Churchill March 24 morning: Starting Cross Examination

The morning started with Churchill producing a notebook he brought in to show how he collects research (this particular notebook contained research on the Fort Clark Smallpox Epidemic, which was conditionally admitted into evidence subject to Defense examination. Mr. Lane continued with his broad questions, which allowed Churchill to give expansive answers or comments to points brought up in previous testimony.

Why answers to Investigative Committee (“IC”) questions were incomplete or contradictory -- Churchill noted that when you spend 20-30 years accumulating information and then someone says, “Prove this point,” it takes time to accumulate the data. As you accumulate knowledge you are not marking everything to prove specific points. The IC rules allow for extension of the 120-day deadline, but four of the committee members didn’t seem to know that rule and Wesson didn’t tell them. (Lane refers to the IC as the “Wesson Committee,” possibly to distinguish it from the other two committees, and possibly to infer that Wesson had particular influence—or both.) Churchill noted that the question-answering process was that he would start responding to committee questions and they would insert another question to do, so there is a collection of partial answers. “An amazing amount of work that goes into preparing a response to a broad array of charges.” While the IC was five people working full time with secretarial support, he was one person on his own.

“Blood quantum” quote re Allotment Act – IC said there was no such language in the Act therefore it is a misquote. But Article III of the act allows the Secretary of Indian affairs to set policy to implement the act, and the way the passage describes the total effect of the Act is correct. The Indian Commission’s policy required someone to be one-half Indian to receive the land allotment of 160 acres. As a result of this limitation, Indians lost 100-150 million acres of land. Quotation marks can be used to indicate a term of art, sarcasm, that a particular term is suspect, or to indicate a direct quotation. Churchill always puts “blood quantum” in quotes because the term is meaningless and an anachronism; what the policy is really about is DNA or genetics, getting close to eugenics. In this case, quotes mean sarcasm.

Did CU pay for witnesses to come in? – Churchill presumed CU paid transportation, but for sure they weren’t paying for his witnesses. So the answer to why he didn’t present certain evidence during inquiry was cost ($1400 for Hawaiian witness) and time. And remember, Churchill didn’t get to the Privilege & Tenure Committee until after being convicted by two committees and having the results published electronically.

Confidentiality – Churchill’s understanding was that the entire process was to be confidential, as it is in the university overall. The University never before convened a press conference to announce forwarding complaints, supplementing complaints, and never before published the decision of a committee. Churchill got news of the progress of his case from the Rocky Mountain News.

Assertion that the University is duty bound to investigate any and all allegations of academic misconduct -- Churchill notes that there were multiple complaints filed in regard to the IC report, asserting misrepresentation of sources, outright fabrication, and massive plagiarism in the report itself. Churchill testified that the University took those complaints to Health Science Center to be investigated, and the Center said the report was not scientific research therefore not subject to investigation.

What effect has this investigation and decision had on Churchill’s life? – Churchill was fired on July 27, 2007, so he hasn’t had the (approximately) $105,000 compensation (salary and benefits) for about 2 years. He is not asking for money; he wants his job back and restitution (we assume that is back pay) and an acknowledgment that the process violated his rights.

Professor Radelet’s emphatic assertion yesterday that Churchill’s 30 yrs of academic research is now not worth a bucket of warm spit – Churchill assumes this is evidence of the belief that “if we can nail Churchill we can destroy the line of investigation for which he is the primary proponent” (i.e. the deliberate genocide of indigenous nations). “In the areas of academia where they really know about my work I’m not damaged, but this conviction allows others on the fringes to seal it off so what I set out to do years ago is limited. The Master Narrative says that while we (i.e. the white people in charge) are not perfect we’re pretty close and we have nothing to apologize for. It is an abomination and the people who made that happen are pathetic.”

Who is Philip Deer and what did he tell you? -- Philip is a Muskogee spiritual leader who is important in the American Indian movement. Churchill is not “traditional”; he doesn’t teach or run ceremonies but engages in activism through his writing. Philip told him that his family raised him in a way to understand things from Indian view but also to know how to talk to others who don’t understand. This gives Churchill a unique ability to talk to those outside to make them see how we see/value things on the inside (the Indian people). Churchill was quietly moved in describing his relationship with Deer, and with that answer, direct examination finished.

Mr. O’Rourke was quiet as he began cross examination. He noted that they—he and Churchill—had spent lots of time together, that he hoped to ask direct question and get direct answers.

O’Rourke started by getting Churchill to agree that in January 2005 a) Churchill was a public employee; b) people became enraged by his 9/11 essay; c) the University and Churchill personally received thousands of angry messages; d) government officials were threatening to cut University funding, parents were threatening to withhold children from school; e) there was a general firestorm. O’Rourke made sure the jury understood that Eichmann is credited with gleefully masterminding the intentional destruction of five million jews, which is why the reference in the 9/11 piece was so offensive. Churchill admitted he didn’t mean to imply that people working in the trade towers intentionally killed people, but he stood by his position that people who work for “profit maximization” are nevertheless at least indirectly responsible for people in other countries who work long hours for almost no pay.  The example Churchill gave was how their decisions could result in 13 year old children in Indonesia being chained to work in sweatshops.

O’Rourke showed that there is an existing policy (1998) on faculty research and a definition of “research misconduct” that includes fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, misappropriation no matter what discipline the faculty member is in, and that Churchill had never asked for an exception to this policy for ethnic studies work. O’Rourke then addressed the incident where Churchill had admitted to that four paragraphs had been plagiarized from Professor Fay Cohen's published article. Churchill said he does not know who wrote the article, but it was plagiarised.  Putting passages up on the screen, O’Rourke noted that not only the beginning four paragraphs, but the end and indeed the “whole thing, from stem to stern” was plagiarized. Churchill countered by noting that the middle portion was originally written.

Questioning and testimony then went into a somewhat hard to follow area regarding Churchill’s asserted copy editing of essays that later appeared in two publications. O’Rourke asserted that Churchill’s work on the essays was substantial; Churchill insisted it was just copy editing for consistent form, such things as substituting “nation” for “tribe.” O’Rourke was trying to make the point that Churchill could not have not noticed an article with the exact same title published in two separate journals he was involved with within a year. But Churchill had the text put back on the projected screen to note that in fact the titles were not identical, and no, he did not remember or notice editing articles on similar topics. (Not a great moment for Defense.)

Questioning then went to the topic of ghost writing. Churchill described Rebecca Robbins as someone who had agreed to write an article and then didn’t produce. Churchill was asked for a draft, which he wrote and sent to Robbins to change and publish as she pleased. He never discussed it with Robbins, and saw later that she published it verbatim. O’Rourke then projected a Churchill response to the IC committee where he said that what he has done from time to time is write under pseudonym using a real person’s name. O’Rourke wanted to emphasize the significance of Churchill’s 15 page “essay” in response to the IC’s query on ghost writing, but Churchill deflected this by referring to the IC’s originating question of “what is the difference between pseudonymic writing and ghost writing.”

Churchill insisted that writing under a pseudonym can be using a made-up or real name, which is different from ghost writing, which is providing raw material for someone else to either adopt or change and put their name on. Churchill noted that ghost writing happens all the time, and there is no agreed-upon standard against it. O’Rourke then dissected this reasoning to say that “If it happens all the time, we don’t know who has written anything, do we? Perhaps all the books in the library are ghost written? But if it is so common, why did all the witnesses you have brought in (naming them) say that they had never done this?” O’Rourke also asked the inevitable question of why Churchill hadn’t brought Robbins in to testify that she fully adopted the essay, but Churchill deflected that by saying it wasn’t his responsibility to prove he was innocent, but the University’s to prove he was guilty.

In this case, the devil is in the details, and cross examination is where they raise their little horns. O’Rourke had—and will continue to have after lunch break—lots of particular “you said this here but this there” sorts of questions for the Plaintiff. Churchill has yet to be shaken by any of them. He knows the details and does not lose track of who said what, when. His basic explanation doesn’t change, which makes him a very effective witness for his cause.