Ward Churchill took the witness stand today in his First Amendment lawsuit against the University of Colorado and denied academic-misconduct charges that the university had cited in firing him in 2007, according to The Denver Post and the Colorado Daily.
Mr. Churchill is expected to take the stand again tomorrow in a trial in which he is attempting to prove that the university trumped up the misconduct charges as a pretext for getting rid of him to end the uproar triggered by an essay he wrote about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Responding today to questions from his own lawyer, David A. Lane, Mr. Churchill sought to rebut several of the key allegations of scholarly misconduct that the university leveled against him.
Asked about a charge that an essay in one of his books involved plagiarism, Mr. Churchill said he only copy-edited the essay, and therefore should not be held responsible for its originality.
In regard to another allegation, Mr. Churchill argued that he did nothing wrong in letting another scholar attach his name to an article he had ghostwritten for her, and then citing the article as hers in another of his works, because she had taken ownership of the position he espoused.
Responding to the university’s charge that he engaged in fabrication in writing that a commander at a U.S. fort deliberately ordered the distribution of smallpox-infected blankets to American Indians in the 1830s, Mr. Churchill said his account was backed by oral history transmitted by the tribe in question, the Mandans. He also defended an assertion that circumstantial evidence suggests that Capt. John Smith deliberately infected the Wampanoag tribe with smallpox in the 1600s, saying that he had not specifically accused Captain Smith of such an act but instead said the infecting was probably carried out on his orders.
Mr. Churchill also defended the essay that initially triggered the national controversy surrounding him, saying it did not support terrorism, but instead was arguing that the United States should expect people oppressed by its foreign policies to strike back. —Peter Schmidt
