Minor Correction to Ward Churchill Report

The following correction has just been posted on the Inside Higher Education website. The original can be viewed at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/09/qt:

The members of the investigative committee that explored allegations of research misconduct against Ward Churchill have unanimously adopted a statement that identifies one misstatement in their report, offers additional language to fix that mistake, and clarifies that the changes in no way relate to their conclusions about Churchill, who has since been fired by the University of Colorado. While the members all agreed on the statement, only three of them agreed to its release to Inside Higher Ed. Their names appear at the end of the statement.

The statement reads:

The undersigned were members of the Investigative Committee appointed by the University of Colorado at Boulder in December, 2005 to consider allegations of research misconduct against Professor Ward Churchill. The full text of our lengthy report can be found at:
http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/download/WardChurchillReport.pdf

Although our tenure as members of that committee ended when we submitted our report in May, 2006, we feel an obligation as scholars to correct one sentence in that report. On page 34, an incomplete sentence resulted in an inaccurate statement. The relevant sentence reads, "The pages referenced by Professor Churchill in the Salisbury book do not contain the words 'Wampanoags' and have no discussion of any disease or epidemic (including smallpox)."

That sentence should have read, "The pages referenced by Professor Churchill in the Salisbury book do not contain the words 'Wampanoags' and have no discussion of any disease or epidemic (including smallpox) spread by John Smith or attributed by Salisbury to Smith's 1614 visit to the area." We were obviously aware of Salisbury’s discussion of the epidemic(s) that struck in 1616-18: subsequent pages of our report refer to his account of those outbreaks of disease.

When the error in the sentence on p. 34 was pointed out to us in spring, 2007, Professor Wesson announced the correction in a letter to the University of Colorado’s official paper, Silver and Gold Record, published on 12 April 2007; she asked also that it be communicated to the university officials considering Professor Churchill’s case. Now that the university has completed its deliberations, we want to ensure that the correction is drawn to the attention of the wider scholarly community.

Although our report’s description of these pages in Salisbury's work was inaccurate, we took into account during our deliberations the actual contents of the pages in question and those surrounding them. This correction therefore does not change any of our findings about research misconduct with respect to the specific allegation it concerned or any of the other allegations.

Thank you for allowing us to correct the record.

Robert N. Clinton, Foundation Professor of Law, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University

José E. Limón, Director, Center for Mexican-American Studies and Mody C. Boatright Regents Professor of American and English Literature, University of Texas at Austin

Michael L. Radelet, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado at Boulder