I've suggested that the Ward Churchill verdict has strong negative implications for the (already shaky) future of tenure--and I've also wondered whether it may mark a watershed moment in diversity hiring and promotion initiatives. I was reminded of those thoughts by Gary Kamiya's recent essay at Salon.com, "Ward Churchill's Win Is Scholarship's Loss."

Just a few paragraphs from an essay well worth reading in its entirety:

It should not have taken a public outcry to make the university look into Churchill's dubious scholarship. Beyond that, the portrait of Churchill that emerges from the report raises serious questions about why he was hired in the first place.

Churchill's academic background is unorthodox. He holds a B.A. in technological communications and an M.A. in communications theory from Sangamon State University. According to Wikipedia, he began working as an affirmative action officer at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1978. In 1990, despite the fact that he did not hold a doctorate, C.U. hired him as an associate professor, and granted him tenure in the communications department in 1991. He moved to the new ethnic studies department in 1996, was made a full professor in 1997, and became chairman of the department in 2002. He received these promotions despite having no formal graduate training in the fields he works in. (Churchill was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1992 by Alfred University after giving a speech there.)

Churchill's self-described ethnic identity played an important, perhaps crucial, role in his academic career. He has stated that he is of Indian ancestry, and was granted tenure in a "special opportunity position," later described as a program to"recruit and hire a more diverse faculty." However, an exhaustive investigation by the Rocky Mountain News found no evidence that he had Indian ancestry. The Denver Post confirmed the same finding. (Churchill was awarded honorary associate membership in the United Keetowah Band in 1994, as were Bill Clinton and others, but such membership does not indicate Indian ancestry.)

C.U.'s failure to do due diligence on Churchill, both before it hired him and later, reflects the peculiar relationship between college administrations and the various identity-based programs -- ethnic studies, gender studies, queer studies -- that sprang up in the 1970s and 1980s. These are legitimate academic fields. But by their nature they are tinged, and often more than tinged, with advocacy. This sets them apart from other academic disciplines and can have problematic consequences. Many students enroll in these programs not just to learn about a subject but to affirm their identity as a member of a "subaltern" group. And some professors in these fields were hired less because of their scholarship or qualifications than of their identity and their passionate advocacy on behalf of that identity. Under these circumstances, it's not surprising that some hires were not always held to the highest academic standards.

If C.U. had been paying attention, or had wanted to pay attention, it would have looked into Churchill's record long before his controversial essay. Serious questions about his research had been raised as far back as 1996 by John LaVelle, now a professor of law at the University of New Mexico Law School. But C.U. failed to look into LaVelle's allegations that Churchill was slanting and fabricating evidence about Native American history.

... the Churchill case reveals the problematic nature of advocacy scholarship. Passionate advocacy has a place in academia, but not if it leads to falsifications. The rise of advocacy scholarship was understandable and has generated much legitimate research and worthy polemics. But it also opened the door to hacks and ideologues. Ethnic studies and gender studies departments are always in danger of falling into breast-beating advocacy and identity-group solidarity. It is the responsibility of universities to make sure they don't.

In the conclusion of their report, the authors write, "If there is one crucial pattern that most affects our assessment ... it is a pattern of failure to understand the difference between scholarship and polemic, or at least of behaving as though that difference does not matter."

The ultimate lesson of the Churchill case is that no cause, however just, benefits from being taken up by a propagandist. Scholarship must be sacrosanct. Rules of evidence must be followed. You can't assert things that you want to believe are true, no matter how morally right or practically beneficial those assertions may be, and then distort or make up evidence to support them.

The solution, though, is not for academics to dismiss the Churchill verdict as much ado about ivory tower business as usual. The solution--as Colorado itself urged in a 2006 review of its tenure-related policies--is for faculties to take seriously how deeply they compromise themselves, their institutions, their autonomy, and the principle of academic freedom when they fail to self-police at moments of hiring, promotion, and post-tenure review. We should see faculty senates across the country voluntarily convening to assess whether their policies and procedures governing those moments are properly rigorous, whether rigorous policies are being properly carried out, and, in cases where there is an issue with one or the other, acting decisively to remedy the problem. These self-assessments and subsequent measures should be conducted openly and transparently (as Colorado did), with recognition that academic freedom is, in its most essential sense, a compact with the public to serve the greater good. I will venture to say that anything less shows that the academy still doesn't get it--that the self-generated corrosion of credibility reflected in the Churchill case will only continue, and that the consequences down the road for all academics will be that much more severe.