After Ward Churchill’s writings became widely known, it was clear that he hates America, despises those who perished at the World Trade Center as “little Eichmanns,” and admires our nation’s enemies. Last Friday, with the release of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s preliminary review of Mr. Churchill’s work and conduct, it is now also clear that he stands accused of numerous instances of academic fraud.

Chancellor Phil DeStefano and other administrators concluded that Mr. Churchill’s writings and public comments were “repugnant” but protected by the First Amendment. At the same time, the review team referred Mr. Churchill’s case to the university’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct because there were so many serious allegations of plagiarism and fabrication against him. This latter committee will have the power to recommend sanctions, including dismissal from the university.

Interestingly, the DeStefano report did not defend Mr. Churchill on grounds of academic freedom. This is because academic freedom is bounded by what the report calls “standards of professional conduct.” The most basic of those standards is the duty to adhere to norms of intellectual honesty and professional conduct. Even though Mr. Churchill’s speech is protected, the university may nonetheless hold him accountable for violations of the minimal standards of professional integrity required of a tenured professor.

Reputable scholars contacted the university review committee to call attention to Mr. Churchill’s many violations of professional integrity. A professor at Lamar University, Thomas Brown, told the investigating panel that Mr. Churchill’s claim that the U.S. Army deliberately distributed smallpox-infested blankets to Mandan Indians in 1837, causing an epidemic that killed 100,000 people, was false. Mr. Brown said that Mr. Churchill had “fabricated the most crucial details of his genocide story” and that he had “misrepresented the sources he cites in support of his genocide charges, sources which say essentially the opposite of what Mr. Churchill attributes to them. “The source that Mr. Churchill had cited for his accusations was a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, Russell Thornton, who told the press that Mr. Churchill had misrepresented his work and had embarrassed legitimate scholars of American Indian history.

A professor at the University of New Mexico, John LaVelle, informed the committee that Mr. Churchill’s work is “sorely lacking in historical/factual veracity and scholarly integrity.” An expert in the field of American Indian studies, Mr. LaVelle charged Mr. Churchill with misrepresenting the language of a 19th- century federal statute, falsely claiming that the federal government had imposed a “blood quantum” test on American Indians to determine eligibility for membership in a tribe. Mr. LaVelle had previously exposed Mr. Churchill’s analysis as a “hoax,” but Mr. Churchill has continued to publish his false claims, and other scholars continue to cite and repeat the erroneous Churchill assertions in their work. Thus, a factual distortion enters the academic mainstream as “fact.”

A professor at Dalhousie University in Canada, Fay G. Cohen, told the university investigating team that Mr. Churchill had plagiarized her work. She had written a chapter for a book that he was editing, which she withdrew after they quarreled about substantive editorial issues. Ms. Cohen said that Mr. Churchill called her late one night after she pulled her chapter and said in a menacing voice: “I’ll get you for this.” When the Churchill book appeared, it contained an article that was “nearly the same” as the withdrawn Cohen contribution, but its authorship was attributed to Mr. Churchill. In 1997, the legal counsel of Dalhousie University concluded that the disputed chapter in Mr. Churchill’s book was plagiarized. The review committee inquired into whether Mr. Churchill had engaged in teaching misconduct because several former students had complained about him. Two students said that he had lowered their grades because of the views they expressed in his classroom. But the reviewers decided to ignore these student complaints because they were over five years old, and student records at the university are not retained after five years.

Another important issue was whether Mr. Churchill had engaged in “fraudulent misrepresentation” by claiming that he was a Native American in order to gain employment or to add “credibility and public acceptance to his scholarship.”

When Mr. Churchill was hired by the university in 1979, he described himself as a Native American on his application. He claims on his curriculum vitae to be enrolled in the United Keetowah Band Cherokee tribe. In his speeches and published works, he frequently describes himself as an American Indian and refers to his ancestry as Cherokee or Creek Indian. He has claimed ancestry in three different Indian tribes. However, the “principal chief” of the Keetowah Band of Cherokees told the reviewers that Mr. Churchill is not enrolled in the tribe and holds only an “honorary” membership.

Did Mr. Churchill falsely claim to be of Indian descent when he was hired? It turns out that “certain Indian leaders” complained to the university in 1994 that Mr. Churchill had lied on his employment application about his Indian heritage. At that time, the then-chancellor of the Boulder campus decided that the university accepted self-identification as legitimate. If Mr. Churchill falsely claimed to be an Indian and thereby gained access to the benefits of affirmative action in his employment, it was fine in the eyes of the university. Since the matter was resolved in 1994, the review committee decided to treat this issue as a closed question.

But did Mr. Churchill use his claims of Indian ethnicity “to gain a scholarly voice, credibility, and an audience for his scholarship by wrongfully asserting that he is an Indian”? The reviewers hold that his assertion of Indian descent “is material to his scholarship, yet there is serious doubt about his Indian identity.” The matter was referred to the university’s Committee on Research Misconduct to determine whether Mr. Churchill had fabricated his identity.

The investigation of Mr. Churchill avoided answering important questions. First, how was Mr. Churchill able to win a tenure track appointment at a major research university without having earned a doctorate, which is normally a minimum requirement for such a position?

Second, how did he win early tenure, again without the minimum scholarly qualifications for advancement in the academic world?

Third, why did the reviewers not acknowledge that Mr. Churchill’s bachelor’s and master’s degrees were awarded (by Sangamon State University in Springfield, Illinois) in “communications,” which means that he lacks any academic qualifications as a historian or social scientist?

Addressing the last question might have helped to explain his contempt for the norms of scholarly inquiry and professional integrity, since he was able to evade the norms for entry into the academic profession with the connivance of the university.

The reviewers might also have devoted a bit more attention to Mr. Churchill’s claims of Indian ancestry, which were so crucial to his gaining employment without appropriate credentials and then winning early tenure. The Denver Post reported last week that Mr. Churchill was born to Jack LeRoy Churchill and Maralyn Lucretia Allen in Urbana, Ill., in 1947, and grew up in Elmwood, Ill., after his parents divorced. The U.S. Census for 1950 and 1960 showed no Indians living in Elmwood. And the review committee also knew that Mr. Churchill recently had been denounced by the leaders of the American Indian Movement as a poseur.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of this sorry situation is that the chancellor and his top deans believe that Mr. Churchill’s ethnicity is and should be relevant to his purported scholarship. Mr. Churchill played the ethnic heritage card to the maximum, claiming that his ancestry gave him special knowledge of American Indian history without benefit of the usual period of study.

What are exposed are not only his dubious claims and fraudulent scholarship, but the absurdity of the university’s assumption – widely held in the academic world – that one’s bloodlines or ancestry is an academic credential. By now, Mr. Churchill may believe he really is an Indian. But as Paul Campos, a law professor and columnist for the Rocky Mountain News wrote, “Some people believe they’re Napoleon. But that’s not a good reason for giving them professorships in French history.”

The decision about Mr. Churchill’s future at the University of Colorado now rests in the hands of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct. That committee has the power to recommend his expulsion. It is difficult to imagine a committee of scholars deciding that Mr. Churchill’s well-documented record of plagiarism and fraud is acceptable in the university community.

Whatever the committee may decide about his fate, it is the reputation of the university – not only in Boulder, but across the nation – that hangs in the balance.

Ms. Ravitch is a member of the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution.