Tuesday, May 16, 2006

The End of Academic Standards

The report on faux Indian (and faux professor) Ward Churchill has come out, it is pretty critical, but fails to hold him accountable for anything. The most ridiculous section:

Two members of the Committee conclude and recommend that Professor Churchill should not be dismissed. They reach this conclusion because they do not think his conduct so serious as to satisfy the criteria for revocation of tenure and dismissal set forth in section 5.C.1 of the Law of the Regents, because they are troubled by the circumstances under which these allegations have been made, and because they believe that his dismissal would have an adverse effect on other scholars’ ability to conduct their research with due freedom.



Is this really that big of a problem? Should we really be concerned that we are cutting into the academic freedom of academics who plagiarize and produce fraudulent work?