The AAUP has included essays on the Ward Churchill case and on the assault on academic freedom at Bacone College in Oklahoma in the inaugural issue of its new online journal on academic freedom.

The Churchill article, by Ellen Schrecker, is here: http://www.academicfreedomjournal.org/VolumeOne/Schrecker.pdf

and AAUP President Cary Nelson's article on Bacone is here: http://www.academicfreedomjournal.org/VolumeOne/Nelson.pdf

It's great to see AAUP focusing on Indigenous issues...

I found the Churchill essay well-researched and persuasive, but was surprised that the article includes this sentence on page 21:

"Churchill would not have been fired had Colorado’s politicians not called for his scalp."

The essay, further, refers to a split with the "fledgling" field of American Indian studies that created problems for those at Colorado trying to make sense of the evidence they gathered in their investigation.

I would be interested to hear what others make of AAUP's analysis of what happened to Ward Churchill or of these characterizations of Native studies.