A WHILE BACK, I quoted Indian Country Today as saying that Ward Churchill was sought out for his views, which led a few readers to argue that this wasn’t necessarily so. But it’s looking more and more as if it’s the case, though it’s also possible that his claimed Indian ancestry was the real attraction. Either way, the University certainly seems to have been anxious to hire and tenure him.

The Rocky Mountain News reports:

Ward Churchill received tenure without the usual scrutiny at a time when the University of Colorado was anxious to add minority teachers, one player in his hiring said Thursday.

Churchill, who claims American Indian heritage, was tenured in the communications department effective the fall of 1991 – a meteoric leap from a job he had held for more than a decade in a program that provides tutoring and counseling for minority students. . . .

Bowers said Churchill was interviewed by every faculty member in communications. Professors in the department read some of Churchill’s works, but not all of them, he said.

They concentrated on Churchill’s writings about the standoff between the federal government and the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee, Bowers said.

“He wasn’t writing general theory, he was writing specific cases. But specific cases are of interest to academics,” Bowers said.

Tenure review typically includes an evaluation of the candidate’s published works by scholars from other campuses. That didn’t happen in Churchill’s case, Bowers said.

More here:

Ward Churchill’s quick rise to a tenured position came as a surprise to the former University of Colorado official who suggested him for a temporary faculty position in 1990.

Churchill had been working for more than a decade in a program that helps minority students when then-Vice Chancellor Kaye Howe recommended him for a one-semester appointment teaching Indian studies.

Eleven months later, Churchill leaped to a coveted tenured position.

“This just doesn’t compute for me,” Howe said Wednesday of Churchill’s quick rise to tenure. “I don’t understand that.”

Tenure is usually granted only after a “laborious” process, she said.

Apparently — as Indian Country indicated — they were afraid of losing him:

In 1990, CU officials apparently considered Churchill an expert in American Indian studies.

“Ward is certainly being courted by other universities as a significant Indian scholar and teacher. It would be a shame to lose him because of a standard which may be irrelevant in this case,” Howe wrote Middleton in an e-mail, referring to Churchill’s lack of a doctorate. . . .

The documents released by CU do not explain why Churchill was able to avoid the normal process for getting tenure, which gives a high measure of job security to faculty. Scholars have questioned Churchill’s conclusions for years, and some have suggested he lied about being an Indian to land his job at CU.

I’ll bet the CU folks wish they’d lost him to another school now.

UPDATE: Ouch. That smarts.