At its 20th anniversary dinner, Accuracy in Academia will make its first annual presentation of its Little Churchill awards, named after Ward not Winston, for dubious academic achievement. Just as the colorful Ethnic Studies professor has distinguished himself for calling the victims of the World Trade Center attacks of 9-11-01 Little Eichmanns, thus comparing them to the notorious Nazi from the Second World War, so too have a host of academics distinguished themselves by their ethnic sensitivity in an age of “tolerance.” But Ward Churchill’s achievements do not end there. He has also produced scholarship that either already appeared elsewhere under someone else’s name or, when it was indisputably original, was factually challenged. Accordingly, AIA acknowledges the many competitors in higher education to Ward Churchill’s still-evolving legacy of sensitivity, originality and, above all, accuracy.
- The Little Churchill award for sensitivity. Like the award which we will bestow for original scholarship that rivals Ward Churchill’s own trend-setting accomplishments, the contenders for this prize come from a crowded field. Thus, we have a two-way tie for what might be termed the Little Churchill Little Eichmann. The distinguished joint winners of this prize are
Hatem Bazian—the University of California at Berkeley professor who called for an Intifada in the United States and…
Northeastern University (Illinois) professor Shahid Alam who compared the 9-11 terrorists to America’s founding fathers. - The Little Churchill award for original scholarship came down to another two-way tie between Columbia University Middle East Studies professor Rashid Khalidi and recently-retired Central Connecticut State University president Richard L. Judd. Khalidi, who thinks America’s media make too big a deal about suicide bombers, posted an article under his own name on the web that matched up section by section with the work of another author, who was conveniently deceased. Judd offered an opinion column to the Hartford Courant that looked remarkably like an editorial by another writer that had appeared in The New York Times.
- The Little Churchill prize for accuracy. This award also functions as a lifetime achievement award for historian Howard Zinn. If he had written nothing else, and many of us wish that were the case, the grand master of historical fantasy would win the award for his demonstrably unfounded assertion that unemployment grew during the Reagan Years.
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.
