The University of Colorado has requested information needed to further pursue research misconduct complaints made against Ward Churchill by the family of his deceased third wife, Leah Kelly.

Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano has not announced whether he will refer the Kelly family's grievance to CU's standing faculty committee on research misconduct. That panel is investigating several complaints of plagiarism, fabrication and violation of copyright law against the tenured ethnic studies professor.

When DiStefano on March 24 asked the committee to examine aspects of Churchill's work, he said the Kellys' criticisms of Churchill's preface to Leah Kelly's posthumous book In My Own Voice would not be examined by the committee. CU, he said, had been "unable to obtain independent verification" on the Kellys' complaints.

The Kellys, at that time, said that was because CU had made no effort to do so.

Rhonda Kelly, Leah Kelly's 41-year-old sister and a law student living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, wrote to DiStefano on June 13 asking CU to reconsider its decision.

"There are too many flaws with Churchill's writings of this book, and it is unfortunate the University of Colorado does not have higher standards for professors who teach and write about the history of the first peoples of this land," she wrote.

The book is a collection of essays written by Leah Kelly. Churchill published the book in 2001 after her death at 30 in a car-pedestrian accident.

Rhonda Kelly argued that Churchill intended her sister's story to be illustrative of larger issues affecting indigenous people.

DiStefano then requested documentation or sources relating to three specific areas:

• Records showing where Rhonda and Leah Kellys' parents attended school.

• Names of at least "three qualified experts" who could address the question of whether the Kellys' Ojibway clan follows matrilineal or patrilineal traditions.

• Records to support the Kellys' complaint that Churchill misstated the name of the hospital where Leah Kelly died.

Rhonda Kelly sent DiStefano the information in a letter dated July 20.

CU had not received her letter as of Tuesday, nearly a week later.

Churchill declined comment Tuesday.

Churchill, a tenured ethnic studies professor at CU, became the center of national controversy early this year after it was discovered that in 2001 he had written an essay on the Sept. 11 attacks comparing some workers at the World Trade Center to Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

In the wake of that outcry, CU initiated an examination of Churchill's published works and public speeches. That process concluded that he had not exceeded the boundaries of a public employee's free speech.

But that review resulted in DiStefano referring several research misconduct charges to a peer review panel. That inquiry could lead to results ranging from Churchill's exoneration to his termination.

Complaints of errors

According to the family of Leah Kelly, Ward Churchill's deceased third wife, his 58-page preface to her book In My Own Voice contains numerous factual errors concerning her personal history and her family's culture, including:

• Stating that the Kellys' Ojibway clan follows matrilineal traditions, while they say they adhere to patrilineal traditions.

• Stating that both of Leah Kelly's parents attended residential schools, whereas the Kellys say only Leah Kelly's father did so.

• Misstating the name of the hospital where Leah Kelly died, after being struck by a car May 31, 2000. Churchill has already acknowledged this error.

• Misstating the circumstances of the accident.

• Stating that Leah Kelly suffered a miscarriage early in her marriage to Churchill at the six-month mark, whereas hospital records show it was at six weeks.

What the faculty panel is exploring

The allegations against Churchill already being examined by CU's standing faculty committee on research misconduct are:

• That Churchill has misrepresented a key statute in Indian law, the General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act of 1887, incorrectly interpreting it to say it makes blood quantum a requirement of tribal membership. It is also alleged that Churchill has similarly mischaracterized the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990.

• That Churchill has repeatedly advanced a theory charging the U.S. Army with genocide by knowingly distributing smallpox infested blankets among the Mandan Indians in 1837, citing sources that, in fact, contradict that claim.

• That Churchill plagiarized the work of professor Fay Cohen of Dalhousie University.

• That Churchill improperly claimed American Indian heredity to win a greater audience and credibility for his writing on American Indian issues.

• That Churchill plagiarized a defunct Canadian environmental group's pamphlet on a shelved water diversion project.

Churchill has repeatedly denied wrongdoing on all the above counts.

brennanc@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2742

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