The academic world is facing another professor accused of misrepresenting her ethnic background. Andrea Smith, an associate professor at the University of California Riverside has written extensively on Native American subjects and long claimed Cherokee heritage. However, critics have said that Smith is no Cherokee — a scandal reminiscent of Elizabeth Warren scandal after her lifetime claim of being a Native American were debunked. Likewise a former University of Colorado professor and radical “Native American” writer Ward Churchill was found to have phony claims of being Native American. The question is what is the proper response of a school if an academic long claimed such a status, which comes with obvious benefits from schools seeking to diversify their faculties. On one hand, there can be a question of academic honestly while on the other academics can claim that they were acting in good faith on the basis of family accounts or misguided assumptions.
David Cornsilk, a Cherokee genealogist found no evidence of Cherokee bloodlines for Smith and added “Wannabes like Andrea use the myths of Cherokees hiding in the hills, passing for white or being saved by righteous whites, to perpetuate their lies.”
Cornsilk has said that Smith came to him repeatedly to establish Cherokee roots and that each time he told her that no such links existed. Critics say that Smith continued to represent herself as a Native American woman and a minority. Media reports state that various people confronted Smith about her claims to be a Cherokee in the past at academic conferences and appearances and claim that she promised to stop doing so.
Smith has not responded directly to reporters and it is not clear how much of the research on her background is being contested. She issued a somewhat encryptic statement that “I have consistently identified myself based on what I knew to be true” and that her belief was based on “what I knew to be true.” In a statement that drew comparisons to Rachel Dolezal, she added that she “will always be Cherokee.”
She also stated in a blog posting that “I have consistently identified myself based on what I knew to be true. My enrollment status does not impact my Cherokee identity or my continued commitment to organizing justice for Native communities.” It is not clear if Smith is still claiming to be an actual Cherokee and failed to show up on listings to some “enrollment” issue.
Smith received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz in 2002 and her J.D. at UC Irvine School of Law in 2013. According to her faculty bio, she is the author of Native Americans and the Christian Right: The Gendered Politics of Unlikely Alliances and Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. She is also the editor of The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex, and co-editor of The Color of Violence, The Incite! Anthology; Theorizing Native Studies,and Native Studies Keywords.
She is clearly identified as a Cherokee in this videotape:
The University has indicated that it will take no action on the allegation and that Smith remains a faculty member in good standing with the university. It further stated that ethnicity was not considered during her hiring. That later statement remains one of the most difficult issues for academics like Warren who listed herself as a minority for reporting purposes.
Source: Inside Higher Education
“tick one more racial equality box for the feds.”
…better Fed than red, my Momma always said.
But this way you can be both!
What’s crazy manic is the conservative obsessiveness over bashing liberals, this is done at ANY cost. This thread displays this exceedingly clearly. I doubt your friend JAG would think that this liberal female professor’s embellish her ethnicity rises to the level of outrage that four dead service members does. I would suggest that conservatives here hold up and mirror and take a long hard look, if you dare. You folks are ill, deep down in your soul.
JAG is a good and sane liberal. You can go toe to toe w/ her and it doesn’t get crazy. We need more sane liberals.
This thread got crazy manic. It’s a shame. We had a fairly sane and civil conversation ON THE TOPIC going on earlier.
randyjet:
“As for the so called atrocity of the Trail of Tears, I suggest you do as i did and read the BOOK The Trail of Tears and learn something about that time and period, and about the Cherokees I have neither the time nor the inclination to educate you on the many errors you make..”
What did I get wrong about the Trail of Tears? My only mention, I believe, was that Warren’s ancestor actually rounded up the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears, adding a layer of irony to her later lie about actually being one.
JAG:
“Just as I have NO REASON to believe that Warren and this woman Smith, are not Native Americans.” Actually, it’s been conclusively shown that she is zero percent Native American. Earlier reports on the New England Geneological Society backing up her claim were from an astonishing ethical error on their part where they took her word for it.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/05/genealogist-who-claimed-elizabeth-warren-was-132-cherokee-goes-silent-as-source-document-exposed-as-false/
Thomas Lipscomb, a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future:
“Have the New England Historic Genealogical Society and its genealogist Christopher Child engaged in intentional fraud in confirming Elizabeth Warren’s disputed Cherokee heritage?
No reputable genealogist or genealogical organization would ever use a family newsletter by an amateur genealogist as the basis for an opinion. They require direct documentation from a certified copy of a birth or marriage certificate or some other objective evidence. While family newsletters, or family web postings may provide a useful tip as to where the real documentation may be, they are just as likely to be dead wrong encrustations of family myth that may or may not be true, but can’t be proven.
While family members may find these myths of interest, professionals like the New England Historic Genealogical Society and Christopher Child, or the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, where I have served on the Heraldry Committee, will not accept them as documentation for any kind of genealogical claim. And they certainly won’t take a chance of embarrassing themselves professionally by making a public statement on the basis of flimsy evidence they regard as little more than rumor.
I have considerable experience with genealogical documentation. I have served as the head or an officer of a number of genealogical associations. My own family history won the Donald Lines Jacobus Award as best genealogical history of the year given by the prestigious American Society of Genealogists. And I have had to help dozens of people support their applications for membership over the past forty years, as well as approve them. Most genealogical associations are delighted to help. They are looking for members, not trying to exclude them. But I have never seen a case in which any application was approved relying upon an item from a family newsletter not supported by documentation…
But that raises the real question: what in the world did the more than 160 year old New England Historic Genealogical Society and its genealogist Christopher Child think they were doing taking what they knew was only a family rumor, putting their own reputation behind it, and plastering it all over the press?
They had the research and professional in-house capability to pull up the document required to substantiate Warren’s claim. Someone has just done it, and the magic word “Cherokee” appears nowhere on it. And this should come as no surprise to any researcher in genealogy. Research in that field is full of bad information and blind alleys.
Lipscomb concludes that even if we give the New England Historic Genealogical Society and Christopher Child the benefit of the doubt, this is at best “a ghastly professional error,” and at worse something far more serious:
But now that the actual document has surfaced, attested to by the local state officer in charge of these vital records, they have refused to comment or revise their much-ballyhooed statements to the press on Warren’s Cherokee heritage. If they continue to do so, they will have gone well beyond making a professional error. After all the questions of their credibility attending the election of a United States Senator from Massachusetts are of a good deal more consequence than assisting in the preparations of membership papers for the Society of Mayflower Descendants.
And now, barring a recantation, it appears the venerable New England Historic Genealogical Society and Christopher Child have colluded in an election fraud upon the people of Massachusetts to publicly and repeatedly advantage a candidate from the Harvard Law School for political office at the expense of their own professional standards and the evidence now staring them in the face. It is time for the press to call them to account.”
If you’re going to lie about being a minority, don’t self identify as a Native American. They actually keep detailed records, and vigorously fight fraudulent claims because Native Americans are entitled to a great many other benefits besides Affirmative Action.
@Squeeky
But my purse doesn’t match my frock.
The entire US should be a Gun-Free zone.
Then it would be impossible for this to happen.
For example, some of the tightest gun regulations in the US are in Chicago and New York City, and one rarely hears of gun violence there.
The gun free policy at recruitment centers was in place long before any liberal took office Pogo. Still trying to bash liberals whilst standing on the dead bodies of four of our troops. Nice… Not.
Thank Gaia that those Marines were in a Gun-Free zone.
It might have been a lot worse!
randyjet:
Race/ethnicity on voter registration is used for collection purposes only. Why you would want someone prosecuted for checking the wrong box, but OK with someone lying about being a minority for 25 years in order to allegedly benefit from Affirmative Action or similar quotas is beyond me.
That’s quite a double standard you have there.
I’ve explained to you why I felt that Bush’s “wrong box” was not criminal, included a link to explain why it was not criminal, and exhausted the topic of why he stood to gain no benefit if he did it on purpose. He has never claimed to anyone for any part of his life, as far as I know, that he’s a minority. How could he? We all know who he is. Therefor his explanation of having just checked the wrong box makes sense.
As I stated before, however, if he did pretend to be a minority for personal advancement, then I would have the same problem with him that I had with Dolezal et al.
I’m curious if you feel that anyone who makes a mistake on their taxes should be prosecuted rather than simply filing an amended return.
I am truly shocked that the shooter is from the Religion of peace (and that ISIS tweeted out about it before the attack), and not some heterosexual Christin Palin supporter.
If only men in universities could spend MORE time being indoctrinated about the evils of white heteronormative male privilege and the triumph that is FEMINISM and MULTICULTURALISM, this sort of horror wouldn’t be happening.
You would Squeeky, no surprise there.
randyjet:
“Karen, You obviously have not read any CV of Warren since you would know that she is an outstanding legal scholar when she got the post at Harvard, thus your contention that she used her ethnic status to get the job is smply an outright lie.” Yes, I am aware of her CV credentials. How would you have any idea what the pool of candidates were for any of her jobs?
Answer: you don’t. You are inexplicably declaring that she did not benefit from lying about being a Native American.
After having been proven exhaustively to NOT be any fraction of Native American, she repeated her knowingly false statement about her fraudulent Native American history in her 2014 book.
@Chief Consort
Well, I think you’re pretty!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Yoo, Bush’s the torture lawyer, a fitting typo.
Conservative bashing of liberals trumps everything doesn’t it Pogo? What a sad angry life you must lead. Your callous disregard for these military deaths and your continued emphasis on your petty conservative narrative is a picture into what yoo are and it ain’t pretty.
Inga – so, it is more important to troll the tread instead of stay on topic.
Paul, quit trolling the thread.
But some religious nuts in bakery in Toadbutt, Montana might decline to cater a gay wedding, Inga.
THAT’s the real tragedy here.
Shootings happen every day in America, but liberal English professors get raked over the coals just for channeling their inner Indian.
It just ain’t fair.
YOU’RE MOST WELCOME.
Just continue on topic Pogo. We all know what is TRULY important to you conservatives. Bashing liberal women professors embellishing their ethnicity FAR exceeds the terrorist attack on five military members and is of utmost urgency and hugely consequential in the scheme of life. Proceed.
And THANKS for the reminder to use ALLCAPS intermittently, Inga.
It really brings it HOME.