Activism Posing As Scholarship: Heirs Of Ward Churchill

"Academia's Hidden Crackpots" from the LA Times discusses activists posing as scholars, in the wake of the notorious Ward Churchill debacle.  It notes that the University of Colorado didn't seem to engage in much self-reflection to figure out how it had hired and retained such an unqualified person on its faculty.

What should concern us all, however, is academia's nurturance of loons like the hate-filled Churchill. No, they are not many, but they shout louder than their numbers would suggest. And though their influence is minor in American higher education overall, they can be very influential in particular fields, such as comparative literature and gender and ethnic studies. That's because the problem on campuses isn't rigorous Marxist materialists, as conservative stereotypes would have you believe, but craven emotional warriors in the arena of identity politics.

Even if the majors are soft and more attractive to the fringe element, it is argued, doesn't excuse this acceptance of shoddy scholarship and activism substituting for academic excellence.