[Update (Sept. 5, 7:55 p.m. Eastern): Welcome Instapundit readers, and many thanks to Prof. Glenn Reynolds for the Insta-relaunch. His link has produced 1,852 unique visits in less than an hour, and at this point there are about 45 additional visits each minute!]
[Update (Sept. 5, 9:58 p.m. Eastern): 5,418 unique visits in the exactly three hours since Instapundit linked to this post.]
[Update (Sept. 6, 6:45 p.m. Eastern): We just broke 10,000 unique visits to this post in less than 24 hours. Thanks to readers for their interest, and for the many comments. We've resized the posters, below, to improve the readability of the post -- some readers remarked that they were too large, filling the screen. For the full-size version, just click on the poster. Also, we hereby authorize anyone who wishes to reproduce any or all of the posters, both online and in the "real world," as long they are reproduced without alteration.]
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Welcome to another academic year of blogging and postering from Harvard Law Unbound (HLU). For those unfamiliar with our work, we are members of the Harvard Law School community dedicated to the candid examination of corruption and conflict of interest at the Law School, and of its long-standing practice of censoring and otherwise chilling politically incorrect speech. For remarks by prominent bloggers about our work, consult Prof. William Jacobson (here and here), Prof. Glenn Reynolds (here and here), Dan Riehl, and Scott Johnson.
(Disclaimer: as we’ve repeatedly stated, ours is an informal group not recognized in any way either by Harvard Law School or by Harvard University, and our group has absolutely no connection to Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left.)
This blog post announces the results of the vote taken yesterday by the members of HLU. Inspired by Nick Gillespie’s blog post on famous “fake Indians” — and even more by John J. Miller’s 2006 National Review essay, “Honest Injun?” — we set out to determine, looking at all those who have been caught during the last century pretending to be of Native American ancestry, just who is the most egregious perpetrator of this particular type of fraud — in the vernacular, the most “dishonest injun.”
From a large number of initial candidates, we agreed on three qualifications necessary to make the final ballot. To be a finalist, someone must: (1) have no Native American ancestors; (2) have sought professional advancement via affirmative representations of Native American status; and (3) have asserted that status in at least one published book.
Below is our Letterman-style list of the five most “dishonest injuns,” arranged from lowest to highest total votes. By a wide margin, the two top vote-getters were the only professors among the finalists. We readily reached a consensus that their actions are especially dishonest because professors, given their high level of education, are especially aware of their legal and ethical obligation not to commit ethnic fraud for professional advancement.
We’re sad to report that one of our professors here at Harvard Law School, Elizabeth Warren, was the top vote-getter, narrowly beating out Ward Churchill, formerly of the University of Colorado at Boulder (after his status as a fake Indian was exposed, Churchill was fired in 2007 for academic misconduct).
As in the past, we have created a poster campaign in an effort to present the relevant information in concise and easily accessible form. This is our first five-poster campaign. Images of all five posters appear below. Hyperlinks are provided so interested readers can readily check the sources on which we have relied.
On behalf of all members of the Harvard Law School community who would speak the truth but for the Law School’s climate of fear designed to chill politically incorrect speech, we register our shame that Elizabeth Warren continues to be a professor in good standing at the Law School, that she has not been sanctioned in any way for her long-running participation in academic fraud, and that the Law School has not even conducted an impartial investigation into the ample evidence of her wrongdoing. Hers is another stark example of the corruption (failure to hold insiders accountable) and conflict of interest (unwillingness to take prompt action that might hurt the Democrats’ hold on the U.S. Senate) which all too frequently manifest themselves at the heart of the current administration of Harvard Law School.
Biographical background on “Grey Owl” here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Biographical background on “Iron Eyes Cody” here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Biographical background on “Little Tree” here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Background biographical information on Ward Churchill here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Here, via hyperlinks, are the sources we relied on for each statement in our Elizabeth Warren poster:
# 1 Most Dishonest Injun
Elizabeth Warren, aka “Fauxcahontos”
1. Born (1949) and raised in Oklahoma City, named Elizabeth Herring. 100% white; all her ancestors are of Northern European extraction. None of her ancestors was a member of any tribe, and none even lived near Native Americans. A great-great-great grandfather was a soldier who helped expel Cherokees from Tennessee in 1837.
2. As a recent law school graduate interested in teaching, by the early 1980s she reinvented herself as part Cherokee, taking advantage of law school affirmative action hiring programs. On this basis she was hired by the U. of Houston, U. Texas, U. Penn., and Harvard.
3. To help sell the fraud she listed herself as a Native American in various professional directories, as early as 1986. She authorized U. Penn. and Harvard to falsely report her as a Native American in filings with the federal government, violating federal law. She identified herself as “Cherokee” in a 1984 Native American cookbook put out by her cousin. (Her recipes weren’t Cherokee; she copied them out of the New York Times.)
4. Fraud began to unravel in April, 2012, while she was running for a U.S. Senate seat. Though incontrovertibly an ethnic fraud, she still claims Cherokee descent based on a fabricated elopement story and a reference by her mother’s sister to “high cheekbones” running in the family, even though: (a) she reported her mother’s sister as “White” (not “American Indian”) on the 1999 death certificate she signed; and (b) after exhaustive research, her own nephew was unable to “document any Native American ancestry.”
5. Has repeatedly refused to meet with Cherokee geneologists (or even send staff to meet) to address her ancestry claims. Unlike “# 3 Most Dishonest Injun” Asa (Ace) Earl Carter, to date no Harvard professor has come forward to defend Warren’s work as a “cultural impersonator.” Not even family members defend her. Nonetheless she remains a professor in good standing at Harvard Law School, which has not even conducted an impartial investigation into the ample evidence of her academic fraud.
