I was saying I’d rather be Rekers than Churchill or Bellesisles, but only when it comes to the former’s treatment by the academy, not (as I wrote) “in any other sense.” I certainly wouldn’t want to be busted as a customer at Rentboy.com. Who would?

Is that contemptible of me?

Your comment got me to thinking about whether being named emeritus is a “‘reward’ in the usual sense.” According to Wikipedia, professor emeritus “may be given to a full professor who retires in good standing…. [I]t is typically awarded for ‘long and distinguished service.’” Sounds about right. If not a reward in the material sense, emeritus status is certainly, with its implications of “good standing” and “distinguished service,” a reward in the social sense. In addition to the pat on the head, emeritus status usually also affords some perks with a modest dollar value, such as continued access to research databases and the campus recreation center.

Wikipedia also notes that “Standards for granting professor emeritus status vary considerably from one institution to another.” To which I can only say, apparently so.

FWIW, I liked the Galen quote about the taste of human flesh. Pork? Not surprising, I guess, though I’d have thought it would taste more like chicken.

“I have now read through every DoD casualty report from last fall for both Iraq and Afghanistan and news obituaries for most of them, and I have found none that was even remotely possible as the case that Bellesiles wrote about in the Chronicle. … Bellesiles’s story of Javier’s service and injury is so unusual that it should have been easy to verify. But it wasn’t.

This leads to concerns about the Chronicle of Higher Education. Serious questions have now been raised whether the Chronicle of Higher Education has published claims from Michael Bellesiles that can’t be substantiated. This is unfortunate, as it undermines the Chronicle’s credibility and reputation. Liz McMillen, the editor of the Chronicle Review, therefore ought to check Bellesiles’s story. Fortunately, that’s easy to do. She merely has to contact Bellesiles, find out the real name of Javier (either a first or last name would probably do), examine Bellesiles’s syllabus to establish the timeline, and interview his Marine teaching assistant. With Javier’s real name, it should be extremely easy to verify the date and cause of his injury, his place of treatment, and his date of death. She need not publish Javier’s real name any more than Bellesiles did when he published his story about Javier; indeed, her inquiry would be less intrusive than Bellesiles’s original publication of his story in the Chronicle. … If the Chronicle were to do its duty and report its findings honestly, then we would know whether the story is true. If Bellesiles substantially made up his story to advance his career, then I would expect him to refuse to give Javier’s name to even a friendly editor from the Chronicle. Fortunately, the Chronicle should at least be able to review his syllabus and interview his teaching assistant. At the end of the day, the Chronicle should publish its findings or report that it was unable to verify Bellesiles’s story as true.”

At the same time that the University of Colorado was moving to investigate Ward Churchill, the University of South Carolina was rewarding its own fictionist with emeritus status. So maybe the best way for an academic hack to stay off the conservative hit list is to be a homophobic hack at a Southern University, and to make stuff up about gay people rather than the White Man.

As for Bellesisles’ recent Chronicle essay, it certainly doesn’t strike me as self-evidently fabricated. The wingnut response to it seems vindictive, hyperbolic, unfounded, sadistic, and certainly not very Christian. No surprises there.

Anyway, the answer to Erin’s question is obvious. Bellesisles can recover his lost stature–at least some of it–by doing honest work from here on out.