The Churchill Judgement

Most of us have heard about the judgment in the matter of Churchill vs. Colorado university — CU was deemed to have wrongfully terminated Mr. Churchill and Mr. Churchill was awarded damages of one dollar.

I have come to the mind that CU is wrong in this case. They only fired Ward Churchill (I will not use the titles of Dr. or professor with Ward Churchill) because of his stupid talk about little Eichmanns & the like. If (and I believe them to be true) the accusations of scholarly misconduct are true (again I want to emphasize I believe them to be true) then why did they not fire him for the misconduct when it was uncovered, more critically why did they hire him in the first place?

From a professor at Oklahoma University:

Having been in the academic system for 17 years, I know how the system works. I know how dishonest these people can be. They won't say that they're firing you for the real reason. They'll trump up charges, they'll invent some specious reason. They'll stack the committee members with people that will do what they want. Waiting to go after Ward Churchill until he wrote that controversial essay, and then they suddenly become concerned over the quality of his scholarship?

The Corner — Mark Hemingway quoting David Deming

This is right, Ward Churchill may have been a shoddy researcher and academic but all was peaches and cream until the Little Eichmann article. Ward was not fired for his shoddy academics but for his controversial article which finally caused Colorado University to let him go. When the going got tough due to the article CU finally decided academic integrity was important.

I just flashed back to Larry Summers mess at Harvard University. Larry Summers you may recall had some comments about women in the sciences and engineering fields and why their populations at the upper levels are minimal. He spoke against the orthodoxy of the left and was excoriated for it. His freedom of speech and academic freedom did not save him.

In the end in this fight between Churchill and Colorado University I hope they both fall into the abyss with their hands clenched around each other's throats.