Comments on: I Called The Ward Churchill Verdict

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:17:18 +0000

OK, so what you’re saying is that the University made the wrong argument. They should have said, “Yes, we hired him to be an activist. However, he crossed the line. We fired him for being bad at the job for which he was hired.” Tenure or no, he CAN be fired for poor performance.

By: Shaunsky

Shaunsky — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:33:30 +0000

He didn’t plagiarize, the jury found that all of the charges were false or very minor.

CU will have to pay 1 million to his lawyers in addition to 5 million to their own, plus may have to pay back pay and re-instate him depending on the judge’s decision.

By: tehag

tehag — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:56:54 +0000

If only I’d known before working on my master’s degree (which now I wish I’d done in CO) that I could plagiarize all I wanted, cite non-existent sources, etc., then defend myself my saying none of my academic violations matter because I’m loud-mouthed and hate-filled and that’s why you’re after me.

If Churchill won’t be disciplined for his “academic” work then why should I care if any other academic is fraud?

tehag

By: Allen

Allen — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 20:05:39 +0000

This was a civil suit with a lower bar of proof. So yes, the young jury said that the firing came not from academic dishonesty but because of the blow-up over the paper. But Churchill was awarded an entire dollar in damages. Not exactly a ringing endorsement that Churchill was harmed. You’d think at least he’d be able to get some compensation for his last 4 years of lost wages, maybe more dependent on if the judge rules that he’s to be reinstated, and some damages. But a $1?

By: DWPittelli

DWPittelli — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 19:32:30 +0000

The 1st Amendment… does not prevent your employer from firing you for it.

Actually it does, if your employer is the government, such as a state university.

By: diz

diz — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 15:08:28 +0000

so firing Churchill was both wrong on a first amendment basis and wrong because his statements on 9/11 were merely conforming to the standards of his chosen academic discipline

I don’t see how the 1st Amendment applies at all here. The 1st Amendment prevents the government from tossing you in jail for your speech. It does not prevent your employer from firing you for it.

The only real question is what does his tenure agreement allow him to be fired for.

By: Bob Sykes

Bob Sykes — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 11:33:58 +0000

You can’t get rid of tenured faculty simply by eliminating a department. Under AAUP guidelines, which courts generally follow, the faculty in an eliminated department must be placed in other faculty positions. The faculty are dismissed only if the elimination is due to a provable finacial exigency.

By: bobby b

bobby b — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:50:36 +0000

Tenure: Wonder how many long-term quietly conservative profs retain their spots mostly due to tenure? The statismocracy that rules most of academia wasn’t there 20 or 25 years ago, and so those olde fartz had fellow individualists on their faculty to provide mutual support, but most of them are gone now, leaving the painfully small cohort of conservative engineers and docs and biologists and . . . . the real scientists and empiricists, the “facts are your friends” people, who, academic excellence aside, still have to run the liberal, Statist PC gauntlet every day they come to school. For their sakes, keep tenure.

Churchill: is the law regarding dismissal now truly going to be modeled after search-and-seizure law? If they said “what he said about the victims was awful – go investigate his bona fides one more time”, and they then find that he lied about his qualifications, his criminal record, his name and SSN, his attraction to minor boys – they can’t act on that new information in the manner in which they would normally act upon learning such things, merely because their initial driving reason for even looking at him was improper?

But then, if we truly do give serious criminals a pass when we try them on poisonous-tree evidence, I suppose that, in the defense of all such rights, UC-B probably does have to ignore those issues now when they make continued-employment decisions about him.

By: Ross

Ross — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:54:57 +0000

I would have to agree with Nelson on this one. Churchill’s “Eichmann” essay brought him under scrutiny, but it was his plagiarism, his lying regarding ethnicity, his distortion of others work, etc., that are the real issues. He is an academic fraud who should not be employed by a University.
Juries often get it wrong.

By: Nelson

Nelson — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:04:12 +0000

Folks: I have no doubt that Churchill was looked at in greater detail because of his remarks after 9/11. Having said that, he made numerous false claims in his research. To my knowledge, two authors of studies that Churchill sited said that he purposefully mistated their work and that have firing was the appropriate remedy. The AIM (American Indian Movement)has stated that Churchill’s claim to have American Indian roots is false. Two wrongs don’t make a right. He should never have been hired in the first place. Now that we know the extent of his academic fraud what is the University suspose to do? What a weird world we live in. Sorry Steve, I think you are off base on this one.