AP Perpetuates Myth
The opening for this story is very misleading: Fired Colo. professor sues university
DENVER - A professor who was fired after comparing some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi sued the school Wednesday, saying officials retaliated against him for exercising his right to free speech.
Although that is the event that triggered an investigation, that has nothing, at all, to do with why he was fired. He was fired for academic misconduct, the AP does actually report that.
Ward Churchill was ousted by the University of Colorado's governing Board of Regents after three faculty committees accused him of plagiarism, fabrication and other research misconduct.
Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, had triggered a national outcry with an essay comparing some World Trade Center victims to Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann.
The Regents said his dismissal was based on other writings and that his firing was unrelated to his Sept. 11 comments. The academic investigation did not include the Sept. 11 essay but began after university officials concluded it was protected by the First Amendment and that he could not be fired for writing it.
Churchill has denied the research misconduct allegations and called the investigation "a farce" and "a fraud."
His lawsuit, filed in Denver District Court, charged that after the essay came to light, "the university vowed to examine every word ever written or spoken by Professor Churchill in an effort to find some excuse for terminating his employment."
University spokesman Ken McConnellogue said the school stands behind the Regents' vote to fire Churchill.
"We believe this is a matter of academic integrity for the university, so we will not be settling the lawsuit," he said.
Churchill will now have the unenviable task of answering for his conduct in open court, in public records. Every instance of plagiarism and fraud will be right out in the open, not kept within the cozy wall of silence that has surrounded the disciplinary process up until now. The university is inclined to fight this lawsuit, which speaks directly to the confidence they have that Churchill did, indeed, violate academic integrity. But no matter how Churchill tries to paint it, he wasn't fired for his reprehensible writings following 9/11. But he really should have thought about what skeletons he had hiding in his closet before he published it.
Media, The Ivory Tower | Gaius Thursday, 26 July , 2007
By FedUp, Thursday, 26 July , 2007 @ 7:15 am
Not to worry… there will be all manner of looney-toons to rush to his defense (can you say ACLU?). He and his layer will try to bury us with obfuscation, excuses and total arrogance. Time for this MOE-ron to move on! Teachers like him do our children a great disservice. Freedom of speech has limits - like common sense… wonder what ever happened to that theory…?