Now that professor Ward Churchill's wrongful termination for 'academic misconduct' trial in Colorado has been decided in the plaintiff's behalf, and the full court press for Churchill's reinstatement to the tenured ranks of education at Colorado University Boulder begins with a statement of purpose from the plaintiff:
'If the judge declines to give Churchill his job back, he said he'll ask for 10 years worth of lost "front pay" -- at about $110,000 a year.' (ed: That's $1 million dollars plus, further, he'd much rather have the tenured professorship):The bleating may still be heard from the anti-open education fringe (David Horowitz' colleagues) and other 'right wing' loons about Churchill's unfitness-to-teach due to the initial decision of 'research misconduct and/or plagiarism', from the 'packed' academic misconduct committee."If it would make a bunch of people uncomfortable on the Boulder campus, what's the argument?" Churchill said. "They violated my rights, therefore to spare them discomfort I should not be restored to what I was unlawfully deprived of? That's somewhat tenuous."[In Full @ the Boulder Daily Camera]
For those at CU who can't stand having him so close, Churchill has an offer:
"If it really makes you that uncomfortable, you're free to leave," he said.
Stanley Fish, literary theorist and legal scholar, weighs in on the report of the “committee of faculty peers” that found Ward Churchill guilty of academic misconduct, and his conclusion... "Ward Churchill is not guilty of academic misconduct"
“The verdict did not surprise me because I had read the committee’s report and found it less an indictment of Churchill than an example of a perfectly ordinary squabble about research methods and the handling of evidence. The accusations that fill its pages are the kind scholars regularly hurl at their polemical opponents. It’s part of the game. But in most cases, after you’ve trashed the guy’s work in a book or a review, you don’t get to fire him. Which is good, because if the standards for dismissal adopted by the Churchill committee were generally in force, hardly any of us professors would have jobs.”
[In Full]
