Jury Rules That Ward Churchill Wrongly Dismissed
Yes. That Ward Churchill.
DENVER — A jury has ruled that the University of Colorado wrongly fired the professor who compared some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi.
The jury awarded Ward Churchill just $1 in damages Thursday. A judge will decide later whether he gets his job back.
Churchill was a tenured professor of ethnic studies. He was fired on charges of research misconduct but maintained his dismissal was in retaliation for an essay he wrote about Sept. 11 victims.
He called the World Trade Center victims “little Eichmanns,” referring to to Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann.
Churchill has always claimed that his scholarship was only challenged as a result of the controversy his now-infamous “little Eichmans” essay stirred, and that his ultimate termination resulted not from problems with his research and writing but rather because of his political views. I think that it’s undoubtedly correct that Churchill’s political views brought further scrutiny upon his scholarly work. But that doesn’t mean that the problems that scrutiny uncovered were wrong. The 9/11 essay may have been the genesis for the scrutiny, but facts are facts.
Put simply, Chuchill wasn’t fired because he compared the 9/11 victims to Nazis. He was fired because that comparison drew scrutiny to his less-than-honest academic record. A jury may now have ruled otherwise, but that doesn’t make it true. Churchill is plainly guilty, in my humble opinion, of egregious instances of plagiarism and outright fabrication. Wikipedia has a nice summary of the charges.
It’s a little unbelievable that the taxpayers of Colorado are apparently going to have to start paying this idiot’s wages again.
