CU faculty organ Silver & Gold Record covers the Can-A-Thon:
Regents Dismiss Ward Churchill
Complaints about investigation rebuffed

Churchill is clearly cavalier in his approach to the historical record, twisting and misrepresenting facts in order to make a grand, "anti-imperialist" point. When rereading his controversial essay "Some Push Back"—in which he refers to the "little Eichmanns"—I noticed this passage on Gulf War I:

In trying to affix a meaning to such things, we would do well to remember the wave of elation that swept America at reports of what was happening along the so-called Highway of Death: perhaps 100,000 "towel-heads" and "camel jockeys"--or was it "sand niggers" that week?--in full retreat, routed and effectively defenseless, many of them conscripted civilian laborers, slaughtered in a single day by jets firing the most hyper-lethal types of ordnance.

100,000 killed in the closing days of the war by "hyper-lethal types of ordnance"? (As opposed, I suppose, to moderately lethal ordinance.) Easy to understand "why they hate us," I suppose. Except that Churchill's casualty figures are off by about 99,700.

As Washington Post correspondent Steve Coll wrote, "more Iraqis fled their vehicles and were taken prisoner than were killed by U.S. bombing of the highway. There still are no reliable figures on precisely how many people were killed in the convoy, but reporters who visited the scene as bodies were being collected say the most they saw at any one place was 40, and they estimated that a total of 200 to 300 Iraqis may have died at the scene."

Professor Churchill has been under attack for a long time. His crime - he tried to chip away at the denial that many found comfort in. Some habits are hard to break. Many of us are born and bred to believe that we are the best. Our country has never done anything wrong. The USA has never committed a war crime. We do not torture. Just ask the Attorney General.

Churchill is not alone in his current circumstance. His name will go down in history along with Galileo and others who have dared to challenge the conventional view. Now the trial of the century is about to begin. It has been more than 300 years since the Salem Witch Trials and more than 80 years since the Scopes Trial.

...um, lady, Churchill would belong with Galileo only if Galileo had claimed the universe revolves around the Earth (and that he had irrefutable proof, proof he never seemed able to produce). And the Scopes trial was a defeat for evolutionists. And, as we've wondered before, is it a witch hunt if you actually find a witch?

Churchill is ready to fight back. He is on the offense. Go get'em, Ward. Many are with you.

Will Churchill receive justice through a judicial process? No one knows. The judicial system in the United States often fails to achieve truth or justice.

...so, it's a win-win situation for The Perfesser & his Dune Buggy Attack Battalion. If his lawsuit prevails, he regains his throne in the Kingdom of Any Wound You Can Show, I Can Show Worser. If he loses his lawsuit, then the US judicial system is fatally flawed. Got it.

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.

One of the first things University of Colorado president Hank Brown did after its regents fired divisive professor Ward Churchill Tuesday was reach out to donors, some of whom had held back money until the process was resolved.

In a letter dated July 24, Brown said the university was accountable to donors and was obliged "to work to continue to be a place worthy of your investment."

Responses Wednesday were overwhelmingly positive, CU Foundation officials said. Ninety-two percent of the 50 donors who replied to Brown's letter agreed with Churchill's firing.

...It'd be interesting to find out just how much donation money was being withheld.

I read the complaint and was surprised that the lawyer asked for money but not for injuctive relief. That's legalese for a court order for the university to take some action, ie reinstating Churchill in his job. He also could have asked for a temporary restraining order to delay the firing. The other thing I noticed is that what happened yesterday was that Churchill amended a previous complaint - he had already filed the lawsuit sometime before. I have only seen what was filed yesterday and not any other motions in the case.

You may find interesting the legal standard that the court will use to instruct the jury in the trial:

To determine "whether a public employer's actions impermissibly infringe on free speech rights, the court applies the four-prong test articulated in Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391 U.S. 563 (1968)" (Burns v. Bd. of County Comm'rs of Jackson County, 330 F.3d 1275, 1285 (10th Cir. 2003)) First, it must determine whether the employee's speech involves a matter of public concern. If so, it balances the employee's interest in commenting upon matters of public concern against the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees. Third, if the balance tips in favor of the employee, the employee then must show that the speech was a substantial factor or a motivating factor in the detrimental employment decision. Fourth, if the plaintiff establishes that speech was such a factor, the employer may demonstrate that it would have taken the same action against the employee even in the absence of the protected speech.

The university can base its defense on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th tests, and will probably use some combination of them. I think the school's defense will basically be that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. All the attention he attracted to himself brought all these other ethics issues out of the woodwork.

Churchill is going to argue that there is a witchhunt against him, but in reality he was doing all he could to draw attention to himself.

Over at Inside Higher Education, the comments we noted yesterday have multiplied, and as usual, History Professor Art Eckstein cuts to the chase. Here's just one of his pithy comments:

Pico, and then Faculty Brat, when combined, raise a point I hadn’t thought of: Ward grading exams and essays of his students—exams based overwhelmingly on his own work.

Churchill often assigned his books (and ONLY his books) as the reading for his courses at CU; indeed, one former student said on a previous Ward discussion here in insidehighered.com that Ward required—required—that students buy these books, four or five of them, personally from him, in his office, for cash.

Leaving THAT little item aside, the point about Ward assigning his own books as the textbooks for his courses would be this: how many students over the years got a high grade from Ward for repeating to Ward the teacher Ward the “researcher’s” false and lying version of the Mandan Epidemic, complete with ahistorical Army forts on the Upper Missouri manned by ahistorical evil Army surgeons —NONE OF WHICH items ever existed, historically???

The mind boggles.