As a counterpoint to Russell Means' preposterous bluster yesterday, Jodi Rave's post this morning is hard to beat
Excerpt:

As a former Churchill student and CU graduate, I’ve long taken a stand against Churchill who I’ve maintained was an academic fraud who pretended to be a Cherokee. I’ve always had a hard time understanding why any Native man or woman would stand beside him and defend such a vile man who has repeatedly shown hate against Native people. If anyone read the affidavits written by Native people they could see the disdain he had against people he purported to defend.

Are Native people really that desperate for a hero?

In effect, Judge Naves has, unless reversed on appeal, sanitized CU of the taint of the jury’s decision that CU terminated him not for research misconduct, but for expressing his first amendment rights in violation of the Constitution.

Thus, not only is Churchill not entitled to the $1 jury award and the vindication the award represented, but his attorneys cannot seek reimbursement of their attorney fees conjectured to be over $1,000,000 since Churchill did not prevail in his Section 1983 first amendment claim.

Most of this cost would never have been incurred by Churchill and his attorneys (or, for that matter, the jury’s time in sitting through a month long trial) had the issue of quasi-judicial immunity been determined before trial by Judge Naves through a motion for summary judgment that as a matter of law CU would prevail.

In the trial's closing arguments, Churchill's attorney portrayed CU as a nest of liars in thrall to the "master narrative" of history that Churchill had bravely tried to counter. "The master narrative," David Lane said, "has been the master narrative for hundreds of years because basically the white guys in suits write history."

They do, do they? On Tuesday, it was a black guy in a black robe who authored a sterling chapter in the judicial history of this state, one that helps to reclaim the meaning of scholarship. One can only imagine the grotesque conspiracy that Churchill will claim to discern in that.

...and the DP gets personal injury & criminal defense attorney Scott Robinson to opine on the inevitability of a Churchill appeal (spoiler: it's inevitable) (yet again via DrunkaWokeUpEarlierThanUsThisMorning)
Excerpt:

[I]s it in the least "judge-like" to publicly denounce a litigant before trial, as the regents did Churchill, in an ill-advised resolution approved in February 2005, long before allegations of research misconduct surfaced?

In that unanimous resolution, the regents proclaimed that Churchill had brought "dishonor" to the university through his unabashedly unpatriotic 9/11 essay, "welcomed" his resignation as the chair of the Ethnic Studies Department, and apologized "to all Americans" for Churchill's "disgraceful comments."

Not really very judge-like behavior, by any definition, and certainly, grounds for recusal in any courtroom in the land.

This case thus pits liability-law social policy against free-speech entitlement, with Naves' decision representing only the most recent chapter in the Churchill saga, which is nowhere near final resolution.

Mr. Churchill's lawyer, David A. Lane, responded to Judge Naves's ruling by announcing plans to appeal. In a statement e-mailed to The Chronicle, the lawyer said, "The message in this ruling is that if your First Amendment rights are violated by the University of Colorado, don’t look to Denver District Court for justice, because justice did not prevail in this instance."

The crowing by the University of Colorado administration after the latest twist in the Churchill case illustrates this claim pretty well. Provost Phil DiStefano seems to have huffed a few lines of Hogwarts Ambiguity Powder to keep a straight face while dubbing CU’s trampling on Churchill’s academic freedom, subversion of faculty process and transparent political thuggery “a victory for faculty governance.”

[...]

Yessir, Naves says, the Regents are immune from legal liability because—here’s the creative part—he thinks they’re kinda like judges, a “quasi-judicial body.” They can’t be sued for decisions taken in relation to their jobs. (Unlike faculty at public institutions, who a growing web of hostile law says can be retaliated against for disagreeing with the thugs and political hacks who boss them.)

Now, the law doesn’t actually come out and say the Regents are immune—that’d be too pedestrian and straightforward. You need a good Reader and Thinker to see that.

As RaceToTheBottom points out, Naves could have spotted this analogy of Regents to judges, and the corresponding immunity from lawsuits before the trial, and spared Churchill the expense of a month-long hearing. But before the trial—not knowing its inconvenient result—Naves didn’t need this clever (and false) analogy.

Look for this stinker to be reversed on appeal. And if it isn’t—whoa, nelly. Strap on for a wild ride. Increasingly the Law says administrations have academic freedom—and you don’t.

Associate professor of cultural studies Marc Bousquet, author of the above (and our first nominee for PB's Cheyfitz Memorial Dead Rat And A String To Swing It With Award), has been a reliable flack for Churchill for a while now. We first noticed his superlative toadying in a July 21, 2008 post.

Churchill criticized the decision. "What [Judge Naves is] saying, in essence, is they were not prepared to treat me as any other faculty member would be treated, which was all I ever required."

He said he would appeal. "I will continue to deal with it until the day I drop," he said.