‘Everyone should have known better’
Ward Churchill, through his lawyer, David Lane, is suing the University of Colorado (“Churchill fired; next shot in court,” July 25). He claims the official investigation that revealed academic misconduct is invalid. The investigation originated only because of Churchill’s outspokenness and therefore violates Churchill’s First Amendment rights to free speech.
Lane has a point.
CU was unwilling to do anything about Churchill until his insane writings and rantings gained media attention.
No one (at CU anyway) would say that Churchill was violating academic standards for fear of ridicule from associates, who had also been intimidated by other faculty members (including Churchill). Everyone should have known better.
Instead, CU gave him tenure and elevated him to chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department. This episode in CU history should become a classic study in how manipulative people use the weakness in our personalities to blind us to the obvious.
If Lane prevails in court, then misconduct can go unpunished if a person makes outrageous statements before that misconduct is investigated.
We’ll see what the Denver jury says.
Rich McLean, Aurora
you can bet that lane will want every one on the jury to have an IQ of about 3 point below plant life so he can sway them his way.
Posted by on July 26, 2007 05:58 AMOh it should be pretty easy for Lane to find a jury full of 9/11 conspirocy nuts and Bush haters that will find in favor of a liar. OOOPS I mean aprogressive liberal like Churchill
Posted by on July 26, 2007 06:57 AMWhy did it take the University 3 years to read his published essay? I would want the regents to actually check out and read ALL professors publications if you wnat the school to have any integrity. Or is it possible the Regents cant read or comprehened an essay untill someone tells them what its about and what to think? If he plagarized, fire him..but I think this is more about Free speech and the lack off it.
Finding a jury with single digit IQs will be easy, afterall this IS Colorado, home of Nazi fascist warmongers...ooops I meant conservative Republicans who will vote and judge according to whatever the Party tells them too, and take away all of our rights (well, not the 2nd amendment of course, the onlly legituimate one on the Bill of Rights). Sieg Heil!!!!!!!
IF it ever even makes it to trial - hopefully the judge will see it for what it is and throw it out
Posted by on July 26, 2007 07:20 AMjim, let's get this right. The Nazi's were socialists and that places them on the left.. A key part of socialism is suppression of free speech. Ward Churchhill was hired under the assumption he was part Native American. That was a lie. Notice that there is no PhD. after his name. That is because Ward was unquailifed for the position and still is. The problem for CU is hiring people because they are minority and not because they are qualified. Ward is a white man who took advantage of "affirmative action". Why should he continue to benefit from his lies? I was told the first day in college that plagarism would result in dismissal and that the offender would never again attend college. Ward knew the standard and could not live up to it. By the way, Colorado always ranks number 1 or 2 in college grads per 1000.
Posted by Tom on July 26, 2007 07:34 AMTom,
If National Socialism (Nazism) was "on the left" - as you propose - I would really enjoy hearing what you think would be "on the right".
Was that "college" you were talking about as having entered the Josef Goebbels School of Journalism, by any chance?
I have read some real gut busting laughs on these pages; but that one beats them all!
Posted by Old Grouch on July 26, 2007 07:47 AMMr. Grouch, your arguements/points are almost alway ad hominium (you attack the person and not the thought). The emotional name calling is a falacy of logic. Yes, socialism is on the left within American political science. The extreme right would be a monarchy of which I have heard no support. The extreme left would be totalitarian communism. Both extremes are totalitarian in their being. I purpose a thought for your consideration: While Germany lost in WWII, the Nazi's won. Most of Europe is socialist. Many sources can be cited for these statements. However it makes little difference to you. You will believe what you want. Therein lay the problems of Ward Churchill, plagerism (stealing academic material) and lack of proper or real citations. I hope your amused. : )
Posted by Tom on July 26, 2007 09:01 AMIt is a morph. I enjoy the morphing unlike a prior logger who thought: "Stick to the subject matter." Ward will surely enjoy his $70 to $80,000 a year retirement benefits; let us all enter a secular prayer that I am on his jury if you wish to see him eat crow.
Deicide Corner: “If your Bible is an argument for the degradation of woman, and the abuse by whipping of little children, I advise you to put it away, and use your common sense instead.” -- Lucy Colman
Disclaimer: Lucy's use of the expression "common sense" is anathama to me as she may as well be saying: bias and prejudice.
Posted by Richard Grimes, Deicide r22037@yahoo.com (ffrf.org and ask for copy of Freethought today) on July 26, 2007 10:05 AMI think it is obvious that Ward Churchill is in the US hating wing of the Democrat party not the coward wing.
Posted by An American on July 26, 2007 11:21 AMTom,
What I "will believe" is very much based upon your giving me some sources for that remark about Nazism being "left", and/or Nazi's having won in Europe because Europe is "socialist".
England, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Spain, and several other European countries are Monarchies. Are you calling them "extreme right"?
O.K. So you don't care for my naming the "school" of thought you seem to be expounding. Perhaps you might actually tell us just what school of "American political science" teaches what you have just posted. I taught history and civics for some years myself; and I never encountered that set of "definitions". Cite your sources. Name a text that has that as its fundamental presentation of "political science".
Sonny, there's an old joke: "If you steal from one, it's called plagiarism. If you steal from many, it's called scholarship." And right now, "scholarship" is exactly what Churchill is being accused of doing, up at good old U of Cowlorado; and, at root, that's what they fired him for doing..
Posted by Old Grouch on July 26, 2007 01:28 PMI immigrated from Norway in 1968. Queen Sonja is a figure head of state. Norway is socialist. So are many of the countrys you mentioned which also have figure heads from past monarchys. My mother always said listen before you speak.
Posted by on July 26, 2007 02:34 PMSeems to me that once Churchill hit the bigtime airwaves a number of people filed formal complaints with CU about how THEIR work was what was plagerized and those were the complaints that led to his firing.
Yes, they should pay more attention when hiring and doubtless they will in the future but how much academic knowledge is actually required to teach non-subjects that exist only for the extreme lefty purpose of indoctrination?
The point that everyone seems to be missing in the Ward Churchill case (as well as any other where some goofball gets caught with his/her foot stuck in their mouth) is that the First Amendment does not guarantee you protection from consequence due to your poor choice of words. It only guarantees that Congress shall not pass laws to hinder free speech. It does not, and never has, protect you from loosing your job, or getting punched in the nose, when you say stupid, hateful stuff. The First Amendment has been so manipulated by the ignorance of the media and the public to be something that it is most definitely not. Churchill's First Amendment rights have absolutely NOT been infringed upon in this case.
Posted by ckm on July 27, 2007 06:59 AMckm,
Nice simplistic set of illustrations you have there; along with your equally simplistic opinion of what free speech is. They go right along with the usual Republican contempt for the Constitution, as expressed by the President in his comment concerning it's being "just a damned piece of paper."
The real world, however, does not function according to over-simplifications such as these; and the meaning - as well as the consequences - of free speech is much more complex than your theory of it. would have us believe it to be. Neither the media nor the public has "ignorance" here.
Posted by Old Grouch on July 27, 2007 09:28 AMOld grouch...
The only truely simplistic comments are yours.
Like any psudo-intelectual boor, you espouxe nothing but trivial pap.
Freedom of speach is not unlimited.
You can't yell "FIRE" (if there isn't one and it causes panic resulting in injuries) in a crowded environment, you can call any President (Bush, Clinton, Nixon, Kennedy, etc.) and idiot. You can't joke about having a bomb on a plane, you can call Democrats communistic and Republicans warmongers.
Big deal and so what?
Why, by your commments, should your right to free speach be more important than anyone else? It's not.
Everyone, including Ward Churchill, ckm and even you have an equal right to free speach
You really need to do somthing about that God complex you've got going on there.
You're not.
Posted by JimmyB on July 29, 2007 08:18 AMOld grouch...
The only truely simplistic comments are yours.
Like any psudo-intelectual boor, you espouxe nothing but trivial pap.
Freedom of speach is not unlimited.
You can't yell "FIRE" (if there isn't one and it causes panic resulting in injuries) in a crowded environment, you can call any President (Bush, Clinton, Nixon, Kennedy, etc.) and idiot. You can't joke about having a bomb on a plane, you can call Democrats communistic and Republicans warmongers.
Big deal and so what?
Why, by your commments, should your right to free speach be more important than anyone else? It's not.
Everyone, including Ward Churchill, ckm and even you have an equal right to free speach
You really need to do somthing about that God complex you've got going on there.
You're not.
Posted by JimmyB on July 29, 2007 08:18 AMJimmyB,
You certainly missed the point. But, that's pretty much to be expected.
My position on free speech is very simple. IT IS UNLIMITED! That's what this forum, as well as any other marketplace of ideas, is all about.
While the trite and cliched example of "FIRE in a crowded environment" is often used to support limitations on freedom of speech and expression - on even works in print, where it is hardly of any reality whatsoever - it is a flawed, and false, approach - most especially when it is used in the area of printed, and/or photographic and other art, works - which false approach is nothing more than an attempt to gradually destroy the fundamentals of the Constitutional guarantee of the First Amendment.
Making jokes about anything - including bombs on airplanes - is part of that GUARANTEED freedom of speech. And, ALL measures designed to limit, or control speech in certain areas, are also attempts to chip away at the foundations of our rights and liberties, in order to one day come to the point at which only the speech, thought, etc., of the "ruling party" may be presented.
No argument, including the argument of "security", in any form whatsoever, can be made to justify halting freedom of speech - ANYONE'S FREEDOM OF SPEECH - in principle.
Your idea of restrictions on free speech is not more important than anyone else's idea of its complete freedom - though you seem to think it to be so.
Perhaps that "God complex", sonny, is looking back at you in your mirror.
Posted by Old Grouch on July 29, 2007 09:50 AM