Conservative professor: Ward Churchill firing a travesty (Colorado Daily)

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CU should support faculty rights, not quash them
By David Deming, For the Colorado Daily
Monday, February 16, 2009

... The investigation into Professor Churchill's alleged academic misconduct was a disingenuous and utterly transparent excuse for punishing him.

I doubt if many CU faculty members could withstand having their entire body of work scrutinized by a Star Chamber with a magnifying lens ...

I have never met Professor Churchill, and it is likely that we would disagree on many things.

I approach issues from the opposite end of the political spectrum. I'm an outspoken conservative, member of the National Rifle Association and advocate of pure 19th-century laissez faire capitalism ...

http://www.coloradodaily.com/news/2009/feb/16/ward-churchill-cu-colorado-academic-freedom/

[bemildred]

1. Well duh. nt

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2. Jury selection for Churchill's lawsuit starts in a few weeks, so this subject will pop up again

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3. I predict flame wars.

:popcorn::popcorn:

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4. He's not fighting for Churchill.

He's fighting for himself. He apparently went on record with some highly inflammatory remarks a while back, and considered that he had a right to make them.

He almost certainly did, since they didn't involve his research, just op-ed pieces or letters to the editor made in his own name. However, they certainly made the school look bad.

He claims--and he might be right, for all I know--that he's been punished for his political views. Wouldn't be the first time, I've seen people terrified to mention their political affiliation because of their colleagues attitudes, and punished for their non-PC research. However I rather doubt Deming's done what Churchill did in his academic work, and suspect that Deming is assuming that since he believes he was done dirty others did Churchill dirty.

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5. I agree with some of what you said: Deming wrote an inexcusably asinine letter,

which reads as a nasty personal attack with a generous helping of vulgar sexism, and the motives for this defense of Churchill are probably selfish