posted on June 26, 2006 07:37:08 PM new
Its about time..
The interim chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder announced today that CU wants to fire ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill.
"Today I issued to Professor Churchill a notice of intent to dismiss him from his faculty position here at the University of Colorado," said Phil DiStefano at a press conference.
Churchill has 10 days to appeal.
"A university is a marketplace of ideas, a place where controversy is no stranger...indeed one of our most cherished principals is academic freedom, the right to pursue and disseminate knowledge without threat of sanction," said DiStefano. "But with freedom comes responsibility."
After DiStefano's announcement, Gov. Bill Owens, a longtime Churchill critic, released a statement.
“I applaud the chancellor's decision to proceed with the dismissal of Ward Churchill," Owens said. "If a university is a marketplace of ideas, then Mr. Churchill is the rotten fruit among hundreds of good apples. Hopefully, we can soon say good riddance to Ward Churchill once and for all.
A university committee that investigates academic misconduct recommended two weeks ago that Churchill be fired for a "pattern of repeated, intentional misrepresentation."
In a secret ballot, six committee members recommended dismissal and three recommended suspension without pay. Two of the three recommended a five-year suspension and one a two-year suspension.
In a 20-page report, the committee agreed with a May investigative committee report that Churchill intentionally falsified his research, plagiarized other people's work and ghostwrote articles and then cited them to buttress his work.
Churchill and his attorney have threatened to sue CU if he is fired. They accuse the university of retaliating against the tenured professor because of his essay saying some World Trade Center terrorism victims were not innocent and comparing them to a Nazi bureaucrat.
Churchill said at the time that the investigative committee's report read like a warning to other scholars to "lay low."
"Do not challenge orthodoxy," Churchill wrote in his response to the committee. "If you do, expect to be targeted for elimination and understand that the university will not be constrained by its own rules - or the Constitution - in its attempts to silence you."
