Ward Churchill to be Fired

The Denver Post reported today that the interim chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder intends to fire 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."

A university committee that investigates academic misconduct recommended two weeks ago that Churchill be fired for a "pattern of repeated, intentional misrepresentation."

The recommendation only came two weeks ago? Ward Churchill's lunacy hit the news over a year ago (here's WorldNetDaily's first article on Churchill, from February 1, 2005). And I thought Washington was slow.... The Denver Post article continued:

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.

If all Churchill did was falsify, plagiarize, and quote his own ghost-written work, what's the big deal? He's still a scholar, right? Right???

And then Churchill says his 9/11 essay said, "some World Trade Center terrorism victims were not innocent." Is that all? "Some"? Here's how the WND article described this essay:

The controversy stems from an essay Churchill wrote titled "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," written shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. In it, he describes the thousands of American victims who died in the World Trade Center inferno as "little Eichmanns" (a reference to notorious Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann) who were perpetuating America's "mighty engine of profit." They were destroyed, he added, thanks to the "gallant sacrifices" of "combat teams" that successfully targeted the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

"Some," indeed. Let's hope Churchill loses his appeal (which he undoubtedly will file).

An aside:

If it's the University of Colorado, why do they always call it "CU"? Are they paranoid that if they say "UC Boulder," people will ask them where Boulder is in California? If so, then what does Connecticutt call its universities?

I went to the University of Montana for a little over a year, and when I mentioned the "U of M" to people, sometimes they'd ask, "Michigan?" and I'd say "Montana." No big deal. No need to pretend it was really Montana University when it was time to use initials. What's up with those CU people?