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Churchill wins case against CU, and $1

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

The Los Angeles Times discussed the victory of Ward Churchill over the University of Colorado:

Jurors in the wrongful-termination lawsuit filed by Ward L. Churchill agreed with the embattled professor's contention that he was the victim of a "howling mob," not the perpetrator of academic misconduct.

The problem here was that the charges of "academic misconduct" were seen as a pretext to mask the dissatisfaction with the content of Churchill's writings:

University officials concluded that free-speech protections prevented them from firing Churchill for the Sept. 11 essay. However, as complaints about Churchill's academic work surfaced, the school launched an investigation and fired him after three committees of faculty members from Colorado and other universities concluded that Churchill had committed plagiarism, fabrication and research misconduct in his writings on American Indian history.

Sadly, the bungling of the case by the University of Colorado does send the wrong message about professorial plagiarism.
Plagiarism is a bad thing, and it should be punished. But, it shouldn't be used as a pretext to punish something else.

The big issues in the case remain to be decided:

It's up to Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves to decide whether to return Churchill, 61, to his $96,392-per-year job as a professor of ethnic studies at the Boulder campus. The judge also will determine whether the university must pay his legal fees.

The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote:

Five of the six members of the jury have told court officials they do not wish to speak with reporters about their thinking.

But a sixth, Bethany Newill, called a local radio station, KHOW, last night and said the $1 judgment was the product of a compromise between a single holdout juror who believed Mr. Churchill should not receive any damages and five others who believed he should be awarded some significant amount, according to today?s edition of the Colorado Daily. Helping shape the jury?s verdict was Mr. Churchill?s decision to have his lawyers not specify how much money he wanted, as well as his insistence throughout the proceedings that all he wanted was to get his job back.

Full post as published by IPBiz on April 05, 2009 (boomark / email).