Ward Churchill’s attorney plans to appeal the fired professor’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court after the state’s high court ruled Monday in favor of the University of Colorado.
In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, the firebrand CU professor compared some World Trade Center victims to a notorious Nazi.
The Board of Regents fired him in 2007 for academic misconduct after discovering patterns of plagiarism and fabrication in his body of work. Churchill has been trying to get his job back on the Boulder campus, where he taught ethnic studies.
He won a lawsuit against the university in 2009. But while a Denver jury found that CU had unlawfully fired Churchill for exercising his right to free speech, it only awarded him $1 — and the district judge declined to give him his job back.
The state Supreme Court heard Churchill’s appeal in June and issued its ruling against him Monday.
CU spokesman Ken McConnellogue said Monday that the university is pleased with the ruling because it sends a message that academic integrity is critical to the university’s mission.
“Academic integrity is at the core of what we do,” McConnellogue said. “This ruling is a victory for CU faculty and CU students.”
The ruling came a day before the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Boulder County property records show Churchill sold his house at 1484 Wicklow St. late last month for $498,000. Churchill is living in Atlanta and still writing and lecturing, his attorney David Lane said.
Lane said the 55-page ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court never disagrees with the Denver District Court jury that the regents violated the First Amendment when they fired Churchill after his controversial essay surfaced.
The ruling, he said, sets a dangerous precedent allowing CU to fire professors based on their race, religion or politics. Lane said it’s a threat to academic freedom with the potential to chill free speech in classrooms.
“It says the regents are far too important and above the law, and the First Amendment doesn’t apply,” Lane said. “They can do whatever they want with immunity. As long as they give (professors) a sham due process, they can get away with firing them anyway.”
But the likelihood that the U.S. Supreme Court would take Churchill’s case is small, according to CU law professor Melissa Hart, a constitutional scholar.
The U.S. Supreme Court receives about 10,000 petitions every year and chooses to hear about 80 to 100 cases, Hart said. Churchill’s odds become even lower, she said, because the constitutional issue raised by his case doesn’t represent an inconsistent interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and isn’t important in terms of the broader interpretation of the Constitution.
In May 2006, a CU investigative panel issued a 124-page report that found serious and recurring problems in Churchill’s work, including plagiarism, fabrication and questionable citations. A month later, the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct backed the panel’s findings and issued its own report. Then, in May 2007, three members of the university faculty’s Privilege and Tenure Committee recommended Churchill be suspended, while the two others said he should be fired.
CU President Hank Brown recommended Churchill’s dismissal to the Board of Regents. The board voted 8-1 to fire him in July 2007.
CU Chancellor Phil DiStefano said Monday that the ruling helps uphold quality instruction at the university.
“It is vital that what is published and what is taught in the classroom be based on research and scholarship grounded in honest, accepted and time-tested methods,” DiStefano said in a statement. “This was always what was at stake in this case for the university, and the winners today are our faculty and students.”
The Colorado Court of Appeals in November 2010 upheld then-Denver Chief District Judge Larry Naves’ decision to deny giving Churchill his job back at CU, where he had earned tenure, higher education’s coveted job protection.
Churchill, in his lawsuit against CU, alleges the real reason he was fired was his controversial essay, which ignited national furor when it surfaced in 2005.
In the essay, Churchill referred to some World Trade Center victims as “little Eichmanns,” a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who helped Hitler carry out plans to exterminate Europe’s Jews during World War II.
Contact Camera Staff Writer Brittany Anas at 303-473-1132 or anasb@dailycamera.com.
