University of Colorado Professor fired over Essay comparing 9-11 victims to Nazis

It isn't at all clear that his comparison re: 9/11 victims is what got him canned. As you point out, he's never done anything but bring bad publicity to the university. Even if you removed his 9/11 paper from existence this all probably would have happened. As you point out, you can't defend academic fraud. It's silly to call it a witch hunt (not you but others did this) when he chose both to bring the increased scrutiny on himself AND to commit academic fraud. It isn't as if academia is the province of the far right, lol.

Poor taste + questionable logic + fraud = firing. There isn't anything wrong with that at all.

 

The problem is some believe that if you are a college professor, you can say, write or parrot any ridiculous offensive nonsense you want and not be held accountable. But the fact is there are limits to everything. Being a college professor doesn't give you a blank check that the rest of America doesn't have. No law enforcement agency arrested him for what he believes/says/wrote. The university fired the guy.

Now is the time for the "slippery slope" debaters to come out and beat that dead horse again.

 

Except that's NOT how it works; you're apparently clueless on this particular topic. If this is your opinion, fine, but he couldn't be fired over the remarks he made, however distasteful they might have been. Instead, the university utilized his comments and the public backlash against him as a justification to pursue 'alternative' means of getting rid of him.

So yes, academia is different, that's the environment in which he and others like him operate.

How about we let the Stasi-wannabes go around college campuses to keep all those libpig professors in line...would that work for ya?

 

That's just YOUR opinion, tm. Unless I misunderstood you're not saying he SHOULD NOT have been fired, right? He gets the axe either way. All that's left is speculation about their motivation.

And while tenure has its beneficial side, I think your positioning it as a holy grail is a bit too much. A professor who gets tenure and then goes about bringing wholesale disrepute and negativity to that institution shouldn't be untouchable.

 

You are responsible for your words. If some tenured guy started proclaiming the virtues of the KKK, he would and should be fired -- free speech or not.

 

Can't say I know much about the guy, but I am not surprised that he was found out to be a a plagiaristic fraud.

I heard about this years ago and found it again on wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill

 

I would say it's hardly a speculation given the circumstantial evidence available to us, but OK.

As for him actually getting fired, I am A-Ok with it if the allegations of plagiarism are true. Personally, I am not a big fan of his...nor am I a fan of the likes of Jerry Falwell who said equally distasteful things in the aftermath of 9/11.

The system is specifically designed that way so that academics aren't intimidated into compliance with a particular view or else risk their careers. This is not a popularity contest, there is a damn good reason as to why the system is the way it is. If you have a sound alternative that would equally maintain academic integrity and keep institutional 'politics' out of the equation, I am interested to hear it.

 

Not a college professor, no, and not under the current rules. In some countries, "hate speech" is a punishable offense, but not in the U.S....not yet, at least.

As I've said: no matter how distasteful it's to you or how 'offensive' you find it, it doesn't mean that you can fire someone for saying even the most outrageous conspiracy theories you can think of. It doesn't work that way. You want conformity? China or Saudi Arabia is the utopia you're searching for...

 

Again, if he's guilty of what's being alleged, then I am all for him getting fired. If that same exact evidence was available before he made his controversial comments, then what the hell was his university doing turning a blind eye to it all this time? If anything, their incompetence/negligence in prosecuting him LOOOOOOOONG before the concerned comments would be the real issue here.

 

I dunno much about the tenure system so maybe I should read up on that a little.

I don't think you should lump my views as a "conformist" who should goto China. I am Chinese but I don't think that makes me a conformist.

No I never said he should be prosecuted for "hate speech". Hell he can say whatever he wants - just don't expect the University he represents to be happy with it. Of course the University is going to go out of its way to find reasons to terminate his employment. And I think they are in their legal bounds to do so.

Like I said I dunno how the tenure system works but what he said seems as offensive to me as some guy touting the KKK and I'm not even an American.

Lumped in with his fraudulent claims of Native American ancestry and plagaristic tendencies, it all becomes clear to me that he deserves to be canned. If you check the wiki page I linked above, you'll see that he doesn't even have a doctorate and was hired under an affirmative action policy because he claimed he was Native American - which he evidently is not. This man obviously lack integrity.

 

I guess we're playing tag here. You're it

You have a good point there. The University probably did turn a blind eye. But if UC got pissed at him - don't they have a right to start digging up the dirt (ie. legal grounds or ammo) to fire him? Or can the nebulous "intentions" of the University be some sort of legal roadblock?

 

Whatever. I'm not clueless on this because it's obvious the university conveniently dug this up in order to fire the guy because that's the only means they had. The point is the same: No remarks/writings/etc, no firing.

My brother is a law professor. I celebrated with him when he got tenure. It was truly a great day in our family. I think all reasonable people can agree academia is different, and extra protections from the consequences of controversial beliefs and free speech are needed. At the same time, the protection from being disciplined or fired should not be infinite. There is a responsibility that comes with tenure. If you think otherwise, fine. The danger of drawing no line at all is just as dangerous as drawing a line somewhere. Colorado made a decision he went too far and took action using another pretense.

See, this kind of comment destroys a discussion. Take a person's viewpoint, run it to an extreme and then pound the extreme. Have fun debating Tom DeLay and his ilk. In this discussion, the correct application of slippery slope is painting people that disagree with you into extremists kooks. Ya know, sometimes mirrors pop up in funny places, like paintings.

 

Fair enough...

Wasn't meant that way at all, China and Saudi just happen to be the two countries that came to mind; both are allies but are radically different from 'us'.

It's a public educational institution, not a Fortune 500 company. The rules are not the same...

Legally, yes, it just stinks...

That's a different issue and, if true, should have been investigated a long time before he ever made those comments. That's a competence issue with the school he works for. However, he seemingly only got into trouble once his comments came to light...I take issue with that.

 

No, legally the university should be fine as long as they produce the evidence they need to prove their case. I just have a problem with the way they approached it...

 

Except that would go against the idea of tenure which is to give professors a secure basis to engage in intellectual pursuit. That pursuit might very well lead to something offensive but that is the risk of tenure. When I was at CAL there was an anthropology professor who basically said that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites and Asians. Sure that didn't reflect well on CAL and a lot of people protested but he wasn't fired.

The idea of the university is as a place of intellectual ferment that means that often a lot of what is said will be unpopular and offensive to most.

UC is right to fire the guy for plagarizing but it would go against their own principles to fire him for speech. His speech might've earned him more undue attention but in the end it was own intellectual failings and not his speech that got him fired.

 

Who are you, rook? Quit being so nice.

This is D&D. If you aren't flinging poo, you shouldn't be here/

 

My apologies sir and I will endeavor to do better....

 

Considering there is hard evidence that he committed academic fraud, it certainly IS speculation to claim he's being fired for his views.

Yes, TM - we understand why tenure was created. However, that doesn't mean there should be no limit on what a professor can say or advocate. I'm not sure why professors should be a protected class anymore than any other employee on any other job.

What is wrong with the process? They didn't fire him when he made the statements. They fired him when his fraud came out. The controversy surrounding Churchill isn't new.

 

well... if taken from a logical point of view, the same premise for which Israel hung Eichmann (being a cog in the monstrous machine) could be applied to all American taxpayers... Each time an American soldier rapes an Iraqi woman, each time an Israeli soldier shoots an Arab child, they are all being sponsored directly through the tax dollars paid for by you and I. And by not resisting or even objecting to the system, we are by default every bit as guity as Eichmann. Even if you absolve regular American citizens as being too ignorant and powerless, you can still put half the US State Department and executive arm of the govt on trial.

The horror of Israel's post-Holocaust anti-Nazi hunt is precisely extending persecution for the losing side of a war to pretty much the end of time. (Exact same sentiment which led to WW2 and Hitler in the first place, coincidently). Vindictive wretches IMHO, and all the worse for being blatant hypocrites too when you look at Israel's post-war human rights record and history of shameless aggression/occupation.

And since America is Israel's ONLY real friend in the world and its primary sponsor. That same vindictive logic is what the 9-11 perpetrators used to justify their attacks on us. Irony? Justice? I'd prefer to think it is just another proof that what goes around, comes around.

 

This is so offensively stupid that you must be either a moron or a Nazi or are talking out of your rear. Once Reynhard Heydrich was killed in Warsaw, Eichmann was in charge of locating and rounding up all the jews and deporting them to either concentration camps or death camps. He was the manager of the death machine and ran the 'Final Solution' and he actually pushed quite a bit for it to run faster and be more agressive than even Hitler and Himler wanted.