Redstate

and thank you for giving me a little glimmer of hope that they really DO eventually grind in "your" world.

now the POS will be touring the country.  I'd rather know where scum like that is...not popping up throughout the country

he's probably going to join the Cindy Sheehan Magical Mystery Tour.

That's how he was exposed.  Students at UVM read an article of his in advance of his visit and publicized it locally.  Students at another institution where he spoke later Googled him and found the UVM coverage and managed to take it national.  

Churchill has been exposed as a huckster selling cheap knock-offs.  

Between he and Jack Abramoff, the image of Native Americans could use some good news.  Maybe we could give autonomy to Native Hawaiians or something ... oh, wait....

Good update AE...

By 'students' I actually meant me and another kid, when we were up at UVM.  I read it on a lefty prof's website.  Sam Hemingway, a local press big fish in Burlington, picked up the story.  I remember it because I got into an email exchange with Churchill and was surprised that a tenured professor could act so pedantic.  

Surely you jest.  Being pedantic is our job.

...Chancellor" -- isn't that redundant?

First the Football team, and now this Churchill joker.  Good luck finding a permanent chancellor, Boulder.

--furious

post your email exchange!!!

Churchill will have to find a new university willing to let him spew his hate and spin out his sloppy, plagiarized "research".

Oh, I forgot. 99% of all US colleges would be happy to have him. :(

At least he doesn't have to get a real job and join the ranks of us Little Eichmanns. :-P

my UVM email account has been deleted (it lasts twelve months after graduation, I graduated 12/02).  I asked him how much he was being paid to come speak, he gave me an outlandish figure ($100,000) and when I expressed to him my intention to get the University to pull its sponsorship, self-righteous to be sure but not particularly insulting.  He launched into a sneering tirade about Bushies and fascists and that was the end of it.  

Stupid PC claptrap...[mumble, grumble, threatening of Indian revolt...]

You could always look to the Native Alaskans...

I'm sure an invite from Harvard will soon be in the mail and he will be warmly welcomed by their academically oriented facutly, especially the ethics department.

 till we actually see him walking out the door?  Or is this just the university blowing smoke?  I would love to see it and I would like to know what other Red-Staters think.  Thanks for the update.

I suppose there might always be a miracle, but this is pretty much it in the academic world.  He's had a CU committee and a committee made up of both in house and outside academics--and they've all found him incredibly guilty.

I understand your incredulity, and believe me I share it.  But this, in combination with Juan Cole not getting the Yale job, gives me reason to thing that there's some hope for academia yet.

Bet that got your attention!  Were I a teachers' union or a plaintiff's attorney, here's how I'd defend him:

There is a supercharged atmosphere in the aftermath of 9-11 and that atmosphere taints the judgement of the administration and the faculty committee.

I'd get something in about how dependent the university is on State and federal funds, which are granted by a political process.

I assert that the Faculty Committee's findings are a pretext.  No other faculty member's work has ever been subjected to such scrutiny, and it is only because of the protected political speach in which Professor Churchill has engaged that he has been subjected to such scrutiny and subsequently has been dismissed.

I assert that inasmuch as Professor Churchill's offending speach was protected by the 1st Amendment, the University's action to dismiss him was a constitutionally impermissible retaliation for exercise of a protected right.

The lower courts will side with Churchill and there'll be one heck of a hue and cry; I'd see to that.  I'd be on every cable news program that would have me.  I'd even be Greta's best friend.

When we get to the Supremes, we'll get to revisit that employee speech case of a few weeks ago.  The Court sided with the employer in that one, but it specifically dodged the question of whether a state-paid, state-employed teacher in a state institution engages in protected individual speach or unprotected government speach.  And it will all hinge on whether it can be shown that there is a sufficient nexus between his status as a professor and the conduct that he exhibited in in writing and speeches.  Gonna be fun to watch.

is one that my history prof brought up in addressing the late Stephen Ambrose.  Why should a tenured faculty member be held to a lower standard of academic integrity than an average undergraduate?  Should not the bar be considerably higher, not lower?  

it is a pretext.  No other faculty member has been subjected to such scrutiny regarding their academic integrity and it is only because of that enhanced scrutiny that Churchill was dismissed.  That enhanced and discriminatory, retaliatory scrutiny was based on Churchill's Constitutionally protected speech.

I'm not defending him; I think he's a POS, but that's the defense he'll get.  Been there, done that; won some, lost some.

Is point to Ambrose, to Ellis, to Doris Kearns Goodwin to demonstrate that to publish prolifically (as Churchill has, and within the academic world he has been relatively successful at it) is to invite close scrutiny.  

If you actually read DiStephano's intent to dismiss, you will find that he makes it explicit, as did the investigating committee, that they agree with you that Churchill's statements on 9/11 were protected by the first amendment and were not the grounds for his dismissal.  I am also on record agreeing with this conclusion.

You write:

No other faculty member's work has ever been subjected to such scrutiny, and it is only because of the protected political speach in which Professor Churchill has engaged that he has been subjected to such scrutiny and subsequently has been dismissed.

This is a ridiculous statement that suggests you have never been part of a serious tenure review.  Are you suggesting that all academics are plagiarists who creatively invent convenient historical episodes--and it would only take an investigation to uncover their misdeeds?  And, furthermore, that such misdeeds are perfectly okay as long as academics are engaging in "protected political speech?"

Churchill's offensive but "protected" statements are not the issue here.  His shabby and sub-standard scholarly method is.  But clearly, his apologists will continue to hear none of this.  It's free speech, man!

the scrutiny was only as the result of his protected speech.  Understand, this isn't about whether he should be fired at some administrative or academic level of evaluation; this is the Supreme Court case he and his backers are dying for.

I just said I'd argue it.  And since I have asserted that I engaged in a Constitutionally protected activity and then you fired me, I have created a rebuttable presumtion that you have discriminated against me for that activity.  And since the Chancellor is a governmental actor, he acts under color of office to interfere with my Constitutional rights.  Ergo, Section 1983 is my friend.

Hey, sorry, I always represented the Employer and I'd love to fire him and make it stick, maybe I could, but I'm telling you how it would be argued.

I'm sure they'll argue it, but this whole wretched and cumbersome process has been designed to offset just such an argument.  I'm not so sure the lower courts are going to be able to wade out of the avalanche of paper that will be delivered unto them.

and write for the Kosmos crowd.  

Always room for someone to crash the gate with a new twist on how those swirling balls of gas and matter determine our 'destiny'.

and you should understand the difference.  Make you a deal; I won't teach, you won't fire tenured professionals.

Whatever standard of review he or any other tenure candidate might be subjected to is irrelevant.  The fact of the pre-disciplinary review is the issue.  In this case, a tenured professor with all that property rights stuff under Loudermill v. Cleveland Board gets hauled in and subjected to additional scrutiny.

My theory is that the additional scrutiny was as the result of a constitutionally impermissible motive.  And were I representing him, I'd win this case in every lower court.  We'll see what the USSC does.

Having grown up in and attended a Colorado University, I am pleased to no end that is wasn't CU-Boulder.

No a tenure review is not a lawsuit, and yes I do understand the difference.  What you said was that no academic had ever been subjugated to such scrutiny.   This is simply not so--they are subjugated to it all the time, just not in the press.  As far as I know, Churchill's academic work has not been examined as part of a lawsuit to date, so I fail to see your point.

And while I'm perfectly happy for you to stay out of the classroom, I'm afraid I can't keep my part of that bargain.  You see, tenure is not actually a life-time guarantee of employment, and one thing that is truly heartening about this decision is that it demonstrates that it is still possible to fire someone who is guilty of egregious misconduct even if they have tenure.  

And one thing Churchill has never been is professional, regardless of his tenured state.  

I didn't say that "no" academic had been subjected to scrutiny, but that really doesn't matter here.

Assume Churchill is a tenured professor with all the privileges and emoluments thereof and had completed all the tests, spells, and incantations necessary.

Tenured professor shoots of his mouth in a way that offends much of the Country.

As the result of shooting off his mouth, his work is subjected to scrutiny as a direct result and not a part of the normal course of scrutiny.

As the result of that scrutiny, tenured professor gets dismissed.

Ergo, dismissal was the result of additional scrutiny.

Scrutiny was motivated by Churchill's Constitutionally protected speech.

Ergo, product of that scrutiny is tainted by the impermissible motive.

This case is going to the USSC and nothing "heartening" is going to happen for a long time.  I've done lots and lots of dismissals of permanent or tenured public employees; you can do it, but I'm telling you, this is no slam dunk.

What you seem to not understand is that once you have tenure, you can still be fired.  The episodes of plagiarism and fraud that are the basis of the intent to dismiss post-date Churchill's tenure.  

In this comment you write:

I didn't say that "no" academic had been subjected to scrutiny, but that really doesn't matter here.

In a previous comment you wrote:

No other faculty member's work has ever been subjected to such scrutiny

So...since we're pretending to be in court here...are you arguing that some other academic who is not a faculty member has been subjected to such scrutiny?  And yes it does matter for your argument, because I understood your premise to be that Churchill was held to an unreasonable standard of scrutiny because his "protected political speech" offended the authorities.

that came as a direct result of his alleged bad acts.  That scrutiny is not a normal part of whatever, if any, scrutiny is given the work of a tenured professor.  Since that scrutiny resulted from his participation in a constitutionally protected activity, the governmental actors who dismissed him violated Section 1983.

And you would do well not to assume that I don't understand tenure or permanance and the purported property right to the job that comes from Loudermill v. Cleveland Board.  I've rearranged lots of tenured and permanent employees' career plans.

Your experience of such scrutiny differs from mine.  I have seen other's work closely scrutinized (and savaged) for factual errors before and after tenure.  I have seen careers ruined by this process.  Not many, but it does happen.  But as I said above, this generally doesn't happen in the press.  Why did it happen so here?  Because Churchill put himself into the press.  Your assertion is that once Churchill participated in "protected political speech" it automatically immunized him from any investigation of his academic work.  That he could deliberately and repeatedly put himself into the spotlight, but that he has some magic protection from its glare even when his right to his "speech" has been repeatedly upheld by his institution and by the academic community at large.  

Again, I don't doubt that the always entertaining David Lane will argue as you do that the scrutiny only came because of the decision Churchill made to market himself so very heavily--he has of course proposed it--I just don't think it's the automatic slam dunk that you seem to.  Things haven't turned out so well for Lane so far.  And a decision in Churchill's favor would basically say that once a tenured faculty member at a state university engaged in highly public and radical political speech, it is no longer possible to terminate that professor for any reason, which is not how I read 1983.

his dismissal before most any labor arbitrator.  I think most state trial courts would sustain his dismissal.  But, when you get into the rarified air of appelate review, this is not a slam dunk for the employer, which is what I actually said; not that he had a slam dunk win.

My whole point in this exercise was to examine what it takes to dismiss a public employee with a property right to their job.  You can do it, but pack a lunch.

Being pedantic is our job.

In that case you won't mind me pointing out that you misspelled 'DiStefano', according to the linked press release, and this. I wouldn't have pointed it out save  for the misspelling being embedded in the post's title.

my visit to hear Ritter speak at Lake Forest College.  During the Qand A session, I got the distinct impression that he really didn't like me.  His head was about to explode it was so red, and his voice kept climbing higher and higher.

I heard that the speaking fee was very close to the one you mentioned for Churchill

will just argue that the scrutiny was the result of publicity rather than of protected speech.  This would be a difficult burden to prove; even if he was fired on account of his speech (which they will never concede) there is a substantive difference between the right to say offensive things and the right to be paid to do so.  The Tenth Circuit is not renowned for its inveterate activism as is the Ninth.  My guess is that any attempt to redress this via the court system would be shot down at a lower level and the higher echelons of the Federal system would simply decline to grant cert.  

protected, and not always I might add, but one's job isn't.   The trash should have been thrown in the dumpster for his 9/11 remarks.  If academic discourse means anything, it doesn't, and if that discourse was elevated and an example to others, and it isn't,  Churchill wouldn't have been allowed to mop the rest rooms.

     Pretense and the Emperor's Clothes are what we are left with,and not just in academis.  Our culture is a charade leaning on memeories and remnants, propping itself up with a past no longer honored.

I structured the argument based on a zillion like it that I've heard before, and I have always worked in the 9th Soviet, er...Circuit.  No doubt here you'd be headed for the USSC, but who knows if they'd grant cert.

I'd feel OK about going before a labor arbitrator with his dismissal.  I could keep the Constitution out of it before most arbitrators, but I wouldn't be surprised if the U has some warm, fuzzy policy on encourageing freedome of expression and the like, which will hurt in establishing the necessary nexus between his conduct away from his classroom and his job.  I don't know the facts well enough to know if there's something clearly in the scope of his duties to hang your hat on.

Going straight to dismissal on research and plagiarism issues would be tough, most arbitrators and judges would want to see some corrective disciplinary attempts first.

My whole point is that his dismissal is far from a slam dunk.  Were it before me, I'd advise my principals to go forward but with lots of caution and in the back of my mind, I'd be thinking what it would cost to settle it.

is constitutionally protected under Loudermill v. Cleveland Board and its progeny, which holds that once tenured or permanent, the job is a property of which the employee may not be deprived without due process.

The University is a governmental actor that must afford him due process and to the degree that it may interfere with his free speech rights, it must be able to show its narrowly tailored interest in doing so.

In the public employee speech case from LA that the USSC handed down the other day, they explicitly declined to apply the reasoning to a teacher.

It'd be very unlikely.  This is a heavily politicized case and does more to raise issues of labor law than constitutional law.  I would imagine that absent an egregious and stupid decision by a lower court the Supreme Court would probably decline to grant cert.  They rarely revisit cases from the 10th Circuit (in 2003 they heard only one).  

Are you contending that the 18 month multi-level process that has taken place does not constitute due process?  The University has followed every protocol and allowed Churchill every opportunity to defend himself.  If you assert it is still not possible to terminate him, then it is simply not possible to terminate a tenured professor.

at most.  He was just being a jerk.  

enough to answer with any certainty.  I do know that the more complex a review process is, the more likely you are to be found to have made some mistake in that process.  That said, the true governmental actor is the Chancellor who took a finding by the academic body and acted on it by dismissing Churchill.  Under Loudermill, Churchill had to have knowledge of the accustion, presumably he did, and an opportunity to respond to the accusation, which response must be considered by the decision maker.  In my experience, labor arbitrators and judges are all over the dial on whether the decision maker is entitled to rely on the evidence and findings of the review below him or whether he must treat the findings as an accusation and provide a specific opportunity to respond.  I don't know of any on point cases with teachers but the Administrative Investigation process commonly used with cops is analogous, and triers of fact are all over the dial on the process duty.  The cynical side of me says that if they like what you did, they won't look hard at the process, if not, they'll start looking for a process fault.  It has always been my practice to summarize the findings of the review into specific allegations, notify the employee that those allegations warrant whatever level of discipline, and afford them one opportunity to provide obviate or mitigating facts.  And those are just the questions you'll face on process, then we come to cause.

I would argue that the trier of fact should be very deferential to the faculty committee's recommendation, but I don't know the U's policies and practices well enough to go further on cause.  And then you have the speech issues; there is the labor law question of whether or not there was sufficient nexus to his job and the constitutional question of whether it was protected speech and whether the U's actions were retaliatory.

You can dismiss a permanent public employee or a tenured teacher or professor, but you really need to know what you're doing.  The more elaborate the review process, the more likely the Employer is to be found to have erred.  For example, many years ago when our cops first got their Administrative Investigation process in contract, the state went several years before it could sustain a dismissal, always tripping up on the process or failing some nexus test.  But we concentrated on getting it down and getting supervisors and managers trained to it, and now it has been years since we lost a dismissal, often the union doesn't even pursue it to arbitration.  Universities don't do this sort of thing very often, so who knows if they got it right.

 disappointing perhaps and well short of the goal of some, but a harsh fact of life.  Colorado State is a public university, not Univ of Colorado and I doubt very much that Churchill is a public employee.

      My point about freedom of speech was perhaps incomplete and I plead guilty to that.  But as the late Wilmoore Kendall pointed out FOS has become a weapon and too highly selective to be taken seriously as such.  The young high school valedictorian who had the microphone cut off on her by school officials after mentioning God might give you a broader take on speech.  Please, no lectures on SC opinions of the past, I can see it coming.

       Allow me to rmind you that in my post I refer to what might be called, the road downwards.  This slide or degradation is an amalgam of factors and influences, including the Courts, but certainly not limited to them.  One may live, with stupidity, institutional aggression, squalor, and ugliness, along with Ward Churchill.  But one need not approve, surrender one's mind,or be quiet about it.  I assume, if only for the moment, that this bothers you less then it bothers me.  I also assume that you know I won't try to convince you otherwise.

 

I'm just showing how he will be defended.  I'm on the other side of this having just retired from spending twenty years disciplining and dismissing unionized public employees.  In order to represent the Employer, you have to understand what the union will argue and the attorneys if it goes to court.

I didn't make the system, I just understand it.

of disciplining and dismissing public employees".

     You're not such a bad guy after all.

that could happen to you if you worked for the State of Alaska was to have your supervisor come to your desk accompanied by me or some member of my staff.  Odds were pretty good you were never going to see that desk again.

A professor isn't normally going to get the kind of scrutiny Churchill did, but there are other cases where it's happened.  For example, a few years ago Michael Bellesiles, a history professor at Emory, was asked to resign (and would have been fired had he not) for writing a book on guns in early America that was later found to be partly made up. He was only asked to resign after his work had received intense scrutiny from many other professors who saw the flaws in it.

its precisely the fact that you and so many other lawyers would argue that way regardelss of what they believe that leads to jokes like:

Q: What do you call 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of a lake?

A: A good start.

Churchill should be fired, and lawyers making absurd arguments against the firing should have their arguments dismissed with prejudice by the first court at which they are filed. The effect on the country would be incredibly salutory.

in the top ten of my insulting lawyer joke collection.  But since I'm not a lawyer, it is pretty much irrelevant.  If you'd bothered to read any of the thread, it was a discussion of how a teachers' union or or plaintiffs' attorney would structure the argument against his firing.

I've defended the Employer against unionized public employees for many years, and was just making the argument as a demonstration.

Pay closer attention next time before you start hurling stuff.

...when ROTC returns to the Ivy League (except for Cornell, which never dropped it).

...wouldn't it be your desk who would never see you again?

--furious