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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (27625)	7/26/2007 5:42:59 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 35834

[T]he ethnic studies professor was fired for academic misconduct: cooking up historical facts about U.S.-Indian relations, plagiarizing the work of others, and writing essays under other people's names and footnoting them as independent sources. All this should have been scrutinized by the regents well before he started popping off about 9/11. Little Academicians By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Wednesday, July 25, 2007 4:20 PM PT Academia: Extremist professor Ward Churchill wasn't fired for calling 9/11 victims "Little Eichmanns." No, the University of Colorado regents threw him out Tuesday for academic fraud. What took them so long? Churchill, fresh from being publicly found by the University of Colorado to be a liar and a plagiarist, ought to be crawling into a hole and hiding. Instead, he's declared the regents' bootprint on his backside a "victory" and vowed to make his next stop Denver's District Court, where he'll claim his free speech has been violated. In reality, the ethnic studies professor was fired for academic misconduct: cooking up historical facts about U.S.-Indian relations, plagiarizing the work of others, and writing essays under other people's names and footnoting them as independent sources. All this should have been scrutinized by the regents well before he started popping off about 9/11. Instead, they approved him to teach, probably congratulating themselves on their tolerance. Churchill will appeal his firing on free-speech grounds, no doubt arguing the public outrage and scrutiny he drew from his infamous "Little Eichmanns" essay exposed his misconduct, which otherwise would have been left alone. Who knows? He might even win. But that's exactly the problem with an academia more steeped in political correctness than academic standards and honesty. The Colorado regents showed amazing complacency over what should have been real alarms about Churchill's credentials and work. Sure, standards in social sciences are low, but they shouldn't include fraud. Did they catch the fact that Churchill pretended to be an Indian (beating out real ones) to get his ethnic studies job? Did they catch his false claim about fighting in an elite unit in Vietnam? Did they know about the plagiarized art accusations? These were all easily checkable, but somehow weren't. Even after Churchill was exposed for academic misconduct, one of the nine University of Colorado regents, Cindy Carlisle, nevertheless voted to let him keep his job. Make no mistake — this is not about the need to tamp down free speech or to repress leftists. It's about a regent board that excuses any behavior, solely because Churchill is a leftist. Something in the academic atmosphere gave Churchill the idea that truth doesn't matter and that the crazier his opinions, the more they shield him from scrutiny. Teaching at the University of Colorado, making $97,000 a year, saying anything he wanted — could there be a better gig? No. But for students and taxpayers, it's the precise opposite of what scholarship, academic merit, competitiveness and the quest for the truth are about. They were ripped off, royally. The University of Colorado regents, who have tolerated this sort of fraud, ought to be even more ashamed than Churchill. ibdeditorials.com