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Opinion: 'Anything goes' for Ward Churchill
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Filed Under: Education | Opinion

"These are some of the things Ward Churchill's attorney, David Lane, wanted jurors in Judge Larry Naves' courtroom Tuesday to believe:

• The strength of any evidence "is in the eye of the beholder";

• "There is room" in our universities for Holocaust deniers;

• Professors are "entitled to make the case that the attack on Pearl Harbor never occurred";

• When Churchill wrote, "There's some pretty strong circumstantial evidence that [Captain John] Smith introduced smallpox among the Wampanoags," he did not really mean that Smith introduced smallpox. Good gracious, no; and

• If a professor references a research paper that he wrote under another person's name, it counts as a valid source if the other person agrees with it.

Is your head spinning yet? But then knocking common sense for a loop was surely the idea.

Lane — a consummate courtroom dramatist — is trying to convince the jury that tenured scholars can say and write whatever they want, no matter how preposterous or fanciful, so long as they believe it."

Get the Story:
Churchill's lawyer says anything goes (The Denver Post 3/18)

Another Story:
CU law prof again grilled on Churchill bias (The Denver Post 3/18) %

Related Stories:
Opinion: Ward Churchill too tough one to defend (3/13)
Opinion: Ward Churchill murdered scholarship (3/11)

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