Indianz.Com > News > Opinion: Free speech may hurt Ward Churchill

Opinion: Free speech may hurt Ward Churchill
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Filed Under: Education | Opinion

"Should Ward Churchill be:

A) Reinstated as a tenured professor at CU.

B) Given so-called front pay in lieu of reinstatement.

Or . . .

C) Sent packing with the $1 awarded by the jury in his lawsuit against the school and nothing else.

Those are the remedies available to Denver Chief District Judge Larry Naves in the wake of the nominal damages verdict returned at the conclusion of the former professor's wrongful-termination trial.

Back in April, after a month-long trial, a six-person jury determined that for a majority of the CU regents, protected speech activity was a "substantial or motivating factor" in their decision to fireChurchill and that Churchill would not have been dismissed for other reasons, such as claimed plagiarism or fabrication, without the furor engendered by his 9/11 essay.

But the jury awarded only $1, which was not all that surprising, because Churchill testified that all he really wanted was his job back. "

Get the Story:
Scott Robinson: Churchill's return to CU not a sure thing (The Denver Post 7/2)

Also Today:
Churchill decision in the hands of judge (The Denver Post 7/2)

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