Churchill jury got it right

Littwin:  Jury sees clearly what CU overlookedThe jury got it exactly right. In fact, the jury—six men and women, tried and true—clearly understood what the leaders of our state's flagship university could never quite grasp.

The jurors figured out that this case was not really about Ward Churchill. The case was, from the very beginning, about the University of Colorado and its unwillingness to do the right thing, meaning the hard thing, when it mattered most.

The case was about what happens when the mob wins, when a grandstanding governor trumps academic freedom, when talk-radio noise gets mistaken for the sound of truth, when university leaders cower in fear.

The jurors sat for weeks in Denver District Courtroom 6, and, after hearing all the testimony, they got it. Yes, they got it exactly right.

They didn't care about Churchill. They gave him a dollar. Churchill pulled out a dollar bill and waved it around the courtroom because he didn't care about the money either. For Churchill—and for CU—what will matter is when he walks back into a classroom (once the judge presumably rules that Churchill gets his job back), followed by TV cameras that will record yet another public CU humiliation.And:[W]hen the jurors heard the case against Churchill, they must have been surprised by how underwhelming—and less than entertaining—it all seemed. Let's agree, Churchill broke rules, stretched the truth, was a fabricator and at least a minor-league plagiarist.

But I'm guessing the jurors—who didn't speak to the media after the verdict—had to wonder whether all those years spent chasing Churchill weren't just a little disproportionate. Was this, as Lane said during the trial, all you got?

I kept waiting for CU to come up with a list of tenured professors who had been fired for similar misdeeds. Maybe no one ever committed Churchill-like misdeeds. Or maybe CU just doesn't often (or ever) fire professors for academic misconduct.

I kept waiting to hear why CU never seemed to care about Churchill's transgressions before his essay on Sept. 11. There had been longstanding complaints about Churchill's research, but no one had ever acted on them. CU officials say they had never heard them, which, of course, would be damning enough.Comment:  From what I read, the evidence seemed underwhelming to me too. Three or four cases of questionable practices don't seem like much of a "pattern" to me. These minor-league transgressions probably deserved no more than a minor-league penalty.

Littwin makes some good points. The university knew about the allegations against Churchill but didn't investigate them till his 9/11 essay came to light. Moreover, the university hasn't investigated or fired anyone else for similar transgressions.

If accurate scholarship is so important, why not investigate all of CU's professors for violations? If that would be too expensive, pick a few at random to investigate. Who knows how many academics have made claims without footnoting them or cited their own articles as evidence?