'Conservative' but clueless prof: Churchill case a travesty

David Deming, associate prof at the University of Oklahoma, in the Colorado Daily:

In July 2007, Ward Churchill was fired from his position as a tenured professor at the University of Colorado.

The pretext given for his dismissal was academic misconduct. But the real reason was that Professor Churchill wrote some things that offended people.

His termination was a violation of the academic freedom guaranteed to faculty by CU and the U.S. Constitution. . . .

The usual delusional free speech arguments follow.

The human race has a track record of murdering its greatest benefactors simply because they said things that offended people.

Well, it was a little excessive for CU to execute Wart like they did.

The investigation into Professor Churchill's alleged academic misconduct was a disingenuous and utterly transparent excuse for punishing him.

If you don't look at all the actual misconduct it found. Deming, apparently, didn't.

I have never met Professor Churchill, and it is likely that we would disagree on many things.

He doesn't know?

I approach issues from the opposite end of the political spectrum. I'm an outspoken conservative, member of the National Rifle Association and advocate of pure 19th-century laissez faire capitalism.

Idiocy knows no political bounds.

But I'm not afraid to hear viewpoints that I disagree with, and I don't seek to punish people who think differently. I listen to them because I might learn something.

As opposed to all of us sheep . . .

Truth can only be found when there is a vigorous dialectic. . . .

Dialectic, eh?

It was Professor Churchill's duty to be controversial and offensive. He should not have been fired for doing his job. . . .

Not to teach, but to be controversial and offensive. He had that down.

Update: The demented Keebler elves at the Ward Churchill Solidarity Network have a trial blog up.