For University of Colorado President Hank Brown, Ward Churchill is like a nagging case of institutional herpes. Each time Brown thinks he has salved a sore with some kind of disciplinary action another blister pops up on his body politic.
Even as the CU regents agreed with Brown’s recommendation to fire Churchill after a day-long executive session Tuesday, the remedy appeared little more than an interim step in a long and expensive treatment that, like a stubborn sexually transmitted disease, resulted from a years-old error in judgment.
CU’s seduction by Ward Churchill was consummated with a tenured teaching job for a guy without an academic pedigree and with a taste for controversy. Climb into bed with a guy like that in an impetuous moment of radical chic and he’s yours for life.Or in this case, the people who fund your public institution of higher education.
So, even as the CU regents fired Churchill Tuesday on an 8-1 vote, the inevitability of his law suit against them neutered their resolve.
Sentiments outside the University Memorial Center Tuesday afternoon were exclusively pro-Churchill.
None urged the ethnic studies professor’s firing.
It’s not about scholarship. It’s about politics, said one T-shirt popular among
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