The Demise of Ward Churchill

Well, it took two-and-a-half years, but the University of Colorado finally axed the nutty professor. Ward Churchill has been fired for academic misconduct, including plagiarism. Despite those assertions, this was really about an out-of-control teacher earning nearly $100,000 a year saying things so foolish that no institute of learning could support them.

Imagine losing a loved one in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and then hearing a tenured professor of "Ethnic Studies" accuse your dead relative or friend of being "a little Eichmann," a Nazi. All because the murdered person worked in a capitalistic enterprise.

That statement from Churchill is the equivalent of a teacher denying the Holocaust happened or saying that slavery wasn't evil. How could any school allow a teacher that misguided to instruct students? Talk about academic malpractice!

Predictably, the "free speech" corps rushed to defend Churchill's "opinion." The ACLU urged CU not to fire the man, and a bunch of other phonies screamed "academic freedom."

That must have amused old Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard. In January 2005, Summers publicly mused that maybe women were not as proficient in math and science as men because more males were employed in those disciplines.

Well, you would have thought that Summers had called women Nazis. The Harvard faculty pounded Summers into pudding, and he was forced to resign. The PC forces destroyed him, with barely a peep from the "free speech" lobby.

In fact, the ACLU's Women's Rights Project demanded that Summers rescind his remarks.

Now, please, can we put this ACLU thing to bed once and for all? This is a far-left advocacy group with no interest in anybody's speech it doesn't like. Yeah, once in a while it'll stick up for a non-liberal cause, but in a contrived public-relations move. You want free speech? The ACLU is a dishonest group that hides behind the First Amendment in order to promote a secular-progressive America. So sue me.

More free speech: Ward Churchill hates the United States and defamed innocent people who were brutally killed on 9/11. The charade of firing him took far too long. He's now suing, and that's fine. Even though he loathes this country, he's in love with the protections it affords him. What a guy.

This entire sordid episode demonstrates that fanatics on the left like Churchill have a built in fan base in the media and in the corridors of higher education. The University of Colorado finally did the right thing, but it did it the wrong way.

College professors may have cushier jobs than the rest of us, but they also have a responsibility to tell the truth. Most of those murdered in the World Trade Center were decent human beings just trying to do well by their families.

Churchill called them Nazis. For that, he deserves to be shunned forever.

Veteran TV news anchor Bill O'Reilly is host of the Fox News show "The O'Reilly Factor" and author of the book "Culture Warrior." To find out more about Bill O'Reilly, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. This column originates on the Web site www.billoreilly.com.

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