Free Republic

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? [taken from October 2010 articles/blog posts]NASA's Islam Outreach Minister Charles BoldenGOP lawmakers are critical of Charles Bolden for leaving last week on a trip to China just as the agency he leads begins pursuing an ambitious new agenda. It is the latest in a series of controversial moves that some speculate could result in Bolden's ouster. A law signed a week ago gives NASA four months or less to develop a dozen different plans for the future, including a detailed report on how it would replace the retiring space shuttle.It's an ambitious schedule, one that NASA...

A panel of judges on the Colorado Court of Appeals heard arguments from attorneys Wednesday about whether Ward Churchill should be allowed to teach again at the University of Colorado. As part of the appeal of the verdict in his lawsuit against CU, Churchill is asking that he be reinstated and paid the $1 he was awarded by a jury that agreed he was unlawfully fired for exercising his right to free speech. CU's regents voted 8-1 to fire Churchill in 2007 because of academic-misconduct violations, after faculty members charged with investigating his body of work found patterns of plagiarism,...

Bill Ayers and a University of Wyoming student filed suit against UW on Thursday, asking a federal judge for an injunction allowing Ayers to speak on campus later this month. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Cheyenne, comes three days after UW banned Ayers, a University of Illinois-Chicago education professor with a radical past, from using any university venue for a planned April 28 lecture. The lawsuit alleges the ban is unconstitutional under First Amendment rights to free speech and to assemble. In 1969, Ayers co-founded the Weather Underground, a Marxist-Leninist anti-war group that claimed responsibility for a...

attorney David Lane, whose other high-profile clients include Balloon Boy dad Richard Heene and wrongfully convicted Timothy Masters, remains Churchill's attorney. And he makes it clear that the case is about far more than Churchill's likening of 9/11 victims to "little Eichmanns." The American Civil Liberties Union has already filed a brief in support of Churchill's appeal. But like every court action, this one has to go through a slew of preliminary steps before reaching the consideration stage. In other words, the Churchill matter could remain unresolved for quite some time to come, even though the comments that started the...

School wants $52,000 for expenses related to suit against former professor. The University of Colorado is asking for more than $52,000 from Ward Churchill to recover costs the school incurred fighting a lawsuit filed by the former ethnic studies professor. The total tab, filed in Denver District Court last week, includes individual expenses ranging from $2 for courthouse parking to $22,095 for "in-trial video and visual exhibits." "The university believes that what we've filed is both fair and appropriate for some of the expenses that we incurred during the trial," said Ken McConnellogue, spokesman for the University of Colorado system....

Click here for a summary of NewsReal’s ongoing coverage of the radical politics of Marc Lamont Hill.More information is pouring in about the heroes of Fox News contributor Marc Lamont Hill, who has been in a public battle with David Horowitz of late. One of the key issues Horowitz has taken with Hill centers around people that Hill sees as heroes worth defending. Two years ago Hill defended controversial professor Ward Churchill on The O'Reilly Factor. Churchill was fired from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2007. The issue that eventually led to his firing was an essay he...

Ward Churchill in Denial by: Bethany Stotts, July 13, 2009 A jury may have decided in April that University of Colorado at Boulder officials violated former professor Ward Churchill’s first amendment rights when firing him, but a Denver District Court Judge has ruled that Churchill will neither receive his job back nor receive front pay for his termination. “Professor Churchill’s own statements during the trial established that he has not seriously pursued any efforts to gain comparable employment, but has instead chosen to give lectures and other presentations as a means of supplementing his income,” wrote Judge Larry J. Nye...

(This is part 2 of an article.) Recently neo-fascists opposed to Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama’s nominee to the United States Supreme Court, have argued that she doesn’t respect the “sanctity” of the law and chooses instead to be guided by her personal beliefs. But if there is such a thing as “sanctity” of the law, why are so many Supreme Court cases decided by five-four votes split along ideological lines? Where is this concern when self-loathing Clarence Thomas uses his experiences at Yale University, not the law, to dismantle affirmative action programs, or when Antonin Scalia unethically hears cases where...

Ward Churchill could find himself on the hook for up to $50,000 in out-of-pocket costs the University of Colorado incurred fighting the lawsuit the former ethnic studies professor filed against it, CU's lead attorney said Wednesday. CU attorney Patrick O'Rourke said he plans to file for recovery of those costs -- which include flying witnesses in and out of Colorado and creating deposition transcripts -- over the next 15 days and said the amount would be in the "five figures" and likely just shy of $50,000. "We've got to go through and add it up -- it's not a staggering...

Boulder learning will go on without Ward Churchill. On Tuesday Judge Larry Naves granted CU's and the Board of Regent's motion for judgement as a matter of law that the Board of Regents is immune from being sued and vacates the jury verdict from April of this year. Naves also denied Churchill's motion for reinstatement of employment as well as any "front" pay. He essentially got nothing. "We are very gratified with the decision," said Bronson Hilliard, spokesman for CU Boulder. The ethnic studies professor had sued the University of Colorado in an attempt to regain his teaching post. Churchill...

All eyes will be on Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves on Wednesday as he takes arguments at an all-day hearing for and against giving ousted professor Ward Churchill his job back at the University of Colorado. The hearing is the culmination of a lengthy dispute between CU and the controversial professor, who was fired two years ago. The judge has the option of ruling from the bench at the end of the hearing or issuing a written decision later. Neither the judge’s clerk nor the attorneys in the case would hazard a guess as to when Naves might announce...

Former CU professor will appear on 'Stories from the Edge of Free Speech' on June 29. The controversial academic-misconduct case surrounding Ward Churchill will be prominently featured in an upcoming documentary about free speech that is scheduled to air later this month on HBO. Key players in the case, including Churchill, are interviewed for the documentary, called "Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech." CU system Ken McConnellogue, in an interview, said that the school fired Churchill because he did not meet academic standards.

Former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill will make his case for getting his job back during a one-day hearing to be held July 1, a Denver District Court clerk said Wednesday. Chief Denver District Court Judge Larry Naves will preside over the hearing, during which both Churchill and the University of Colorado will argue for and against reinstatement of the former controversial ethnic studies professor. Churchill was fired nearly two years ago by the CU regents after the school claimed he had committed widespread and systematic academic fraud.

Former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill's legal team is aiming to get the ethnic studies scholar back in the classroom as soon as the fall semester, a Churchill attorney said Wednesday. Qusair Mohamedbhai, one of three lawyers ... Deciding whether Churchill gets his job back at CU, or is awarded a financial settlement instead, rests with Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves. The deadline for Churchill to file his reinstatement motion is Monday. The university will have 15 days to respond. Ken McConnellogue, a spokesman for the CU system, said the university will have a response once it reviews...

David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin profile political indoctrination in academic departments.One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy, by David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin (Crown Forum, 336 pp., $26.95) To some extent, the recent jury verdict holding that the University of Colorado had wrongly fired Ward Churchill was correct: political pressures did inspire the investigation leading to his termination for academic misconduct. It doesn’t follow, though, that Churchill was fired for his political views, which notoriously included comparing 9/11 victims to “Little Eichmanns.” Plagiarism and falsification of evidence aren’t covered under any definition...

BOULDER, Colo. (Legal Newsline)-The controversial University of Colorado professor who likened victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to a Nazi leader has been awarded just $1 in damages for wrongful termination. A jury panel of four women and two men in Denver found Thursday that Ward Churchill was fired as a professor of ethnic studies at the Boulder campus in retaliation for his remarks. The jury deliberated for a day and a half. For its part, the university's board of regents claimed it fired 61-year-old Churchill for academic misconduct, including plagiarism.

BOULDER, Colo. (Legal Newsline)-The controversial University of Colorado professor who likened victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to a Nazi leader has been awarded just $1 in damages for wrongful termination.

At long last, I get it. I was slow on the uptake, I admit, but have finally come around. For much of my life, you see, I labored under a great delusion. I thought public officials had a duty to speak out and rebuke someone in their ranks — or even a prominent constituent — who said something morally repellent. If a prison warden professed indifference toward sexual abuse within his facility, or a college football coach was caught distributing racist or neo-Nazi propaganda, I assumed that elected officials should stand up and object — that they should climb upon...

Ward Churchill won his case against the University of Colorado today as a Denver jury unanimously decided he was fired in retaliation for his controversial essay on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The jury gave Churchill $1 for

After a four-week trial, a jury in Denver is deliberating the case of Ward L. Churchill, a former University of Colorado professor who says he was fired because of an essay he wrote in which he called victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks “little Eichmanns.” The university says Mr. Churchill plagiarized and falsified parts of his academic research, particularly on American Indians, and cited this as grounds for his dismissal in July 2007. Mr. Churchill brought a wrongful termination suit against the university, seeking monetary damages for lost wages and harm to his reputation. He also wants to...