Ward Churchill’s attorney told a Denver jury Tuesday that the University of Colorado handed the former professor over to a “howling mob” when they fired him from his tenured position in 2007.
During opening statements before Denver Chief District Judge Larry J. Naves, David Lane told jurors that CU should have defended Churchill’s rights to speak freely about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks instead of publicly denouncing him.
“They should have said, ‘That is what the First Amendment is about, so, howling mob at the gate, we are not letting you in,’ ” Lane said.
“The mob is an angry group of people fueled by ignorance and directed by fear,” he said. “And the mob sees a traitor as an enemy, as someone to be destroyed. The mob took over at the University of Colorado.”
Churchill, 61, sued CU after he was fired for academic misconduct in 2007. The dismissal followed a political uproar over a once-obscure essay he wrote comparing some victims of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center to Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who engineered the destruction of the Jews.
Churchill says the description was taken out of context. The former ethnic-studies professor sees the case as a battle for academic freedom. He is seeking reinstatement at CU.
Lane said Churchill used the term “little Eichmanns” in describing employees working in the financial center because he was “simply making the point — these are the guys who are greasing the wheels of American oppression.”
The comment so outraged then- Gov. Bill Owens, Lane said, that Owens threatened the university’s budget if the school did not fire Churchill. Owens is expected to take the witness stand today.
University counsel Patrick O’Rourke said that while the Sept. 11 essay may have put Churchill into the spotlight, it was not the reason for his dismissal.
O’Rourke said CU was careful not to bow to pressure from Owens and talk-show host Bill O’Reilly, who both called for Churchill’s firing.
He said CU carefully assembled committees to look into allegations that some of Churchill’s work was fabricated or plagiarized.
“There will be no evidence, zero, that they were pressured in any way by the chancellor, by the governor, by O’Reilly — none,” O’Rourke said. “The evidence will be completely to the contrary. What this professor has done has undermined what we do as an institution.”
Lane countered that Mimi Wesson, a CU law professor who led the Churchill investigative panel, should have recused herself because of comments she made about Churchill in an e-mail that compared him to O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson and former President Bill Clinton, or as Lane summed it up, “a murdering, child molesting, philandering liar.”
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com
