The winter snowstorm stopped the Ward Churchill trial Thursday and may also cause today’s scheduled testimony to be postponed into next week.
Denver Chief District Judge Larry J. Naves issued an order about noon to close the courthouse and said the court may be closed today if travel remains unsafe.
Churchill, a 61-year-old former ethnic-studies professor, sued the University of Colorado after he was fired in 2007.
He believes he was let go because of political controversy that exploded around an essay he wrote about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
CU officials say they fired Churchill for falsifying, fabricating and plagiarizing some of his scholarly writings about American Indians.
Before the judge closed the courtroom, CU professor Joe Rosse, who led the university’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct, testified that the panel was convinced Churchill had engaged in academic misconduct.
He also testified that he was concerned that Churchill was not apologetic and failed to recognize standards of good scholarship.
All week jurors have asked questions that appear to challenge CU’s case. In Colorado, judges may allow jurors in civil cases to submit questions for the witnesses.
The questions are submitted to Naves and then are read to the witness by him.
On Thursday, jurors asked Rosse about the panel’s decision to have a full professor serve on the investigative committee rather than an associate professor who specialized in the specific field of Indian studies.
“It was not either-or. We wanted a person that was both a full professor and with expertise,” Rosse said.
“Did you ever consider anyone else to be chair of the investigative committee after Ward Churchill shared his concern about Mimi Wesson having a bias against him?” a juror asked.
Rosse said he could not remember.
Wesson, a CU law professor, led the investigative committee and has been accused by Churchill of having a bias against him before she headed the panel.
Wesson denied the charge when she testified earlier in the trial.
The last witness on the stand was CU Regent Michael Carrigan, who testified that he got hundreds of complaints about Churchill, but one e-mail that was from a CU graduate stood out.
The alumnus wrote to Carrigan that he was seriously injured on Sept. 11 and was furious about Churchill’s comparing some victims to Nazi Adolf Eichmann in his essay.
“Here he was targeted, attacked, injured, and here was a professor from his own alma mater saying he was not innocent,” Carrigan said. “I felt that merited an apology.”
Carrigan testified that while he was disgusted by Churchill’s essay, it was not what got him fired and there was not a universitywide conspiracy to terminate him.
If CU officials wanted to conspire to fire Churchill, they would have found easier methods to frame him such as examining his expense reports, copier use or travel records. That would have been easier than launching a two-year faculty investigation into his scholarship, Carrigan said.
