DENVER—A witness for the University of Colorado says a professor fired on plagiarism allegations amid an uproar about his comments about Sept. 11 victims was treated fairly.
A professor who helped investigate allegations against Ward Churchill says a faculty committee wasn’t a rubber stamp for the administration. Don Morley, a communications professor at CU-Colorado Springs, testified Friday during the third week of a trial in a lawsuit against the school.
Churchill is suing to get his job back. He claims the school used the pretext of misconduct to fire him in retaliation for his controversial essay, in which he likened victims of Sept. 11 to a Nazi.
The essay, widely publicized in January 2005, set off a firestorm that spawned negative headlines for CU for months.
“He failed to establish that the university was out to get him for his exercise of free speech,” Morley said of Churchill.
Morley was a member of the university’s Privilege and Tenure Committee, which investigated allegations that Churchill misrepresented or fabricated research on Native Americans and claimed the work of a Canadian environmental group as his own.
Morley said he had hoped the fraud charges against Churchill that were forwarded to his panel from the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct would turn out to be false.
“Why?” CU attorney Patrick O’Rourke asked.
“You just don’t want to see one of your own fall and he’s one of our own,” Morley replied.
The committee absolved Churchill of several allegations when the wrongdoing didn’t rise to the committee’s higher standard of “clear and convincing” evidence for misconduct. But Morley said what the committee did find in terms of misconduct merited firing the former ethnic studies professor.
Much of the morning’s testimony was devoted to the question of whether Churchill was properly dismissed. Churchill’s attorney, David Lane, questioned CU Regent Michael Carrigan on exactly what prompted the university to undertake a full examination of his client’s scholarship.
The university determined that Churchill’s essay was protected by the First Amendment but had by then received information that Churchill might have committed academic fraud.
Carrigan said the school had a duty to investigate those allegations once they became known.
