BOULDER — If a judge won’t give Ward Churchill a job back at the University of Colorado, the former ethnic studies professor plans to ask for more than $1 million, he said Monday.
Churchill, who won a wrongful-termination lawsuit against the university last week, said he doesn’t accept the contention that dissatisfaction with his presence on campus should prevent his reinstatement.
“If it would make a bunch of people uncomfortable on the Boulder campus, what’s the argument?” Churchill said. “They violated my rights, therefore to spare them discomfort I should not be restored to what I was unlawfully deprived of? That’s somewhat tenuous.”
For those at CU who can’t stand having him so close, Churchill has an offer:
“If it really makes you that uncomfortable, you’re free to leave,” he said.
A Denver jury determined Churchill, 61, was unlawfully fired by CU for exercising his First Amendment rights in a scathing essay about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But jurors awarded him only $1 in damages.
Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves will decide at a yet-to-be scheduled hearing whether Churchill can return to the university, which says it fired him because of academic fraud that surfaced after the essay caused a national firestorm.
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