Ward Churchill, Is The Fix In?

It may well be that the preponderance of evidence presented against Ward Churchill during the University of Colorado's investigation into academic misconduct may not matter, as it seems that University's administration has stacked the board of inquiry with Churchill's cheerleaders.

[I]t turns out that two members of the investigating committee are on public record extolling Churchill and his work. "A major scholar and public intellectual," gushed Professor Robert Williams of the University of Arizona. Churchill's books are "well-argued and intensively documented in a scholarly manner," enthused Professor Bruce Johansen of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Couldn't the University of Colorado have just asked the Ward Churchill fan club - one surely exists in this age of celebrity worship - to rule on the charges of research misconduct that have been leveled against him and saved itself time and trouble?

For that matter, why go through the motions at all? Why not announce the pro-Churchill verdict right now and be done with it?