Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Did I miss something?

From Yahoo News - Panel recommends firing Colo. professor

The fifth paragraph finally gets past the bs and tells the why of the recommended firing - "The school's investigation focused on allegations that Churchill committed research misconduct and plagiarism."

Now it's the last paragraph that confuses me. "Churchill's case has been cited by conservatives as an example of how universities have overstocked their faculties with leftists. Others raised concerns about academic freedom."

What does research misconduct and plagarism have to do with his political views (they are pretty obnoxious) or academic freedom?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Churchill is an idiot, plain and simple.

The two issues are mutually exclusive. But it was his obnoxious hate-filled political views that caused people who dislike him to start digging into his scholarship and pubished work.

Once you start spouting off in a highly public manner, you become fair game for those who oppose you to look and see if your "knowledge" at a sufficient level to lend support to your claims. And being the blogosphere, a few very knowledgeable people caught on to his research misconduct and brought it to light.

The academic freedom claim is made by those who want are in agreement with Churchill. Since the people who oppose him are the ones who brought his cheating to light - their twisted logic is - he's being fired for his political views! The only time they care about cheaters is when it's on the other side of their political spectrum.

Unknown said...

It's this idea - cited by conservatives as an example of how universities have overstocked their faculties with leftists - that annoys me. It seems to be implying that if your political ideology is not conservative, then you're a liar and a cheat. The fact that this guy's view could be considered conservative seems to be forgotten.