William Ayers, the former Weather Underground radical whose past made him a lightning rod in the 2008 presidential campaign, said Thursday that fired Colorado professor Ward Churchill became the victim of a "witch hunt" after comparing Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi.
"There's no doubt in my mind he was persecuted because of his politics," Ayers said before appearing with Churchill at a student rally on academic freedom at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
There's no doubt Churchill brought attention and scrutiny to himself with his idiotic remarks, but he was fired because of the information that scrutiny brought to light:
University spokesman Bronson Hilliard called Ayers' allegation "absolute nonsense." He said Churchill was fired because of proven research misconduct, not his statements.
It's true that no one would ever have researched Churchill's past were it not for his big mouth, but once people started bringing Churchill's lies and plagiarism to the school's attention, they couldn't very well ignore it no matter what the motivation of the discoverers was.
Ayers was a co-founder of the Weather Underground, a radical anti-war group that claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, including explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol that didn't kill anyone.I guess for al-AP, trying to kill people shouldn't really be a crime. No, no bias there. Move along, please.
He was a fugitive for years. After surrendering in 1980, charges against him were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct.
Ayers is now an education professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago and an outspoken critic of intimidation of professors.
"Again and again, we have political leaders who weigh in on what's appropriate to teach and who's appropriate to teach," Ayers said Thursday.
So the bottom line in this story is that you have two slimeballs, both of whom have a very shady past in one way or another, and here they are palling around with one defending the other's attempt to get his job back--a job he got only by lying about his ethnic heritage (as if that should help get a job anyway) and by stealing the work of others and passing it off as his own.
These two deserve each other.
And remember, Ayers is a professor of education. He's training current and future teachers.
There was an article in National Review some years back about Ward Churchill's scholarly misconduct quoting at length from another history scholars review of Churchill's work.
ReplyDeleteThe history prof who did the review pointed out numerous inconsistencies between source documents Churchill claimed he used including misquotes, conclusions unsupported by the evidence or the documentation, concocting quotes that didn't appear in the documents Churchill claimed they came from, some information that was directly contradicted by the source documents and other information for which there appeared to be no support inferring, although no coming out and accusing Churchill, of simply making up a number of "facts" to fit his ideological requirements.
Even among arrogant lefties, Churchill's notably loathsome.
Situational ethics will prevail with this group. Therefore, if you hold the correct political views, you are Teflon. But if you hold the wrong political views, you are subjected to every possible nitpicking rule, board hearing or second guessing. This is what happened to the professor that dared to question the Gospel of Gore regarding Global Warming. Did you notice how that's now been rebranded as Global Change? That's a nice vague phrase that fits every possible outcome.
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