First, I want to say I'm down with the University of Colorado firing Ward Churchill. For whatever. Plagiarism is good. Mopery would also work. So would Internet piracy of John Denver songs, peeking into the girl's gym, or spitting on the sidewalk.
But I have to ask... isn't there some speech after which the state is no longer required to employ someone for the purposes of teaching? Examples:
--A [tenured] history professor becomes pro-Nazi and turns her courses into investigations of Jewish perfidy in Wiemar Germany and analyzing the West's "post-war decline into 'mongrelism.'"
--A biology professor is struck by the Old Time Religion and not only denies Global Warming, but lectures repeatedly on Young Earth Creationism. using the Bible as text. Is this extra protected, being religious expression?
--A Nobel-winning physics professor becomes well-known for his views on the inferiority of "the darker races."
--A history professor decides that all of the folks blown up in Oklahoma City by Tim McVeigh deserved it. He calls the federal employees who died "Little Stalins" and suggests that such actions are only right considering generations of oppression by a hateful US government, starting with that horrid Mr Lincoln.This is all protected speech? I rather doubt it. So, while I'm glad he's gone, I just wish the University had come out and said that while it was proven that he was guilty of plagiarism, mopery, etc, they were firing him for being unfit to teach and an embarrassment to the school, based solely on his speech.