26-03-2009, 04:06 PM
(This post was last modified: 26-03-2009, 04:14 PM by Peter Lemkin.)
It gets better
March 25, 2009
The jury questions for Todd Gleeson, the Dean of CU’s College of Arts and Sciences, as follows from the Daily Camera. I don’t wanna get over-optimistic here, but this is reading like an absolute slaughter for the good guys.
Todd Gleeson, dean of CU’s College of Arts and Sciences, fielded several blunt questions from the jury after he finished his testimony this afternoon.
The juror questions were submitted to Denver Chief District Judge Larry Naves, vetted by the attorneys in the case, and then posed to the witness by the judge.
One juror wanted to know if the friction that had developed between alumni and parents and the university subsided as a result of Ward Churchill’s termination.
Gleeson said “for the most part, the wounds have healed.” But he said he still gets questions about the Churchill controversy when he travels and that the matter still has an affect on the school’s reputation.
Another juror question addressed testimony given by several university faculty and administrators throughout the trial that stated that one of the reasons Churchill was dismissed was that he never apologized and owned up to his mistakes.
“Do you feel someone should apologize for something they dont find they did wrong just to satisfy others,” read the jury question.
Gleeson responded by saying if 20 or more fellow faculty members determined that his behavior was out of line, “I would hope I could swallow my pride and apologize for those acts and correct the record.”
Another juror asked if the school made it clear that it supported Churchill’s First Amendment rights after the hubbub over his 9/11 essay bubbled up.
Gleeson testified that then-Chancellor Phil DiStefano was very deliberate about protecting the professor’s free speech rights while the school tried to determine if he had overstepped his bounds or not.
Churchill attorney David Lane asked Gleeson if CU was really concerned about Churchill’s free speech rights.
He put up on the screen a February 2005 resolution from the CU regents and pointed out that it essentially said the school would investigate Churchill to see if it could find grounds for dismissing him.
Lane also showed the jury a couple of other proclamations from the resolution that stated that CU welcomed Churchill’s decision to resign his chairmanship with the ethnic studies department and apologized to the country for his “disgraceful comments.”
“Does that sound like a ringing endorsement of the First Amendment?” Lane asked.
I also hear that David Lane had this line for Gleeson during cross-examination: ”What are you an expert in again? Invertebrate biology? So, the study of animals that lack a backbone?”
Posted by Ben
Filed in Todd Gleeson, Ward Churchill
2 Comments »
Go Natsu! March 25, 2009
Ward Churchill’s wife, Natsu Saito, took the stand today, and, naturally, knocked it out of the park. From the Daily Camera.
Ward Churchill rested his case shortly before 10 a.m., following 11 full days of testimony in Denver District Court.
The University of Colorado has called Todd Gleeson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at CU, to the stand.
Before Churchill rested his case, his wife gave highly emotional testimony while speaking about her husband’s work and the troubles the couple faced in the aftermath of his controversial essay on 9/11.
The courtroom was mostly empty, a sharp contrast to the packed house that was present during the last two days of Churchill’s testimony.
Natsu Taylor Saito broke down while describing how the University of Colorado effectively discredited her husband’s life work and his attempts to challenge the dominant version of history and give traditionally oppressed ethnic groups a more complex and thorough story of their past.
“He calls out the big lies in history, not these ridiculous picky things we’re aruging about here. The most harmful thing to Ward, and to me, is that it was an attempt to silence that history,” Saito said, her words disappearing in a flow of tears.
Saito, a professor of law at Georgia State University who used to work in CU’s ethnic studies department, said she remembered being with Churchill at her home in Atlanta on Sept. 11, 2001 when terrorists struck New York and Washington, D.C.
She testified that they kept hearing television commentators describing the attacks as senseless.
“Ward said, ‘Whatever these are, I don’t think they are senseless,’” she told the jury.
Saito said they weren’t surprised by the attacks and that Churchill felt like a valuable lesson could be drawn from the tragedy.
“If we want to stop violence from happening, we have to understand that its not OK for violence to be perpetrated by anyone, including our own government,” Saito testified.
Churchill attorney David Lane asked if her husband was cheerleading for the terrorists.
Saito said no.
Churchill wrote a controversial essay about the day in which he lambasted U.S. foreign policy and compared victims of 9/11 to Nazi technocrat Adolf Eichmann.
Three-and-a-half years later, when the essay was widely publicized and caused a firestorm across the country, Saito said her and her husband’s world became like “Alice in Wonderland,” where nothing made sense anymore.
She said the ethnic studies department received “thousands” of “ugly, racist” emails and letters, a couple of which Lane put up on the screen for jurors to see.
One read: “Tell Ward my ancestors killed a lot of Indians and I’m proud of it.”
Saito said professors, especially in the ethnic studies department, began to fear for their jobs because the tenure system came under attack from both the Colorado governor and the General Assembly.
“They were afraid, they were scared their protections would be eviscerated by this review (over tenure),” she told the jury.
She said CU afforded no protection to faculty against external pressure once the uproar was in full swing and never responded to a letter professors sent the school asking it to stand up against the racist assaults.
“All of the university rules were being completely turned on their head,” Saito said. “It was like every rule they had on the books was going out the door. It was exhausting and frustrating. There was a lot of sense of abandonment. All these people who said, ‘Yeah we got your back’ were suddenly nowhere to be seen.”
She testified that she left the university in May 2006, around the time her husband was found guilty of academic misconduct.
“I realized this was an untenable situation,” Saito said. “I was really upset because the university failed to take a principled stand.”
Can someone find O’Rourke a rock to climb under? March 25, 2009
Race to the Bottom has its coverage up of yesterday’s testimony. How do they think it’s going? Their overview of the morning testimony is subtitled Score one for the Plaintiff, and their overview of the jury’s questions is subtitled Bad News for the Defense.
And to top it off, from Race to the Bottom’s coverage of the afternoon testimony, CU then called a CU regent who just happens to be either the single dumbest man to ever public office, or the single worst liar.
On cross-examination by Mr. Lane, Regent Bishop seemed confused by the questions and the pressure exerted by Mr. Lane. He finally recalled that, as a state senator at the time (2/2/2005), he had not participated in the unanimous joint House and Senate Resolution to voice the General Assembly’s outrage over the 9/11 Churchill essay. He also stated emphatically that he did not take into account, whatsoever, the 9/11 Churchill essay in deciding to terminate Churchill. Pressed by Lane, Bishop said he not only did not read the 9/11 essay, but he does not know whether the essay compared the 9/11 victims in a favorable or unfavorable light. Both Lane and the jury seemed stunned and Lane pressed Bishop on this point several times—“for all you know, the essay could be comparing the victims to the Boys Scouts” and Bishop said “yes.” Bishop also said he did not read all of the Investigative Report trusting CU’s faculty on the committee investigating the allegations.
It’s also worth noting that while Mr. Bishop is here admitting he didn’t even bother to read the SCRM report, he had the following to say during examination by O’Rourke, only minutes before.
Stating he did not just “rubber stamp” the decision of the Investigative Committee and the Privilege & Tenure Committee, he came to the conclusion that Churchill could not be allowed to return to the classroom for the simple reason that CU expects students to meet the highest standards in regards to research conduct, then CU should expect and require that these highest standards are also met by CU’s faculty.
Got it. So he didn’t rubber stamp the decision, he just decided to approve it without EVEN READING THE REPORT.
If this is to be the caliber of CU’s witnesses, one wonders if they might just wanna rest their case right now and save themselves further embarassment.
http://wardchurchilltrial.wordpress.com/
March 25, 2009
The jury questions for Todd Gleeson, the Dean of CU’s College of Arts and Sciences, as follows from the Daily Camera. I don’t wanna get over-optimistic here, but this is reading like an absolute slaughter for the good guys.
Todd Gleeson, dean of CU’s College of Arts and Sciences, fielded several blunt questions from the jury after he finished his testimony this afternoon.
The juror questions were submitted to Denver Chief District Judge Larry Naves, vetted by the attorneys in the case, and then posed to the witness by the judge.
One juror wanted to know if the friction that had developed between alumni and parents and the university subsided as a result of Ward Churchill’s termination.
Gleeson said “for the most part, the wounds have healed.” But he said he still gets questions about the Churchill controversy when he travels and that the matter still has an affect on the school’s reputation.
Another juror question addressed testimony given by several university faculty and administrators throughout the trial that stated that one of the reasons Churchill was dismissed was that he never apologized and owned up to his mistakes.
“Do you feel someone should apologize for something they dont find they did wrong just to satisfy others,” read the jury question.
Gleeson responded by saying if 20 or more fellow faculty members determined that his behavior was out of line, “I would hope I could swallow my pride and apologize for those acts and correct the record.”
Another juror asked if the school made it clear that it supported Churchill’s First Amendment rights after the hubbub over his 9/11 essay bubbled up.
Gleeson testified that then-Chancellor Phil DiStefano was very deliberate about protecting the professor’s free speech rights while the school tried to determine if he had overstepped his bounds or not.
Churchill attorney David Lane asked Gleeson if CU was really concerned about Churchill’s free speech rights.
He put up on the screen a February 2005 resolution from the CU regents and pointed out that it essentially said the school would investigate Churchill to see if it could find grounds for dismissing him.
Lane also showed the jury a couple of other proclamations from the resolution that stated that CU welcomed Churchill’s decision to resign his chairmanship with the ethnic studies department and apologized to the country for his “disgraceful comments.”
“Does that sound like a ringing endorsement of the First Amendment?” Lane asked.
I also hear that David Lane had this line for Gleeson during cross-examination: ”What are you an expert in again? Invertebrate biology? So, the study of animals that lack a backbone?”
Posted by Ben
Filed in Todd Gleeson, Ward Churchill
2 Comments »
Go Natsu! March 25, 2009
Ward Churchill’s wife, Natsu Saito, took the stand today, and, naturally, knocked it out of the park. From the Daily Camera.
Ward Churchill rested his case shortly before 10 a.m., following 11 full days of testimony in Denver District Court.
The University of Colorado has called Todd Gleeson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at CU, to the stand.
Before Churchill rested his case, his wife gave highly emotional testimony while speaking about her husband’s work and the troubles the couple faced in the aftermath of his controversial essay on 9/11.
The courtroom was mostly empty, a sharp contrast to the packed house that was present during the last two days of Churchill’s testimony.
Natsu Taylor Saito broke down while describing how the University of Colorado effectively discredited her husband’s life work and his attempts to challenge the dominant version of history and give traditionally oppressed ethnic groups a more complex and thorough story of their past.
“He calls out the big lies in history, not these ridiculous picky things we’re aruging about here. The most harmful thing to Ward, and to me, is that it was an attempt to silence that history,” Saito said, her words disappearing in a flow of tears.
Saito, a professor of law at Georgia State University who used to work in CU’s ethnic studies department, said she remembered being with Churchill at her home in Atlanta on Sept. 11, 2001 when terrorists struck New York and Washington, D.C.
She testified that they kept hearing television commentators describing the attacks as senseless.
“Ward said, ‘Whatever these are, I don’t think they are senseless,’” she told the jury.
Saito said they weren’t surprised by the attacks and that Churchill felt like a valuable lesson could be drawn from the tragedy.
“If we want to stop violence from happening, we have to understand that its not OK for violence to be perpetrated by anyone, including our own government,” Saito testified.
Churchill attorney David Lane asked if her husband was cheerleading for the terrorists.
Saito said no.
Churchill wrote a controversial essay about the day in which he lambasted U.S. foreign policy and compared victims of 9/11 to Nazi technocrat Adolf Eichmann.
Three-and-a-half years later, when the essay was widely publicized and caused a firestorm across the country, Saito said her and her husband’s world became like “Alice in Wonderland,” where nothing made sense anymore.
She said the ethnic studies department received “thousands” of “ugly, racist” emails and letters, a couple of which Lane put up on the screen for jurors to see.
One read: “Tell Ward my ancestors killed a lot of Indians and I’m proud of it.”
Saito said professors, especially in the ethnic studies department, began to fear for their jobs because the tenure system came under attack from both the Colorado governor and the General Assembly.
“They were afraid, they were scared their protections would be eviscerated by this review (over tenure),” she told the jury.
She said CU afforded no protection to faculty against external pressure once the uproar was in full swing and never responded to a letter professors sent the school asking it to stand up against the racist assaults.
“All of the university rules were being completely turned on their head,” Saito said. “It was like every rule they had on the books was going out the door. It was exhausting and frustrating. There was a lot of sense of abandonment. All these people who said, ‘Yeah we got your back’ were suddenly nowhere to be seen.”
She testified that she left the university in May 2006, around the time her husband was found guilty of academic misconduct.
“I realized this was an untenable situation,” Saito said. “I was really upset because the university failed to take a principled stand.”
Can someone find O’Rourke a rock to climb under? March 25, 2009
Race to the Bottom has its coverage up of yesterday’s testimony. How do they think it’s going? Their overview of the morning testimony is subtitled Score one for the Plaintiff, and their overview of the jury’s questions is subtitled Bad News for the Defense.
And to top it off, from Race to the Bottom’s coverage of the afternoon testimony, CU then called a CU regent who just happens to be either the single dumbest man to ever public office, or the single worst liar.
On cross-examination by Mr. Lane, Regent Bishop seemed confused by the questions and the pressure exerted by Mr. Lane. He finally recalled that, as a state senator at the time (2/2/2005), he had not participated in the unanimous joint House and Senate Resolution to voice the General Assembly’s outrage over the 9/11 Churchill essay. He also stated emphatically that he did not take into account, whatsoever, the 9/11 Churchill essay in deciding to terminate Churchill. Pressed by Lane, Bishop said he not only did not read the 9/11 essay, but he does not know whether the essay compared the 9/11 victims in a favorable or unfavorable light. Both Lane and the jury seemed stunned and Lane pressed Bishop on this point several times—“for all you know, the essay could be comparing the victims to the Boys Scouts” and Bishop said “yes.” Bishop also said he did not read all of the Investigative Report trusting CU’s faculty on the committee investigating the allegations.
It’s also worth noting that while Mr. Bishop is here admitting he didn’t even bother to read the SCRM report, he had the following to say during examination by O’Rourke, only minutes before.
Stating he did not just “rubber stamp” the decision of the Investigative Committee and the Privilege & Tenure Committee, he came to the conclusion that Churchill could not be allowed to return to the classroom for the simple reason that CU expects students to meet the highest standards in regards to research conduct, then CU should expect and require that these highest standards are also met by CU’s faculty.
Got it. So he didn’t rubber stamp the decision, he just decided to approve it without EVEN READING THE REPORT.
If this is to be the caliber of CU’s witnesses, one wonders if they might just wanna rest their case right now and save themselves further embarassment.
http://wardchurchilltrial.wordpress.com/
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass