If you hadn’t figured out from my column I disagree with what seems to be the consensus view among conservatives about Ward Churchill. I think he should be canned. It would be preferable if they could do it for cause — i.e. find fraud, or malfeasance or some such — but if not I still think he should go. I appreciate the arguments on the other side from a lot of smart folks, but at the end of the day he should never have been hired in the first place (has anyone found out if he was hired as part of a “diversity” program on account of his almost certainly fictional Indian status?). And while I understand the worries of a “chilling-effect” backlash, I think academic freedom would actually be better served if he were fired in the long run. Right now the left chills speech it doesn’t like with impunity and there is no sign that they see any reason to stop. Perhaps if they realized that this is a two way street we might get some more appreciation for real ideological diversity.