Ward Churchill and his supporters have launched a last-ditch campaign focused spuriously on academic freedom to keep him from getting fired. As Inside Higher Ed reports, University of Colorado President Hank Brown has now set in motion a process that is widely expected to lead to Churchill’s dismissal.

Brown is holding his ground in lively fashion, calling the argument in behalf of Churchill argument a “Paris Hilton defense” – meaning “that the professor and the socialite both blame their troubles on being famous, instead of accepting that famous people have to follow the rules just like others do.”