The Ward Churchill matter is revealing in many ways, as Anne wrote earlier. And so is the University of Colorado committee’s report on Churchill’s misconduct. It’s a whopping 124 pages—not exactly a breezy read—but it speaks volumes about the contemporary academy. Just to pick one example of what’s so amazing about the report, it completely neglects students’ role in the learning process.

First of all, take the report’s definition of academic freedom: “the freedom to inquire, discover, publish and teach truth as the faculty member sees it, subject to no control or authority save the control and authority of the rational methods by which truth is established.” Got that? “As the faculty member sees it.” Nothing in there about students’ right to—I don’t know—receive teaching rather than preaching?

To be fair, this isn’t just a failing of the committee—this definition quotes Colorado regents’ policies. But that only makes the point even more strongly that across the academic establishment, academic freedom is constantly misunderstood as only protecting faculty members’ right to say what they want. The truth, though, is that students have academic freedom—specifically the freedom to be taught, not indoctrinated.

And it gets worse from there. As Inside Higher Ed reported earlier, the Colorado committee played host to great gnashing of teeth as to whether Churchill should be fired for his “repeated, intentional academic misconduct—plagiarism, fabrication, falsification and more.” As IHE put it:

One member suggested that Churchill be fired, despite his status as a tenured professor. Two recommended that he be suspended for five years without pay. And two recommended that he be suspended for two years without pay.

Give me a break! When I was in college, I served on the committee that handed out punishments for students who cheated. The rule there? Cheat twice and you’re suspended; once more and you’re gone. Were Ward Churchill a student, this would not have been a tough call: hasta la vista, baby. But after supposedly finding such awful violations on the part of this eminent (albeit Ph.D.-less) academic, the writers of this report couldn’t even bring themselves to unanimously recommend his firing.

Telling.