Rocky Mountain News editorial:

Once the evidence had been officially compiled (much of it had already appeared in this newspaper), Churchill’s termination by the regents, which occurred Tuesday in an 8 to 1 vote, was all but a formality.
After all, the faculty’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct agreed by a two-thirds majority that he should be fired. The chancellor and university president had each in turn concurred. How could the regents balk, given that they possessed proof that one of their professors had engaged in outrageous academic fraud – not just once but on multiple occasions? And far from being remorseful, he was actually defiant – admitting to nothing and refusing to apologize.
If CU were to declare that his transgressions did not justify firing, what would it suggest about the standards the university upholds? What sort of cloud would it cast over the work of every true scholar associated with CU? …
Under President Hank Brown’s leadership, the university has put yet another awkward issue behind it. Even if a court reinstates Churchill someday on the improbable, spurious ground that his First Amendment rights were violated when he was fired, at least Coloradans will know that the faculty and leadership at their flagship university expelled his poisonous influence from their midst when they had the chance.