You may have heard about the University of Colorado professor, Ward Churchill.

Yesterday, a jury found that he had been fired wrongly, for political reasons and awarded Mr. Churchill one dollar. I think it was the wrong verdict, that while the reasons his work came to public light were undoubtedly related to his nasty, vicious political activities, his scholarship is still deficient at best. I'm sad to hear that the fool we have for an ex-governor who managed to make political what could have been professional. After all, Mr. Churchill (I usually call university professors "doctor", but he lacks a Ph.D.) was carefully uncovered by the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News and was shown to be a plagiarist and a fraud who fabricated research and claimed an ethnic background that's little more than wishful thinking. Oh, and shouldn't a department head hold the required degree?

Anyway, here's why I dislike people like Mr. Churchill. It's not that he's self-righteous and abusive toward those who disagree with him. It's that his arrogance leads him to feel that a fabricated claim is justified if he feels it serves a greater moral truth. In the end, his field of ethnic studies is only harmed by his kind. There are plenty of academics who do honest, valuable work in ethnic studies, but Ward Churchill isn't one of them.

CDs listened to today:

• Anton Bruckner: The Symphonies, disk 9
• Ernest Bloch: Symphony for Trombone Solo and Orchestra (Branimir Slokar, trombone)
• The Reverend Horton Heat: The Full-Custom Gospel Sounds of the Reverend Horton Heat
• Forward Russia!: Give Me A Wall
• George Crumb: Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death
• Johann Strauss: Tales of the Vienna Woods, disk 2
• Joe Lovano: Joyous Encounter
• William Bolcom: Songs of Innocence and Experience, disk 1