THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS

The taxpayers might as well throw in the towel because whatever authority they once held over the public institutions that enjoy their forced contributions is disappearing at an astonishing rate and the Ward Churchill case is only the latest example. The University of Colorado is not a private institution. It depends a great deal on taxpayer funding and therefore is governed by an elected Board of Regents. After due diligence these regents, who represent all the people of Colorado, found that employee Professor Churchill’s work was not up to standard, so they fired him. Along comes an accomplished tort lawyer who smells money and knows how to play a tune on journalists’ butts, sues the University, overwhelms a fumbling defense lawyer who no one has ever heard of, succeeds in making a First Amendment case out of it, which it is not, and he and his client prevail.