Judge Hands Ward Churchill an All-Out Defeat

Ruling rejects scholar's plea for reinstatement and vacates a verdict in his favor

By Peter Schmidt

A state court judge on Tuesday not only denied Ward Churchill everything he sought in his long-running battle with the University of Colorado system, but also negated the one victory the controversial scholar had won so far: a jury verdict holding that system officials had violated his First Amendment rights by firing him from a job as a tenured ethnic-studies professor in response to statements he had made.

Having presided over the four-week trial that led to the jury's April 2