Via MSNBC/The Rocky Mountain News: Two departments at CU rejected Churchill.

Here’s some more info to go along with my post from this morning:

In a memo to the communication faculty, Michael Pacanowsky, who was in line to become chairman, said Churchill needed to join a department, since the program that sponsored his Native American Studies courses did not have the authority to grant tenure.

“Ward’s file was circulated to sociology and political science, and they did not agree to roster him in their departments,” Pacanowsky wrote in an e-mail dated Jan. 10, 1991. “Because Ward’s graduate degree, an MA, was in communications, we were contacted next.”

Pacanowsky goes on to say that Churchill’s work was not “mainstream in our discipline,” but by appointing Churchill, the department would be “making our own contribution to increasing the cultural diversity on campus (Ward is a native American).”

[…]

Pacanowsky made it clear that he was under pressure from College of Arts and Sciences Dean Charles Middleton to make a decision on Churchill quickly.

“I apologize for the manner in which we are having to deal with this, and I am uncomfortable with it, but under the circumstances of the time pressures we are now operating under, I could think of no other way to handle the issue,” Pacanowsky told the faculty.

Pacanowsky, citing other university officials, feared Churchill had been offered a full professorship at California State University at Northridge and that CU would lose the opportunity to hire him.

[…]

Pacanowsky said he was “overwhelmed” by the position in which he found himself.

While he saw the benefit of increasing ethnic diversity on campus, “Ward does not seem to me to be the kind of person who fits our mold of a department focused on interpersonal and organizational communication,” Pacanowsky wrote.

Three other faculty members from the department have also said increasing campus diversity was a factor in granting tenure to Churchill.

[…]

Middleton, who is now president of Roosevelt University in Illinois, has said he doesn’t remember Churchill receiving any preferential treatment or how he was granted tenure.

Churchill received the coveted full professor status in 1997.

So now we know that it was the Dean of Arts and Sciences who was pushing, and that he is now beyond punishment, as he is at another school. Further, we find that the CU Sociology and Political Science departments demonstrated judgment that their college’s Dean lacked.

We have it further confirmed that Churchill’s hiring and status were the result of the worst elements of pro-diversity policies, and simply serve to confirm that the focus in such circumstances is often on skin color not qualifications.

What’s remarkable, and lost on the journalists who aren’t familiar with university nomenclature and procedures, is that Churchill received both tenure and promotion in rank early and sans the appropriate review process.

There are various ranks for those who teach at universities on a full-time basis (some school don;t employ all of these): instructor, lecturer, senior lecturer, assistant professor, associate professor, and full professor. Each comes with a higher pay scale and more prestige. Normally associates and full profs are also tenured, although there are associates who are not.

Further, it is possible to tenure an instructor or assistant and not promote them in rank (just as it happend on rare occasion that some is promoted with getting tenured).

It appears from the MSNBC story that he did not get the promotion to full prof until 1997. Still, a rather remarkable series of events that show him leapfrogging over his “peers”.

The incompetence of the CU College of Arts of Science conitnues to boggle the mind.

See Chris Lawrence and Stephen Green for more comments (both make some apt observations).