Denver District Judge Larry Naves's ruling yesterday that Ward Churchill should not get his job back at the University of Colorado -- and, in fact, should not get any more compensation than the dollar a jury awarded him back in March -- should be the last word on Ward.
It won't be, of course. An appeal will almost certainly follow.
But while CU may have handled Churchill's firing clumsily, badly, even wrongly, as that same jury determined, the university was right to let him go. In fact, CU's biggest sin was how long it took to do so, since serious questions about his academic work and background had been raised (and reported in Westword) more than fifteen years ago.
Better late than never.