Old age is catching up with me.

On page A13 of the July 26th print edition of The Wall Street Journal, former Senator Hank Brown, who is now the President of the University of Colorado, sets forth in detail why he initiated the process which led to the termination of Ward Churchill. The article indicates that Ward Churchill has filed suit in state court to challenge his firing on First Amendment grounds.

I guess that it must be old age catching up with me. As I was reading the article, I remembered back to my youth when the hiring and firings of college teachers wasn’t a matter of constitutional concern, merely a personnel matter. Since my father was a college professor at a publicly funded institution I grew up hearing about the silliness of college deans and presidents and learned a  lot about  faculty politics.

My father and his  poor, unenlightened colleagues somehow managed to toil away with knowing that their tenures and promotions were matters of constitutional import. How did they manage?

I guess that we were unenlightened back then, weren’t we?