No, not Ward Churchill. This has nothing to do with Ward Churchill. In fact, while everyone’s been talking about Ward Churchill, environmental students professor Adrienne Anderson has had her courses cancelled. Anderson is an instructor, which means she’s not in the tenured ranks, which means that she can be fired at will. And she was– by the tenured and tenure-track faculty in environmental studies. Here’s her account, as reported in Colorado Daily:

Anderson is an outspoken environmentalist and has investigated a number of high profile Colorado corporate violations over the years. One example is the Lowry Landfill Superfund site in east Denver, which Anderson has claimed, and some research has shown, contains radioactive waste.

“The question is, do students have a right to engage in real-world research or are they supposed to keep quiet while illegal activities are going on in corporations that the university is trying to curry favors with for donations?” Anderson told the Colorado Daily Monday.

Anderson describes her time at CU as an “ongoing battle of interests over my courses” because some companies, such as Coors and Lockheed Martin, which [she] and her students investigate, are major contributors to the university.

I don’t know what the environmental studies curriculum or budget looks like at Colorado, but I do know that Anderson’s right about that “ongoing battle” bit. From the Rocky Mountain News:

One of her most common sparring partners has been the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District, which treats sewage for Denver and much of the metro area. In 1996, Anderson, in her capacity as a district board member, challenged the district’s decision to accept treated wastewater from the Lowry Landfill Superfund site in Arapahoe County, insisting the plan was a threat to public health and the environment.

She sued the district in 1997, alleging that its board made unfounded allegations against her, held secret meetings and threatened to censure her at public meetings. An administrative law judge ruled in her favor in 2001, but that ruling later was overturned by Labor Department officials. The decision is under appeal.

Actually, there’s a bit more to that 2001 ruling. Denver Water manager Chips Barry was quoted in the February 8 Rocky Mountain News as saying that Anderson’s claims “have consistently and uniformly proven to be without basis. She is, in my view, almost always wrong.” But it seems that in the past, some of Anderson’s critics have been . . . well, kind of slimy and sludgy. According to the Denver Post of September 24, 2001:

Environmental activist and college instructor Adrienne Anderson has been the victim of an “outrageous” defamation campaign at the hands of the PR department of Colorado’s largest sewage plant, and a judge has hit the plant with a $450,000 damage award. According to the Denver Post, the judge has ordered the sewage district “to publicly apologize in a full page ad.” The Post notes that the judge “singled out Metro’s public relations director Steven M. Frank for harsh criticism, concluding that Frank made false statements under oath.” The ruling came after Anderson “claimed that Lowry Landfill accepted radioactive waste from the Rocky Flats (nuclear) bomb plant, material that the district’s sewage system was unable to safely treat. Processed wastewater leaving the sewage plant ends up in the South Platte River; leftover sludge is used as fertilizer on a district property east of Denver. Anderson and other activists say the process simply dilutes hazardous waste and spreads it out where the public might be exposed to it.” The judge found “there was ‘overwhelming’ evidence that the district’s ‘five-year history of illegal and retaliatory action’ had damaged Anderson’s professional reputation and career.”

Indeed.