Category: Wires

Ward L. Churchill, a professor whose firing by the University of Colorado in 2007 inspired a lawsuit that became a landmark case about academic freedom and free speech, has died. He was 78.

The death was confirmed by his former lawyer, David Lane. No further details were provided.

When he was dismissed, Mr. Churchill had been a tenured professor at the university’s Boulder campus since 1991 and had served as chairperson of its ethnic studies department. In 2007, a faculty panel found that he had plagiarized and falsified parts of his research on Native Americans, prompting his dismissal.

He filed a wrongful termination suit against the university, claiming that the real cause for his firing was to punish him for an essay he had written on Sept. 12, 2001, and published online a few days later, in which he argued that the United States had brought on itself the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In the essay, he compared office workers who had been killed with Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi official whose later defense that he was merely “following orders” helped inspire writer Hannah Arendt to develop the concept of “the banality of evil.”

In Mr. Churchill’s essay, titled “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” he wrote that the financial workers who died at the World Trade Center were not innocent bystanders, but “little Eichmanns” who were part of “a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire.”

The essay garnered little notice at the time of its release, nor when it was expanded and published as a book in 2003. But when Mr. Churchill was invited to speak at Hamilton College in New York in 2005, it resurfaced and caused an uproar, and the organizers canceled the event.

Under pressure, including from Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, the university formed a panel to investigate Mr. Churchill’s conduct. It concluded that he had committed serious academic misconduct, including falsifying and fabricating historical details and plagiarizing work by an environmental group and another scholar.

The panel was divided about whether he deserved to be dismissed, with three of the five members in favor, and two recommending a two-year suspension.

The university’s leaders decided to fire him, prompting Mr. Churchill to start his legal challenge. When the lawsuit went to trial in March 2009, Mr. Churchill’s lawyers described the university panel’s search for professional misconduct as a pretext for a foregone decision to dismiss him. Lane, his lawyer, said at the time that Mr. Churchill was the victim of a “howling mob” of university administrators, conservative media, and politicians “falling over themselves” to secure his removal.

In April 2009, the jury found that Mr. Churchill had been wrongfully dismissed, awarding him a symbolic $1 in damages. It found that his political views had been a “substantial or motivating” factor in his dismissal, and that the university had not shown that he would have been dismissed anyway for his academic misconduct.

“The jury’s award is some vindication,” Mr. Churchill said. “I didn’t ask for money, I asked for justice.”

A Denver District Court judge ruled that the university did not have to reinstate or compensate Mr. Churchill, a decision upheld by the Colorado Court of Appeals. In 2012, the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the lower courts’ rulings.

Ward LeRoy Churchill was born Oct. 2, 1947, in Urbana, Ill., to Jack LeRoy Churchill and Maralyn Lucretia Allen. They divorced when he was a year old. In a 2003 essay in an academic journal, he claimed to be of Muscogee Creek descent through his father and an enrolled member of the United Keetowah Band of Cherokee Indians through his mother.

The Cherokee tribe said in 2005 that he was an associate member rather than a full member. A former member of the tribe’s enrollment committee said Mr. Churchill could not prove his eligibility by blood but was granted associate status based on his advocacy work.

Mr. Churchill grew up in Elmwood, Ill., and graduated in 1965 from Elmwood Community High School, where he played football and basketball. Former classmates told the Denver Post in 2005 that he liked to debate politics, even as a teen.

He joined the U.S. Army in 1966, training as a light-truck driver and projectionist, then served in Vietnam. He told the Denver Post in a 1987 interview that he had attended paratrooper school and was assigned to an elite reconnaissance patrol unit, details that did not appear on his Army record.

He was discharged from the Army in 1968. He said in the 1987 interview that he became active in anti-war leftist circles in Chicago after he returned from Vietnam.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in technological communications from Sangamon State University in Springfield, Ill., (now the University of Illinois Springfield), in 1974, and a master’s degree in communications theory from Sangamon State in 1975.

He was hired by the University of Colorado in 1980 to be the acting director of its American Indian Equal Opportunities Program. In 1991, he became an associate professor in the communications department and received tenure. He became a full professor and transferred to the ethnic studies department in 1997.

His classes were popular enough that up to 60 students would be on the waitlist, Arturo Aldama, a professor in that department, told the Denver Post in 2005.

Mr. Churchill was married four times. His first wife, Dora-Lee Larson, filed to end their common-law marriage in 1984 and accused Mr. Churchill of “past violence and threats.” His second marriage, to Marie Annette Jaimes, a colleague at the University of Colorado, ended in divorce in 1995. That same year, he married Leah Kelly, who was struck and killed by a car while crossing a street near Boulder in 2000 at age 25.

Mr. Churchill’s fourth wife, Natsu Saito, was a fellow professor in the University of Colorado’s ethnic studies department. In 2006, while he was being investigated by the university, Saito resigned to teach at Georgia State University.

Information about his survivors was not immediately available.

In 2017, Mr. Churchill returned to speak at the Boulder campus, and he remained defiant. “Academic freedom in America is dead,” he told the crowd. “I had my identity before I was a professor, I had it while I was a professor, and I have it now.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

John Crowley, an author of sweeping fantastical narratives whose ability to blend such disparate material as American history, dreams of lost utopias, and Alice in Wonderland-tinged occult allowed him to transcend the fantasy genre in novels like Little, Big, which critic Harold Bloom called a “neglected masterpiece,” died Sunday at his home in Conway, Mass. He was 83.

His wife, Laurie Block, said the cause was complications of dysphasia and dementia.

The author of 14 novels and 10 volumes of essays and short fiction, Mr. Crowley explored a considerable range of subjects and genres. His first novel, The Deep (1975), was set on a disc-shaped world and involved a war between two factions, the Reds and the Blacks, loosely based on the 15th-century War of the Roses in England.

Even his most straightforward, realistic novel, Four Freedoms (2009), about the workers at an airplane factory in Oklahoma during World War II, is an alternative history of the homefront, in which Americans of marginalized identities — Black Americans, women, disabled people — find themselves liberated by a common purpose.

His work drew comparisons to C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Thomas Pynchon; reviewers recognized notes of Dante, William Shakespeare, and Lewis Carroll. Writing in the Washington Post in 2000, critic Michael Dirda called Mr. Crowley “arguably the most original and accomplished American fantasy writer ever.”

Despite his wide range, certain themes persisted. He was consistently interested in the way that narrative shapes perception; in the sometimes murky line between fantasy and reality; and in the possibility, as he wrote in his 1987 novel, Aegypt (eventually republished as The Solitudes), that “there is more than one history of the world.”

Little, Big, Mr. Crowley’s fourth novel, was his best known and most widely read. Its plot revolves around the long marriage of Smoky Barnable and Daily Alice Drinkwater, which plays out against a tableau of urban decay, a fascist takeover of the United States, and a rural manse that offers a gateway to a realm of fairies and, possibly, a redemptive future.

Any summary of its plot makes it sound twee; in fact, it is an achingly melancholic and deeply humane meditation on mortality and memory.

Like all Mr. Crowley’s books, Little, Big reads almost like a fable, starting with its first sentence: “On a certain day in June, 19 —, a young man was making his way on foot northward from the great City to a town or place called Edgewood, that he had been told of but had never visited.”

Mr. Crowley continued, “His name was Smoky Barnable, and he was going to Edgewood to get married; the fact that he walked and didn’t ride was one of the conditions placed on his coming there at all.”

Poet James Merrill was a gushing fan of Little, Big and arranged for Mr. Crowley to receive a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, which Merrill directed. Eminent fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin said that it “calls for a redefinition of fantasy.” Bloom, the critic, wrote that it was “literally the most enchanting 20th-century book I know.”

It was named the best novel at the 1982 World Fantasy Awards, the highest prize in the genre.

Mr. Crowley was unafraid of boldly original stories and sprawling epics. The four books in his Aegypt cycle, written over two decades, follow the waking and dream life of a historian named Pierce Moffett, with parallel story lines set during the Renaissance. His 2017 novel Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr centers on a sentient, immortal crow as it follows the course of human history.

“The kind of fiction that always interested me,” Mr. Crowley told the Believer magazine in 2009, “is stuff that somehow manages to be convincingly actual — in the sense that you believe that truths are being told about the world you live in — and are also somehow connected to the imaginary in some way.”

John Michael Crowley was born Dec. 1, 1942, in Presque Isle, Maine, where his father, Joseph, was a doctor with the Army. His mother, Patience (Lyon) Crowley, managed the home and later worked as a librarian.

The family moved frequently because of Joseph Crowley’s work, living in Vermont, eastern Kentucky, and finally Indiana.

Though he at times dreamed of becoming an archaeologist or a set designer, John Crowley studied English at Indiana University. As a freshman, he was a member of the university’s quiz team, which won the 1961 GE College Bowl, an event broadcast on national television.

After graduating in 1965, he moved to New York, where he wrote documentary screenplays.

He moved to western Massachusetts in the mid-1970s, where he began writing fiction. He continued to write documentaries, eventually joining his wife, Block, in forming Straight Ahead Pictures, a nonprofit production company.

His film scripts include The World of Tomorrow (1984), about the 1939 World’s Fair, and, with Block, Fit: Episodes in the History of the Body (1991), about American fitness culture.

Mr. Crowley and Block married in 1984. He is also survived by their children, Hazel and Zander Crowley, and his sister, Jo Busha.

Thanks to the presence on the Yale English faculty of two of his great admirers, poet John Hollander and Bloom, Mr. Crowley became a lecturer there in 1993, retiring in 2018.

Mr. Crowley insisted to his students and readers that fantasy was, at its heart, no different from any other genre, and could achieve greatness if it followed the rules of literature.

“To actually articulate a way of being in a literary world without boundaries between reality and fantasy — it can’t just be a bunch of craziness and surreal carrying on,” he told Locus magazine in 2010.

He added, “Fantasy fiction at bottom, or at its best, is about making true fictions by the rules, in worlds you make up out of whole cloth, or out of your heart.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Alfonso Fanjul Jr., the patriarch of a family that lost one of Cuba’s largest sugar businesses in the revolution of 1959 and fled to the United States, where, thanks to pluck and government price supports, they built an even vaster empire, died Aug. 3 in South Florida. He was 89.

The death was announced by Florida Crystals Corp., part of the privately held family business that Mr. Fanjul presided over. The company provided no further details.

A billionaire who called himself a farmer and lived a luxurious life in Palm Beach, Fla., where he docked a 95-foot yacht, Mr. Fanjul, known as Alfy, was co-chair and co-CEO of the family businesses alongside his younger brother José, known as Pepe.

Their two other brothers and sister also have interests in the empire, which includes the world’s largest cane sugar refiner and the Domino and C&H brands.

Alfy and Pepe Fanjul became major donors to both political parties in the United States, a lesson in realpolitik that they learned after Cuban communists confiscated 90,000 acres of the family’s property as well as its mansions and an art collection.

“One of the reasons we get involved in American politics is because of what happened to us in Cuba,” Alfy Fanjul told Vanity Fair in an article published in 2011.

He gave generously to Democrats and was a co-chair of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign in Florida. Pepe Fanjul has donated more than $2.5 million to the political campaigns of President Donald Trump, a longtime friend whose protectionist tariffs have benefited the Fanjuls.

Clinton and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi attended Mr. Fanjul’s funeral in Palm Beach on Saturday.

During one of the few in-depth interviews he gave to the press, Mr. Fanjul was described by Marie Brenner of Vanity Fair as having “the old-world manners of a Spanish aristocrat, a cool detachment that indicates he is accustomed to being in control.”

For decades, the Fanjuls attracted critics of their labor, environmental, and business practices. Environmentalists accused Florida Crystals of spoiling the Everglades with chemical runoff from their 180,000 acres of cane around Lake Okeechobee. (As evidence that it was a good environmental citizen, the company pointed to a renewable energy plant that it built, as well as to sustainable practices on its farms.)

Even sharper criticism came from free trade advocates, who said the Fanjuls profited from import quotas that ensured American sugar farmers got an inflated price, some three times higher than the rest of the world’s price. The difference was said to cost American consumers billions of dollars a year. The libertarian Cato Institute called Big Sugar in the United States a “candy-coated cartel.”

The Fanjuls, usually speaking through public relations specialists, responded that they had built their business over decades of hard work and determination — in the best tradition of the American dream.

Mr. Fanjul was born in Havana on June 27, 1937, to Alfonso Fanjul Sr. and Lillian (Gómez-Mena) Fanjul. His parents’ marriage united two wealthy Cuban sugar families, whose properties included 10 mills, mansions, and the Manzana de Gómez, a full-block commercial building in central Havana that is now a luxury hotel.

Alfy, who was sent to Fordham University in New York for college, was back home on New Year’s Eve in 1959, watching the fireworks at the Havana Yacht Club, when Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the country ahead of the advancing communists.

Mr. Fanjul later told the story of a meeting in the family office soon after with Fidel Castro’s guerrillas, who opened the discussion by laying their machine guns on a table. The family lost all its assets and left for New York.

Mr. Fanjul, his father, and his maternal grandfather, Pepe Gómez-Mena, set out to rebuild the business in America; they had already sent some money out of Cuba.

With other wealthy exiles, they raised $640,000 (about $7.3 million today) and bought 4,000 acres of land in western Palm Beach County and three rundown Louisiana sugar mills. The mills were shipped to Florida, where the first cane harvest was cut in 1961. Over the years, much of the cane was harvested by Jamaican workers on temporary visas.

Seven years older than his brother Pepe, Alfy became the leader of the Fanjuls’ rise in America. He took over as chairperson and CEO of the companies in 1980, after his father died.

The business expanded in 1984 when it acquired large holdings in Florida and the Dominican Republic from Gulf & Western, a conglomerate that then included Paramount Pictures. According to Forbes, in 2025 the family-controlled businesses were worth about $4 billion.

The family’s holdings also include a 7,000-acre luxury resort in the Dominican Republic, Casa de Campo, which is known for golf courses, a marina, and an equestrian center.

The Fanjul portfolio includes a stake in Central Romana Corp., a large sugar producer in the Dominican Republic. Last year, Trump officials lifted a ban that had been imposed by the Biden administration on imported sugar from Central Romana because of accusations that it used forced labor. Labor rights groups have said the company has not improved those practices.

Besides political donations, Mr. Fanjul gave to educational institutions and charities. He was a trustee of the University of Miami and the Brookings Institution, and a co-founder of Mission International Rescue Charities in the Dominican Republic. The Fanjul family has supported hospitals, schools, and civic groups in Palm Beach County.

Mr. Fanjul’s marriage to Maria Cristina de los Reyes ended in divorce, and in 2007 he married Raysa Herrera, who survives him, along with his brother Pepe; their three siblings, Alexander, Andres, and Lillian Fanjul; two daughters from his first marriage, Crista Ryan and Lillian Fernandez; a stepdaughter, Raissa Enis; five grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

From his waterfront home in Palm Beach, Mr. Fanjul liked to set to sea on his yacht for big-game saltwater fishing. He was twice a member of winning teams in the Sailfish Club of Florida’s Gold Cup tournament, in 1979 and 2007.

Unlike some members of the Cuban exile community, he did not obsess over how to reclaim his family’s lost holdings on the island they fled.

“My father spent the last years of his life trying to figure out how to get to Cuba,” he told Vanity Fair.

But Mr. Fanjul understood that the family’s future was American.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.