What?! You want to hold people accountable?
[sarcarm] How dare you?
Don't you know that the media and academia are beyond reproach?
[/sarcasm]
Academic freedom sounds nice. You can do damned near anything, no matter how outrageous, and then scream "Academic freedom!" whenever anyone calls you on it. I wish there were such a thing as "Nursing freedom" for my wife and "Contractor freedom" for me. If we did something that caused embarassment and economic impact to our employers, we'd find ourselves unemployed.
As for Colorado's latest embarassment (Ward Churchill), it'll be interesting to see if Academic freedom covers allegations of lying about his ancestry (for a position that requires Native American ancestry) and charges of academic fraud.