Jul 5, 2006 11:33 pm US/Mountain
Churchill Appeals Dismissal Recommendation
DENVER (AP) ―
The University of Colorado professor who likened some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi and now faces dismissal for alleged research misconduct on Wednesday filed an appeal, setting in motion process he has said will be costly and lengthy.
A faculty committee concluded last month that ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill committed "serious, repeated, and deliberate research misconduct," and Interim Chancellor Philip DeStefano last week said the university should fire him.
In a letter sent Wednesday, Churchill requested a review through the university's Privilege and Tenure Committee, the university announced. The process includes a confidential hearing, with the committee's findings being forwarded to the school's president.
Churchill has vowed to file a lawsuit if he is fired.
University officials have said Churchill has been relieved of all academic work including teaching and work on committees but will remain a paid faculty member as long as the firing is in the appeals process. Churchill is currently on a leave and is not teaching any classes.
Churchill ignited a furious controversy with a 2001 essay that compared some of the World Trade Center victims to Adolf Eichmann, a key planner of the Holocaust. The essay attracted little attention until January 2005, when it surfaced after he was invited to speak at Hamilton College in upstate New York.
Gov. Bill Owens and others called for Churchill to be fired. University officials concluded his essay was protected by the Constitution but they ordered an investigation into his scholarship.
Among other things, CU investigators said Churchill misrepresented the effects of federal laws on American Indians and that he wrongly claimed evidence indicated Capt. John Smith exposed Indians to smallpox in the 1600s. It also said he committed plagiarism by claiming the work of a Canadian environmental group was his own.
Churchill said the investigation was a politically motivated attempt by university officials to dump him because of outside pressure and no professor's work could stand up to that kind of scrutiny.
(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
