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Churchill says Brown wants him fired

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

DENVER – The University of Colorado professor who likened some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi said Monday the school’s president has recommended he be fired over allegations of research misconduct.Ward Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, said he wasn’t surprised by the recommendation by CU President Hank Brown, first reported in Monday’s editions of the Camera newspaper in Boulder.A university spokeswoman didn’t immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.Churchill, who has denied the allegations, said he would file suit in state or federal court if the university’s governing Board of Regents follow through on the recommendation and dismiss him.Churchill touched off a firestorm with an essay likening some victims in the World Trade Center to Adolf Eichmann, who helped carry out the Holocaust.University officials concluded he could not be fired for his comments because they were protected by the First Amendment, but they launched an investigation into allegations that he fabricated or falsified his research and plagiarized the work of others.The interim chancellor of the university’s Boulder campus and a faculty committee have also recommended Churchill be fired. Another committee recommended a one-year suspension without pay and a demotion.Churchill told The Associated Press Monday the university process was biased against him and that he believes he will get a fairer hearing in the courts.”I’ve got more faith in almost anything (than in the university process),” he said. “A random group of homeless people under a bridge would be far more intellectually sound and principled than anything I’ve encountered at the university so far.”Churchill said the faculty committee that conducted the primary investigation of his work was loaded against him, and that the university ignored his suggestions for specific scholars with a background in ethnic studies to be members of the panel.Churchill said he and others plan to file academic charges with the university alleging that the faculty committee committed research misconduct. He said he also plans to publish as many as three books defending his research.


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