BOULDER, Colo. -- The University of Colorado announced Monday that it will dismiss controversial professor Ward Churchill. "Today, I issued to Professor Churchill a notice of intent to dismiss him from his faculty position at the University of Colorado Boulder," CU Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano said Monday afternoon.
Churchill has 10 days to make a request to have the university president or chancellor forward the recommendation to the faculty senate Committee on Privilege and Tenure. A special panel will then conduct hearings on the matter and make a recommendation to the president on whether grounds for dismissal are supported. Another committee found Churchill guilty of research misconduct and another panel recommended that he be fired because of "repeated and deliberate" infractions of scholarship rules.
Churchill, who ignited a firestorm by calling some of the World Trade Center victims "little Eichmanns" in an essay he wrote after Sept. 11, 2001, has vowed to sue the school if he was fired. The tenured professor of ethnic studies has repeatedly denied all accusations of misconduct. He told the Associate Press in mid-June, "The basic situation here is that there was a call by high officials in the state, notably the governor but hardly restricted to the governor, for my termination clear back last February, whether or not it was legal. They were willing to take the heat and go to court if necessary to stand behind an illegitimate investigation."
When his essay was brought to light in January 2005, Gov. Bill Owens, state lawmakers and relatives of Sept. 11 victims in New York immediately denounced it. University officials concluded Churchill could not be fired for the essay, but in March 2005 they launched an investigation into allegations of plagiarism and other research misconduct. Last month, an investigative subcommittee concluded that Churchill repeatedly fabricated his research, plagiarized others' work and strayed from the "bedrock principles of scholarship."
Churchill called the investigation "a kangaroo court" designed to reach the conclusion that he should be fired. |