Boulder – University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, under siege for denigrating some Sept. 11 victims, said today he hasn’t been offered a buyout by the university, and he accused his critics of trying to stifle academic speech.
“I don’t know about a settlement offer. I don’t have one,” Ward Churchill said after a brief outdoor speech on CU’s Boulder campus.
The Denver Post reported Sunday that the university was considering buying out Churchill’s contract to end a firestorm over a 2001 essay he wrote comparing some World Trade Center victims to a Nazi bureaucrat who helped organize the Holocaust.
Gov. Bill Owens called on the university to fire the tenured professor, and some lawmakers have suggested reducing the school’s funding.
The CU chancellor’s office is reviewing Churchill’s speeches and lectures to see whether he should be dismissed for exceeding the boundaries of academic freedom. A decision is expected next week.
School officials have not confirmed that any buyout is under consideration, but Churchill’s lawyer has suggested he might welcome an offer.
“It’s probably an option that makes a lot of sense,” attorney David Lane said Monday. “They want him gone. He wants to end the madness. I think it would be in everybody’s best interest to come up with some compromise.”
In a speech lasting about five minutes, Churchill told a crowd of about 200 that the controversy “is not about me.”
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CHURCHILL CONTROVERSY
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“This is about an agenda to roll back the parameters of political discourse in the academic arena to a preapproved box,” he said.
Ward, a professor of ethnic studies, said the actions of the governor and legislature threaten to gut the state constitution.
