Boulder – A year after he was engulfed in controversy for comparing some of the World Trade Center victims to a Nazi, University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill is relaxed but defiant, claiming progress if not outright victory in his battle to keep his job and make his voice heard.
“They took their best shot,” Churchill said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m still here.”
One of his most vocal critics also sees reason for hope, with universities taking a harder look at hiring and tenure practices.
“Ward Churchill is kind of the 9/11 for universities. … The wake-up call,” said David Horowitz, a champion of conservative causes who accuses Colorado and other schools of stacking their faculty with leftists.
Until last year, Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, wasn’t well-known outside academic circles. But in January 2005, an essay he wrote shortly after the 2001 attacks provoked indignant objections at Hamilton College in upstate New York, where he had been invited to speak.
In the essay, Churchill called some of the Trade Center dead “little Eichmanns,” a reference to Adolf Eichmann, an organizer of the Holocaust. Churchill later said he was referring to “technocrats” who participate in what he calls repressive American policies around the world.
Gov. Bill Owens and university administrators were outraged, but the school concluded Churchill couldn’t be fired for the comments because of free-speech protections. The university subsequently launched an investigation into allegations of plagiarism and other research misconduct that could lead to his dismissal.
CU spokeswoman Pauline Hale did not return a call seeking comment.
Churchill said his critics have only toughened his determination to stay on.
“I might have retired shortly of my own volition, but I certainly won’t under these circumstances,” he said. “They’re keeping me around.”
Churchill contends the investigation into his work is at least partly a reaction to his research challenging conventional views of history.
Horowitz credits Churchill with awakening the public to what he calls the “grim” condition of American higher education.
“I don’t think that the public realized that there were professors like this,” he said.
