BOULDER, Colo.—The University of Colorado’s governing Board of Regents plans to vote Tuesday on whether to fire Ward Churchill, the professor who likened some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi.
Churchill’s attorney said Thursday the regents have already decided to fire him and that next week’s meeting is “a sham.” A university spokeswoman said Churchill has been treated fairly.
University President Hank Brown recommended the regents fire Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, after faculty committees accused him of plagiarism and other research misconduct.
Churchill denies the allegations and has said he will sue if the regents take any action against him.
Churchill’s essay comparing some World Trade Center victims to Adolf Eichmann, a notorious Nazi who helped carry out the Holocaust, set off a firestorm and triggered calls for his dismissal.
University officials concluded he could not be fired for the essay because it was protected by the First Amendment, but they launched an investigation into some of his other writings that led to the research allegations.
Churchill was accused of, among other things, misrepresenting the effects of federal laws on American Indians, fabricating evidence that the Army deliberately spread smallpox to Mandan Indians in 1837, and claiming the work of a Canadian environmental group as his own.
The regents scheduled the vote for late in the afternoon after a daylong, closed session to hear arguments and to debate.
Churchill’s attorney, David Lane, said he asked for the entire session to be open but was turned down.
“We want this charade trotted out for full public view,” he said. “It’s got the trappings of fairness, but it’s all a sham.”
CU spokeswoman Michele McKinney said university policy requires the session to be closed.
She defended the disciplinary process.
“It’s not a sham because there have been more than 25 tenured faculty who have reviewed the allegations of research misconduct by Churchill,” she said.
“Churchill has had a fair opportunity to present his own case, with his own witnesses, through counsel and through evidence,” she said.
