Educator’s 9/11 remark sparks furor

DENVER – A University of Colorado professor who provoked a furor when he compared victims of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks to Nazis resigned as a department chairman Monday but will retain his teaching job, the university said.

In an essay written after the Sept. 11 attacks, Ward Churchill said the World Trade Center victims were “little Eichmanns,” a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who organized Nazi plans to exterminate Europe’s Jews. Churchill also spoke of the “gallant sacrifices” of the “combat teams” that struck America.

The essay attracted little attention until Churchill was invited recently to speak at Hamilton College, about 40 miles east of Syracuse, N.Y. Hundreds of relatives of Sept. 11 victims have protested the appearance. Hamilton College President Joan Hinde has said that “however repugnant one might find Mr. Churchill’s remarks,” the college was committed to his right of free speech and would not rescind its invitation.

Administrators have moved Churchill’s appearance to a building that can seat 2,000, instead of the originally planned 300.

Churchill resigned as chairman of Colorado’s Ethnic Studies Department, telling university officials in a letter that “the present political climate has rendered me a liability in terms of representing either my department, the college, or the university.”

University officials welcomed the move.