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Churchill vows to contest misconduct charges

Professor: Accusers are ones guilty of gross misconduct

John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 28, 2006 at midnight

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University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill issued a stinging rebuttal Tuesday to an official recommendation that he be fired, comparing the campus disciplinary process to the Scopes Monkey Trial and charging that his accusers are guilty of the same misconduct for which he stands charged.

Churchill vowed that the fight over his job has just begun and predicted that interim CU-Boulder Chancellor Phil DiStefano's call for his ouster "sets the stage for the taxpayers to waste another quarter-million dollars" while his case goes to the next level of appeal.

On Monday, DiStefano recommended that Churchill be fired for a pattern of research misconduct that includes plagiarism.

However, DiStefano insisted that his decision had nothing to do with the controversy that Churchill stirred in an essay on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

In that essay, Churchill compared some of the victims in the World Trade Center attack with Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

In a point-by-point critique of the decision by DiStefano, Churchill alleged that the interim chancellor:

• Joined Gov. Bill Owens and state lawmakers in denouncing Churchill's work on "explicitly ideological grounds."

• Violated the laws of the Regents of Colorado by creating and leading an unprecedented special committee "devoted to investigating the political content of my scholarship."

• Actively solicited allegations of research misconduct to create the impression in the media that other scholars were independently and voluntarily leveling the charges.

• Routinely broke confidentiality rules concerning the case by issuing press releases "designed to sustain the media 'feeding frenzy.' "

• Refused Churchill's request that the panel be composed of academics from outside the university and instead drew three of the five members from the campus, thus ensuring a biased panel.