The Chronicle Newsblog:
Chairman Says Churchill Affair Has Hurt Colorado Department
The chairman of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s ethnic-studies department, where Ward Churchill is a professor, has sent a letter that, among other things, asks the university to “affirm its support” for the department, which he says has received many “racist and extremely acrimonious” e-mail messages and telephone calls since Mr. Churchill became embroiled in controversy last year.
“The university can no longer continue to remain silent in this regard, unless it wants to send a message to other academic departments on campus that, when they are at risk and under attack by a vocal segment of the bureaucratic and political establishment, they, too, are on their own,” wrote the department chairman, Albert Ramirez, in a three-and-a-half-page letter dated last Friday.
The letter came 10 days after a university committee found that Mr. Churchill committed research misconduct (The Chronicle, May 17), and two days after Mr. Churchill responded to the panel’s findings by acccusing it of dredging up lies about his work in order to justify his dismissal (The Chronicle, May 24). Mr. Churchill initially drew fire for comments about the September 11 terrorist attacks that likened some victims to a Nazi bureaucrat.
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