Students Disrupt Meeting While Regents Try to Discuss Professor

A student protest turned into a brawl here Thursday, shutting down a meeting of the University of Colorado board of regents after it agreed to investigate a professor who compared the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to Nazis.

Several dozen supporters of professor Ward L. Churchill repeatedly shouted down regents as they discussed whether the instructor had crossed the line of academic freedom.

Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano said he and two other professors would spend the next 30 days reviewing Churchill’s writing and listening to tapes of his lectures to determine whether there were grounds for his dismissal. Other regents issued an apology to the nation for his comments, which they called disgraceful.

Churchill, an activist recently acquitted for blocking last year’s Columbus Day parade in Denver, teaches on the university’s Boulder campus. Thursday’s regents meeting was held at an auditorium in Aurora.

School officials struggled to be heard as students in the room screamed “Fascist regents!” and “Let the public speak!” One protester got into a shoving match, then a full-blown fight with police. Chaos erupted as students dove over chairs to taunt officers while regents were shuffled out a side door for their own safety.

“What country am I living in?” shrieked one demonstrator.

Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, later decried the scene as “mob rule” and repeated his calls for Churchill’s dismissal. Meanwhile, the state Senate passed a resolution Thursday denouncing the professor’s remarks as “evil and inflammatory.”

The furor over remarks by Churchill, 57, began last week. He was asked to speak at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., about Native American prison issues. But professors there discovered a paper he wrote after the Sept. 11 attacks titled “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.”

Churchill called those working in the World Trade Center “technocrats of empire” and “little Eichmanns,” comparing them to Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi mastermind of the Holocaust. He said the workers were “civilians of a sort.”

“But innocent? Gimme a break,” he wrote.

Churchill said the “combat teams” that killed nearly 3,000 people “manifested the courage of their convictions.” In a taped speech, he said that if the Pentagon wasn’t a legitimate target, “I don’t know what is.”

Outrage ensued, and Monday Churchill stepped down as chairman of the department of ethnic studies, though he retains his $94,200-a-year teaching job. Hamilton College canceled his speech, saying it had received so many threats that it couldn’t ensure his or the students’ safety.

Churchill, who specializes in Native American issues, has said his writings were taken out of context, and that he meant that if America behaved unjustly it could not expect to be spared from attack.

Colorado University President Betsy Hoffman, unable to speak at the meeting because of the noise, later said she was offended by Churchill’s words but worried about squelching his freedom of speech.

“Let’s not do something that we will be judged ill for later,” she said. “Firing a tenured faculty member requires serious and careful thought.”

Some Native American groups have also called for Churchill’s ouster, not because of what he said, but for claiming to be an Indian. Churchill describes himself as a member of the Keetowah Band of Cherokee Indians based in Tahlequah, Okla.

“The band has no association with Churchill in any capacity whatsoever,” said George Wickliffe, tribal chief. “It consider his comments offensive and does not in any way reflect the true compassion for the victims of the World Trade Center and their families that is felt by the United Keetowah band.”

The group said it had no record of Churchill in its files.

Churchill did not return calls seeking comment, though he told reporters that he was three-sixteenths Cherokee.

Emma Perez, associate chairwoman of the the ethnic studies department, sent an e-mail this week calling Churchill “one of a handful of Native Americans who are full professors throughout the nation.”

Leaders of the American Indian Movement based in Minnesota said they had told Colorado University officials that Churchill was not an Indian, but were ignored.

“He has been building his career for years by masquerading as an Indian behind his dark glasses and beaded hat,” said Vernon Bellecourt of AIM. “He would not have been published and promoted if CU didn’t think he was an Indian.”

DiStefano said that if Churchill misrepresented himself, it could be grounds for sanction.

Among those at odds with Churchill is David Bradley, an Indian sculptor and painter in Santa Fe, N.M. Bradley was the leading supporter of legislation in the early 1990s requiring anyone selling artwork as an Indian to be Native American.

“I spearheaded a movement to support this law which stops pseudo-Indians from selling their artwork,” he said. “Then Churchill wrote this article attacking me for my stance, calling me greedy. I had never met him.”

Churchill is also a painter, and Bradley believes he opposed the law because it would affect his ability to market his art. “I have been trying to figure out his rage for years,” Bradley said.

At least one person at the regents’ meeting wanted Churchill ousted.

“I think he should be fired and the department of ethnic studies terminated,” said Steven Crow, 64, a engineer turned architecture student. “My kids don’t want to go to CU now because of its reputation. Churchill can call anyone whatever he wants, but not on my dollar.”