Colorado U. Leader Is Morally Blind

Re “University of Colorado Chief Resigns,” March 8: University of Colorado professor Ward L. Churchill compared the Sept. 11 victims to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal who masterminded the Holocaust, history’s most horrible crime. Undoubtedly his vicious and insensitive remarks caused pain to the relatives of the victims of 9/11.

In announcing her resignation, Elizabeth Hoffman, the university president, claimed that Churchill was the victim of a new McCarthyism in which people with unpopular views are targeted. Hoffman’s failure -- in her apparent attempt to evince an “enlightened tolerance” -- to recognize such vile remarks as more than just an unpopular viewpoint and to appreciate that the resulting outrage is not a form of “McCarthyism” exposes a moral blindness on her part.

John Haggerty

Woodland Hills