University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, a figure of controversy in recent weeks because of comments he made about the Sept. 11 attacks, has had his April 1 speech at the University canceled.
Churchill was scheduled to give the keynote lunch address at a symposium titled “Homeland ‘In’Security: Race, Immigration and Labor in Post-9/11 North America,” a joint presentation of the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics and the Center on Diversity
and Community.
Directors of the two programs said they “took the initiative” to terminate plans for Churchill and his colleague, Natsu Taylor Saito, to speak at the symposium because they wanted the event to stay on topic.
“His topic was not the main focus of the conference,” Morse Center Director Margaret Hallock said. “It wasn’t part of the original intent.”
“The joint presentation — which was not centrally related to the conference — would overshadow two days’ worth of other presentations,” CoDaC Associate Director John Shuford said in an e-mail. He also cited concerns about the security and safety of all participants.
“We knew that it would significantly change the nature of the conference,” Hallock said.
Hallock added that the decision was made within the last couple weeks. One of Churchill’s papers from 2001 became a focal point of national scrutiny after the professor had a speech canceled at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. in early February. The essay, entitled “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” offers Churchill’s analysis of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Churchill referenced Malcolm X’s statement on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the controversial essay’s opening paragraphs.
“On the morning of September 11, 2001, a few more chickens — along with some half-million dead Iraqi children — came home to roost in a big way at the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center,” the essay reads.
Churchill referred to some victims working at the World Trade Center as “technocrats” and called them “little Eichmanns,” a reference to Nazi Adolf Eichmann.
The essay didn’t receive much attention until Churchill was scheduled to speak at Hamilton College on
Feb. 3. The New York Times reported Saturday that Churchill received more than 100 death threats prior to the event, which the college canceled for security reasons.
Prior to the cancellation, Churchill responded to the controversy in a Jan. 31 press release.
“I am not a ‘defender’ of the September 11 attacks but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned,” Churchill said in the statement. “I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as ‘Nazis.’ What I said was that the ‘technocrats of empire’ working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of ‘little Eichmanns.’ Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of
the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide.”
Churchill resigned from his position as University of Colorado’s chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies and has been placed under review by the institution. Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican,
denounced Churchill and called for his resignation in a letter given
to the University of Colorado’s College Republicans, according to his Web site.
“We are not compelled to accept his pro-terrorist views at state taxpayer subsidy nor under the banner of the University of Colorado,” Owens said in the letter. “(Churchill’s views) are at odds with simple decency and antagonistic to the beliefs and conduct of civilized people around the world.”
However, members of the University of Colorado College Democrats defended Churchill in a Feb. 7 letter posted on the group’s Web site.
According to the letter, attacks on Churchill are “attacks on the Academic Freedom of the University.”
“The content of his statements notwithstanding, his position with the University should not be in jeopardy for exercising his freedom of speech,” the students said in the letter. “The actions of those who have sought Ward Churchill’s dismissal from the university are misguided and unjust.”

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