Controversial professor accused of plagiarism

A University of Colorado faculty investigation of a professor who likened some 9/11 victims to a Nazi war criminal found cases of falsification, fabrication and plagiarism in his academic research, a school spokesman said Tuesday. One member of the five-person investigative committee recommended that ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill be fired; four recommended that he be suspended. Churchill repeatedly has denied wrongdoing. According to the Web-based Inside Higher Education, Colorado administrators will review the faculty panel’s reports and any response from Churchill before making a final decision. University officials earlier determined that he could not be fired for his comments about the terrorist attacks, which prompted concerns about the timing and motives for the investigation. But Anne Neal of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a non-profit group that has been critical of the academic world, says Churchill is a symbol of a “much larger problem in American higher education: the replacement of impartial teaching with politicized preaching.”