Professor compares 9/11 victims to Nazis

Citing death threats, an upstate New York college on Tuesday canceled a panel discussion featuring a professor who compared the World Trade Center victims to Nazis.

Hamilton College spokesman Michael DeBraggio said multiple death threats were made against both college officials and guest speaker Ward Churchill, who resigned Monday as chairman of the ethnic studies department at the University of Colorado.

In an essay written in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Churchill said the World Trade Center victims were "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who organized Nazi plans to exterminate Europe's Jews. Churchill also spoke of the "gallant sacrifices" of the "combat teams" that struck America.

The essay attracted little attention until Churchill was invited to speak Thursday at Hamilton College, about 40 miles east of Syracuse, N.Y. Hundreds of relatives of Sept. 11 victims have protested the appearance.

Administrators at first moved the scheduled appearance to a building that can seat 2,000, instead of the originally planned 300.

Hamilton College President Joan Hinde Stewart had said the college was committed to free speech, "however repugnant one might find Mr. Churchill's remarks."

On Tuesday, however, Stewart sent an e-mail to students, faculty and staff saying the college had a "higher responsibility ... and that is the safety and security" of the campus community. She said the threats were "credible" and had been turned over to police.

Despite resigning as department chair, Churchill will retain his teaching job.

Colorado Gov. Bill Owens called on Churchill to resign his faculty position too, saying taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize his "outrageous and insupportable" views.

"If anyone could possibly be compared to the evildoers of Nazi Germany, it is the terrorists of the 21st century who have an equally repugnant disregard for human life," Owens said in a letter to the university's College Republicans released Tuesday.

Churchill did not immediately return telephone messages and e-mails from The Associated Press.

In an interview Monday with Denver station KCNC-TV, Churchill said he is not an advocate of violence, but that the attacks were a response to the way the United States treats people abroad.

"The overriding question that was being posed at the time was `why did this happen, why did they hate us so much,' and my premise was when you do this to other people's families and children, that is going to be a natural response," he said.