By: The University of Colorado has received some 20,000 e-mails since the controversy erupted over professor Ward Churchill's essay likening some of the World Trade Center victims to Nazi Adolf Eichmann.
About 55 people from outside the university have sent e-mails to CU during the past week in response to a faculty committee's findings that the professor plagiarized and embellished facts to bolster his arguments.
Thirty-five of those e-mails called on CU to fire Churchill. Ten more criticized the professor but did not directly ask the university to dismiss him, according to the correspondence obtained Tuesday by the Daily Camera newspaper through an open-records request.
The remaining e-mails raised concerns about the school's investigation, with some saying it's a threat to academic freedom and others blaming it on a right-wing political attack.
The CU report said Churchill repeatedly fabricated his research, plagiarized others' work and strayed from the basic scholarship. Four of the five members of the investigative panel said Churchill should be suspended without pay, though one said he should be fired.
University officials said they expect to decide his fate by June 8. Churchill's attorney has vowed to sue the school if he is fired.
The e-mails from the public will not influence CU's decision on how to punish the professor, spokesman Barrie Hartman said.
Churchill said he has seen more support from people since the report was released. He has denied wrongdoing and called the investigation a "travesty."
"Additionally, there's a growing disgust with the sham perpetrated by the committee as people finish wading through its report," he wrote in an e-mail to the Daily Camera on Tuesday.
Churchill's essay, written in the hours after the 2001 attacks, attracted national criticism in January 2005. The CU panel said the essay played no role in their investigation of his work, though they wondered about the circumstances that prompted the academic misconduct allegation.
One e-mail sender urged CU to "get rid of that traitorous scum loser Churchill" and added: "I only wish I would one day have the opportunity to spit in his face."
Rexford Louth of Colorado Springs wrote to CU on May 17 and said two of his children have attended CU. He said he won't send his other two to the school unless the university fires Churchill.
"His prior statements are unacceptable, and the results of this study prove that he is not the kind of man you need to have teaching our young people in a classroom setting," Louth wrote.
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