DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- A professor who likened some September 11 victims to a Nazi fired back Wednesday at a committee that recommended he be suspended over plagiarism allegations, saying a flawed panel had produced a report rife with falsehoods and misrepresentations.
In a toughly worded six-page response to the University of Colorado that he released to news media, ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill denied some of the allegations outright and in other cases said the committee had used "the slightest of pretexts to conclude that I engaged in significant research misconduct."
Churchill accused university officials of bias and said they solicited complaints in hopes of finding reasons to fire him.
"The document contains many false statements, misrepresentations of fact, and internal contradictions; it suppresses evidence and employs faulty logic to conclude that I engaged in research misconduct," the response said.
He also said the university violated his rights by publicly announcing the committee's findings, which he said were part of a confidential personnel process.
University spokesman Barrie Hartman disputed that.
"He's the one whose made the case public; he's been making speeches across the country and making his responses like the one today public," Hartman said.
Churchill did not immediately return a phone message.
The investigation began last year after a Churchill essay relating the 2001 terrorist attacks to U.S. abuses abroad triggered a national uproar and calls for his dismissal. The essay referred to some World Trade Center victims as "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who carried out Adolf Hitler's plan to exterminate European Jews during World War II.
The university concluded that Churchill, who is tenured, could not be fired for those comments, but school officials weeks afterward directed a faculty committee to review allegations of research misconduct.
The five-member panel of professors concluded last week that Churchill had repeatedly fabricated research, plagiarized work and veered from basic principles of scholarship.
He could be fired, although four of the five recommended suspension without pay. University officials said they expect a decision by mid-June.
On a plagiarism charge, Churchill said that no one contested his evidence that a publisher was responsible for removing one attribution he had included, and that on other occasions he did cite the original source.
On an allegation that he had misappropriated another professor's work, Churchill said that he was only a copy editor of the book in question, and that the committee received no evidence he had plagiarized.