Offensive remarks

Clinton, N.Y.

A New York college this week canceled a visit from a Colorado professor who compared the World Trade Center victims to Nazis. Hamilton College’s president had insisted that the professor, Ward Churchill, had the right to speak, despite his “repugnant” views, but turned him away after receiving “credible threats of violence.” Churchill wrote an essay after 9/11 saying the victims worked for a machine as deadly as Hitler’s death camps—“the mighty engine of profit.” The essay received little notice until Churchill was invited to Hamilton, where students erupted in protest. The furor forced Churchill to quit his University of Colorado administrative post, though he kept his teaching job.