University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who became a national figure after likening 9/11 victims to Nazis, has been slapped with a damning 125-page investigative report, commissioned by the university in response to allegations of academic misconduct.

* University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who became a national figure after likening 9/11 victims to Nazis, has been slapped with a damning 125-page investigative report, commissioned by the university in response to allegations of academic misconduct. One of the five investigators recommended that Churchill be fired, while the four others called for a lengthy suspension. Churchill has alleged that he is the victim of a witch hunt--that the investigation is essentially a pretext for administrators to sack him for his controversial statements. The report, however, does not focus on Churchill's public pontifications. Rather, it documents his record of plagiarism, fabrication, and other forms of academic dishonesty. It notes in Churchill's work a "pattern of failure to understand the difference between scholarship and polemic." It also highlights a "consistent research stratagem to cloak extreme, unsupportable, propaganda-like claims of fact that support Professor Churchill's legal and political claims with the aura of authentic scholarly research." Professors are within their rights to be controversial, but not fraudulent. And Churchill is a fraud.