CU's Former President Elizabeth Hoffman and the "New McCarthyism"

By KIRK JOHNSON Published: March 8, 2005

DENVER, March 7 - The president of the University of Colorado, Elizabeth Hoffman, resigned Monday after struggling with a football recruiting scandal and a firestorm over a professor who likened some Sept. 11 victims to Nazis.

But her departure, effective June 30, seems unlikely to quell months of political turmoil in the state over the professor, Ward L. Churchill, who wrote that some people who worked at the World Trade Center were "little Eichmanns," toiling on behalf of American foreign policy just as Adolf Eichmann did on behalf of the Holocaust.

The professor's academic record, including his speeches and books, is being investigated by a campus panel that could recommend his dismissal despite the protections of tenure. His name has become a cue-card for heavy debate on talk radio and television about political balance in academia, the limits of free speech - and perhaps most viscerally on campus - who really runs Colorado's higher education system.

Dr. Hoffman could not escape the storm....

…Officials from the Board of Regents, the university's governing body, said at a news conference in Denver that the decision was Dr. Hoffman's but that she had also lost the support in recent weeks of some board members, including the chairman, Jerry G. Rutledge, who said he had not asked her to stay on.

Mr. Rutledge and Dr. Hoffman said her departure was not a result of political pressure. Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican who has called for Professor Churchill to be fired, said through a spokesman, Dan Hopkins, that he had applied no leverage on the board or on Dr. Hoffman.

But on the campus at Boulder, 30 miles northwest of Denver, some faculty members said the announcement had deepened their fears for the university's traditions of open debate, adding that a speech last week by Dr. Hoffman, in which she warned of a "new McCarthyism" stalking the country, had perhaps heightened pressure for her to resign.

Margaret LeCompte, a professor in the school of education who has spoken in support of Professor Churchill, said she believed that a "concerted attack on the university by the right wing" was a factor in Dr. Hoffman's resignation.

The president's comments about McCarthyism, Professor LeCompte added, "may have been the straw that broke the camel's back for the right wing's desire to have her head."

Many faculty members said in recent interviews that the university was deeply divided over how to respond to the issues raised by the Churchill case. Many denounced the professor's Sept. 11 essay while defending his right to free expression. Others say the controversy has been deepened by personality, especially Professor Churchill's refusal to apologize or back down….

…"I was referring to the deep divides in this country - the red states and blue states," she said. "I'm much more concerned about the fact that whatever you say today, someone is going to take offense at it."

Some faculty members said Dr. Hoffman probably also lost support on campus over her handling of accusations last year that the university's football program had used sex and alcohol to lure top high-school players….
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New McCarthyism. Right-wing Conspiracy. Yeah, right.

The fact is Hoffman was a disgrace as CU's president. Johnson's statement, "Dr. Hoffman could not escape the storm," sounds as if she became caught in forces beyond her control. The poor thing was helpless.

Wrong. Not helpless. Just clueless.

She's no martyr, although Johnson clearly wants to mythologize her as one. She poorly handled university matters. She was incompetent as its president.

Who can forget that proud moment for CU when Hoffman came off as embarrassingly out of touch by insisting that the C-word was a "term of endearment"?

Hoffman was not lynched by a right-wing mob. She hung herself.