The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater will welcome controversial Colorado University-Boulder professor Ward Churchill today. Churchill will be speaking to students as part of Whitewater’s Native Pride week.

Churchill’s coming to Whitewater is being greeted with both eagerness and pessimism as students have begun preparing for his lecture.

According to Whitewater’s director of public information, Brian Mattmiller, College Democrats will be holding a rally supporting free speech and College Republicans will be holding a vigil and rally.

Mattmiller said he did not foresee any security threats because there has already been a good amount of planning.

“[Best case scenario would be] all voices leave feeling heard and that we offered a forum to allow for people to protest and [support],” Mattmiller said. “I have a lot of faith in the campus community.”

Controversy surrounding Churchill began in late January when Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., canceled his planned visit because a faculty member uncovered a controversial essay written by Churchill in 2001, called “Some People Push Back.”

The essay describes the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center as a reflex reaction to American’s past bombings in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, asserting that the victims were “technocrats of society” and calls many of the corporatists who worked there “Little Eichmanns.”

The phrase refers to Adolf Eichmann, the man Adolf Hitler turned to during World War II to implement Hitler’s “Final Solution.”

Hamilton’s initial plan to allow Churchill to speak was soon overturned when more than 100 death threats were sent to the university and Churchill.

According to Vige Barrie, Hamilton director of communications, the issue became more serious after Hamilton’s situation was featured on Fox’s O’Reilly Factor and Whitewater should not underestimate the power of the media.

“It was an obscure article in a vegetarian magazine; a professor here uncovered it and sent an opinion piece to the school newspaper,” Barrie said. “Once it was in the newspaper it was uncovered by the Syracuse paper [that] … wrote a story.”

From there the story was taken to the AP bureau in Syracuse where Fox News picked it up.

However, Barrie said despite the dilemmas, some good has come from the Churchill case.

Since the Hamilton case, Churchill’s validity as a scholar has also come under fire. According to a release, the University of Colorado Board of Regents is currently investigating Churchill’s scholarly credentials.

Additionally, the question of Churchill’s Native American heritage, an allegation of plagiarism and the possibility of buying out his tenure have all surfaced.

Churchill has since resigned from his position as chair of the ethnic studies department.

Colorado Governor Bill Owens has spoken out against Churchill.

“Mr. Churchill’s views are not simply anti-American,” Owens said in a release. “They are at odds with simple decency and antagonistic to the beliefs and conduct of civilized people around the world.”

Barrie said he thinks there is a greater awareness of the meaning of freedom of speech and academic freedom.

“I would hope that dialogue continues,” Barrie said.