University of Colorado at Boulder professor Ward Churchill has resigned his post as head of the school’s ethnic studies department after an uproar over an article he wrote just after the Sept. 11 attacks. Churchill is a longtime native rights activist and leader of the Colorado chapter of the American Indian Movement. The article in question recalled how US foreign policies in Iraq and its support of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians played a role in the attack in inspiring the hijackers. In addition Churchill questioned whether the victims inside the World Trade Center should be described as “innocent civilians.” Churchill wrote “they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire–the “mighty engine of profit.” Churchill accused the victims of Sept. 11 as being among the Americans who were too busy in their own lives to see the abuses being carried out by the U.S. overseas. This week Churchill said “The overriding question that was being posed at the time was 'why did this happen, why did they hate us so much,' and my premise was when you do this to other people’s families and children, that is going to be a natural response.” The essay received little attention until he was invited to speak at Hamilton College in New York. His speech is still scheduled to take place on Thursday. But it has a generated a firestorm of protest. New York Governor George Pataki criticized the school for inviting Churchill. He said ’’There’s a difference between freedom of speech and inviting a bigoted terrorist supporter.’’