Ward Churchill’s lawyer said today that a faculty committee at the University of Colorado had recommended that the ethnic-studies professor on the Boulder campus be suspended for a year — not fired. The Privilege and Tenure Committee sent a report on May 8 to Hank Brown, the university’s president, detailing its recommendations for how the university should handle Mr. Churchill. Although the report was not released to the public, the lawyer, David Lane, said he had received a copy.

According to today’s Denver Post, Mr. Brown has 15 days to decide whether to follow the committee’s advice, fire Mr. Churchill, discipline him in some other way, or close the case.

Mr. Churchill became the object of national outrage and attention in 2005, when reporters noticed an essay in which the professor compared victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks to a top Nazi official. Since then, his academic work has come under fire. A year ago, an investigative panel composed of five professors from Colorado and other universities found that Mr. Churchill had committed academic misconduct. The Boulder campus’s interim chancellor then began efforts to fire him, a process that led the case to be referred to the Committee on Privilege and Tenure. —John Gravois