Ward Churchill had fiery words for his critics Thursday and said "there is no line" that political speech can't cross in the rules of academic freedom.

University of Colorado officials are conducting a review of the controversial professor's body of work to determine if he should be fired. The results of the investigation are expected as soon as next week.

"They're looking for a line, but it doesn't exist," Churchill said in a brief speech outside the University Memorial Center before about 200 students. "However, lines are clearly being crossed by the government of this state."

In his second public talk at CU since an essay he authored ignited a national debate, Churchill told students that calls for his dismissal are part of a national "agenda to roll back the parameters of academic discourse ... into a pre-approved box" created by conservatives.

When people can't criticize the government "because it offends the offenders," he said, "there is no possibility for political analysis."

Some Colorado legislators and Gov. Bill Owens have called for Churchill's dismissal and an examination of the university tenure system since Churchill's essay on the September 2001 terrorist attacks first sparked protests in January.

The treatise compared some victims working in the World Trade Center to notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann for their role in foreign policies that Churchill said led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.

CU's rules on academic freedom call for the "freedom to inquire, discover, publish and teach truth as the faculty member sees it." They also say faculty members have the responsibility to "act on and off the campus with integrity and in accordance with the highest standards of their profession," and that they "should be accurate at all times."

President Elizabeth Hoffman on Thursday, addressing the Boulder Faculty Assembly, said she strongly supports academic freedom but that it's not absolute.

"Academic freedom and tenure come with a very heavy burden of responsibility," she said. "No one is insulated from being investigated because of misconduct."

KHOW radio talk-show hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman escalated the monthlong controversy over Churchill this week when they published a full-page advertisement in the Daily Camera, quoting several of his speeches.

The radio personalities demanded Churchill's firing, saying he has repeatedly advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.

Asked about the ad after his talk Thursday, Churchill said Caplis and Silverman took his statements "completely out of context." He accused them of misrepresenting him as advocating violence and said if readers acted on the statements in the ad, it would be the radio-show hosts' fault — not his.

"I wish they would stop their terrorist speech," he said.

He also said he has not been offered an early-retirement buyout from the university, an option his attorney has said he would consider.

In an e-mailed response to the Camera later Thursday, Churchill brushed off allegations of academic fraud made by scholars John LaVelle at the University of New Mexico and Thomas Brown at Lamar University in Texas.

"I've no interest at all in responding to allegations raised by two utter nonentities, one of them with a personal animus, in a 'journalistic' context that has consistently managed to avoid mentioning the several score scholars of the stature of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, David Stannard, Haunani-Kay Trask and Israel Charny who have enthusiastically endorsed the quality of my work," he wrote.

Chomsky said in a Feb. 3 e-mail that he would not comment on Churchill's views but that the CU professor has "every right to write and speak what he believes" and that "punitive actions are an outrage."

Churchill's talk Thursday at the Dalton Trumbo Fountain was the focal point of a free-speech rally organized by a group of students. Two other professors spoke, including sociology professor Thomas Mayer, who praised Churchill for continually "challenging the imperialist assumptions we make about the world."

Camera Staff Writer Brittany Anas contributed to this report.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Elizabeth Mattern Clark at (303) 473-1351 or clarke@dailycamera.com.