Syracuse, N.Y. ? Citing death threats, an upstate New York college on Tuesday canceled a panel discussion featuring a professor who compared the World Trade Center victims to Nazis.

Hamilton College spokesman Michael DeBraggio said multiple death threats were made against both college officials and guest speaker Ward Churchill, who resigned Monday as chairman of the ethnic studies department at the University of Colorado.

In an essay written in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Churchill said the World Trade Center victims were “little Eichmanns,” a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who organized Nazi plans to exterminate Europe’s Jews. Churchill also spoke of the “gallant sacrifices” of the “combat teams” that struck America.

The essay attracted little attention until Churchill was invited to speak Thursday at Hamilton College, about 40 miles east of Syracuse, N.Y. Hundreds of relatives of Sept. 11 victims have protested the appearance.

Churchill issued a statement Tuesday saying he did not defend the Sept. 11 attacks but simply pointed out “that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned.”

“I have never said that people ‘should’ engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy,” he said.

Administrators at first moved the scheduled appearance to a building that can seat 2,000, instead of the originally planned 300.

Hamilton College President Joan Hinde Stewart had said the college was committed to free speech, “however repugnant one might find Mr. Churchill’s remarks.”

On Tuesday, however, Stewart sent an e-mail to students, faculty and staff saying the college had a “higher responsibility … and that is the safety and security” of the campus community. She said the threats were “credible” and had been turned over to police.

University of Colorado history professor Eric Love, left, makes a point while debating with Isaiah Lechowit, right, president of the College Republicans, outside the Memorial University Center at the campus. Protesters both in support of and against Professor Ward Churchill gathered Tuesday at the university.

Despite resigning as department chair, Churchill will retain his teaching job.

Colorado Gov. Bill Owens has called on Churchill to resign his faculty position, saying taxpayers shouldn’t have to subsidize his “outrageous and insupportable” views.

“If anyone could possibly be compared to the evildoers of Nazi Germany, it is the terrorists of the 21st century who have an equally repugnant disregard for human life,” Owens said in a letter to the university’s College Republicans released Tuesday.

In Boulder, Churchill’s colleagues came to his defense. The Boulder Faculty Assembly issued a statement calling Churchill’s comments “controversial, offensive and odious,” but defended his right to express them.

“The lifeblood of any strong university is its diversity of ideas which allows for the environment necessary to educate and train young learners and advance the boundaries of knowledge,” said the statement released by university spokesman Peter Caughey.