DENVER -- A faculty committee has recommended that a University of Colorado professor accused of faulty research be suspended for one year rather than fired, according to his attorney.

David Lane said Tuesday he didn't think professor Ward Churchill should be disciplined at all but said at least committee members are moving in the "right direction."

"This will make it more difficult for (CU President) Hank Brown and the regents to fire him," Lane said. The Board of Regents oversees the university.

Math professor Weldon Lodwick, chairman of the Privilege and Tenure Committee, which reviewed Churchill's case, had no comment.

The committee gave its report to Brown on May 8. It was not released to the public.

Brown has 15 business days to consider the case and could decide to fire Churchill, give him a lesser punishment or close the case.

If Brown and the board agree on a punishment less severe than firing, the case would be closed.

If Brown recommends that Churchill be fired against the recommendation of the committee, the committee can issue a second report. If Brown decides again to fire him, he would send his recommendation to the regents. Churchill would have 20 business days to request a private hearing with the board.

A faculty committee and an interim chancellor of the Boulder campus previously recommended that Churchill be fired, saying he misrepresented the effects of federal laws on American Indians, that he wrongly claimed evidence indicated Capt. John Smith exposed Indians to smallpox in the 1600s, and claimed the work of a Canadian environmental group as his own.

Churchill then requested the review by the Privilege and Tenure Committee.

Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, sparked a national controversy with a 2001 essay written in the hours after the terrorist attacks that compared some of the World Trade Center victims to Adolf Eichmann, a key planner of the Holocaust. The essay attracted little attention until January 2005, when it surfaced after he was invited to speak at Hamilton College in upstate New York.

There were also questions about his claims of American Indian ancestry and questions about his original artwork.