BERKELEY, Calif. – A University of Colorado professor who compared the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to a notorious Nazi functionary received a warm and largely uncritical reception here yesterday at a forum billed as a discussion of academic freedom.

None of the four other academics on a panel with the embattled Colorado ethnic studies professor, Ward Churchill, expressed any disagreement with his description of workers at the World Trade Center as “little Eichmanns.” The statement, which refers to a Nazi official who orchestrated the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann, appeared in an article Mr. Churchill wrote soon after the 2001 attacks on America.

In his presentation yesterday to a lunchtime crowd of several hundred, Mr. Churchill stood by his comparison. He said those in the financial industry represent “a technocratic elite at the core of empire, those that Eichmann in his own context symbolized.”

Mr. Churchill sprung into the headlines in January, after his 3-year-old Eichmann comments were reported in connection with a speech he planned at Hamilton College in upstate New York. The speech was canceled after college officials said they had received death threats and could not guarantee the safety of those attending the event.

After Governor Pataki, a Republican of New York, and state officials in Colorado denounced Mr. Churchill, the administration at the University of Colorado began an investigation into whether the tenured professor’s comments were protected by academic freedom. The inquiry, which concluded last week, found it would be inappropriate to punish Mr. Churchill for his statements. However, the investigating panel said allegations that Mr. Churchill plagiarized and falsely claimed to be a Native American should be pursued further.

“They’re shifting ground to accomplish the same result,” Mr. Churchill said yesterday. He denied any plagiarism and described the remaining charges against him as a “pretext” and an “anorexically thin fabric of nonsense.”

The only sustained criticism of Mr. Churchill at yesterday’s discussion came from a 20-year-old Berkeley sophomore, Kerry Eskenas, who was the seventh person to speak during the time allocated for questions from the audience.

“I thought this was a forum,” Ms. Eskenas said, expressing concern over the near unanimity of support for Mr. Churchill. She said she was outraged by his suggestion that the victims at the World Trade Center deserved their fate.

“These people, they were working hard trying to earn money. They weren’t on welfare,” Ms. Eskenas said, drawing tittering and eye-rolling from much of the audience. “There were Native Americans and Muslims, and there were people of all nationalities who were killed in those attacks.”

“I’m Jewish and I get offended when people use the term Nazism so lightly,” she continued. “And I can’t understand – if you were on that plane or if you were in that building at that time visiting, would you have deserved it just because you live in the borders of America?”

Mr. Churchill said she misunderstood his argument.

In an interview, Ms. Eskenas criticized the panelists for endorsing open debate but not presenting a diversity of views. “It was hilarious to me. They’re talking about democracy,” she said. “It’s appalling.”

Most of the other audience members who spoke expressed anti-Zionist or anti-Israel sentiments, with which Mr. Churchill said he concurred.

Mr. Churchill said he never argued that those killed in the September 11 attacks deserved their fate, nor did he contend that the attacks were justified. “I maybe thought it but I did not say it,” he said.

The Colorado professor said that two prominent televangelists, the Reverends Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, suggested after the terrorist strikes that a moral decline in America precipitated the attacks. “Where is the outrage over the Falwell and Robertson comments?” Mr. Churchill asked.

Rev. Falwell apologized for his remarks a day after they were made. Rev. Robertson called the statements “totally inappropriate.” President Bush, through a spokesman, also expressed disagreement with the comments.

Two of the professors who took part in the discussion, Natsu Saito of Georgia State University and Carlos Munoz, Jr. of Berkeley, made clear that they agreed with Mr. Churchill’s analysis, which contends that America has perpetrated crimes on par with, or even more grave than, those committed by the Nazis. Ms. Saito, a law professor who also holds an appointment at Colorado, is Mr. Churchill’s wife.

The two other professors on the panel did not say directly whether they agreed or disagreed with Mr. Churchill. The chairman of Berkeley’s ethnic studies department, Ling-chi Wang, said he was bothered by the response to the Colorado professor’s comments. “American higher education is in some kind of crisis,” Mr. Wang said.

Mr. Wang, who organized the forum, dismissed the suggestion that Mr. Churchill might have gotten his job because he described himself as a Native American. “I don’t think there’s any research universities in America that do that kind of thing,” Mr. Wang said.

A Berkeley dean who participated in the discussion, Ralph Hexter, defended the tenure system and decried what he called a “culture of offense-taking.”

“Homogenization of discourse is far more dangerous than breadth or even extremity,” Mr. Hexter said.

In an interview, Mr. Hexter, who is Berkeley’s dean of arts and sciences, said the event would have been more insightful if Mr. Churchill was challenged more directly. “It would have been nice to have some voices on the other side that were really trenchant,” the dean said.

Mr. Hexter said speakers were supposed to discuss broader issues of academic freedom and not necessarily the substance of Mr. Churchill’s comments.

Asked to assess Colorado’s professor’s argument, Mr. Hexter said, “I think the point he was trying to make is a valid one.” The dean quickly added that he does not agree with the way Mr. Churchill expressed his position nor with the assertion that America’s role in the world is comparable to that of the Nazis.