DENVER (AP) - University of Colorado Boulder President Mark Kennedy has received criticism from its Native American and Indigenous Studies Center after using the phrase "trail of tears" colloquially in a faculty meeting last week.

The Denver Post reported that Kennedy was quoted in a write-up of the meeting published Thursday where he was talking about the difficulty and importance of making online learning a success. The Trail of Tears refers to when about 60,000 Native American people were forced from their land between 1830 and 1850.

Kennedy apologized for what he said was a "poor choice of words" and the quote was deleted from the university's account of the meeting.

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