World Jewish Congress calls for a ban of public Holocaust Denial

WJC approves resolution calling for ban of public Holocaust denial
5-7-2013

Calling people "Holocaust-obsessed" is the new holocaust denial

A New Slur
Calling people "Holocaust-obsessed" is the new holocaust denial.

Deborah Lipstadt Lecture now available on CHGS Youtube Channel

Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University and author of internationally acclaimed books related to the Holocaust spoke on campus on Wednesday night, October 26 about Holocaust Denial: A New Form of Anti-Semitism and her recent critically acclaimed book The Eichmann Trial.

You can view the lecture by clicking here.

An audio interview with Dr. Lipstadt about Holocaust Denial and the 50th anniversary of the Eichmann Trial on Access Minnesota.

Deborah Lipstadt Lecture Tonight at 7:00p.m. Coffman Theater

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) proudly presents the Bernard and Fern Badzin Lecture featuring Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University and author of internationally acclaimed books related to the Holocaust.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. at the Coffman Theater, Coffman Memorial Union, on the East Bank of the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Lipstadt will speak on Holocaust Denial: A New Form of Anti-Semitism and her recent critically acclaimed book The Eichmann Trial.

The event is free and open to the public; however, reservations are required. To reserve your tickets please click here or call the reservation line at 612-626-2587.

For parking and travel info please click here.

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education at St. Cloud State University is the initiating sponsor of Deborah Lipstadt's visit to Minnesota.

University of Minnesota Sponsors: Institute for Global Studies, Center for the Study of Political Psychology, Program in Health and Human rights, Center for Jewish Studies, Human Rights Program, Department of German, Scandinavian & Dutch, and the Institute for Advanced Study

Community Sponsors: Jewish Community Relations Council, CHAIM Children of Holocaust Survivors Association in Minnesota, St. Paul JCC, and the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta.
Dr. Lipstadt's new book, The Eichmann Trial, published by Schocken/Nextbook Series in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Eichmann trial, has been called by Publisher's Weekly, "a penetrating and authoritative dissection of a landmark case and its after effects." David Gergen of the Kennedy School has described it as "a powerfully written testimony to our ongoing fascination with the proceedings, the resonance of survivor tales, and how both changed our understanding of justice after atrocity."
Her book History On Trial: My Day in Court With a Holocaust Denier (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2005) is the story of her libel trial in London against David Irving who sued her for calling him a Holocaust denier and right wing extremist. The book won the 2006 National Jewish Book Award and was first runner up for the Koret Award. Her book Denying the Holocaust: the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (Free Press/Macmillan, 1993) is the first full length study of those who attempt to deny the Holocaust.
At Emory she created the Institute for Jewish Studies and was its first director from 1998-2008. She directs the website known as Holocaust Denial on Trial (HDOT) which contains answers to frequent claims made by deniers.
Lipstadt was a historical consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and helped design the section of the Museum dedicated to the American Response to the Holocaust. She was appointed by President Clinton to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council on which she served two terms. She was a member of its Executive Committee of the Council and chaired the Educational Committee and Academic Committee of the Holocaust Museum. On July 7, 2011, President Barack Obama appointed Dr. Lipstadt to the Council again.
She has taught at UCLA and Occidental College in Los Angeles. She received her B.A. from City College of New York (1969) and her M.A. (1972) and Ph.D. (1976) from Brandeis University. Professor Lipstadt is frequently called upon by the media to comment on a variety of matters.
Tune in this weekend to Minnesota Access Radio for an interview with Deborah Lipstadt.

"Thoughts on Agamben's Remnants of Auschwitz: A Talk at the University of Minnesota." Now available

"Thoughts on Agamben's Remnants of Auschwitz: A Talk at the University of Minnesota." by Jeffrey Mehlman

On April 13, Jeffrey Mehlman presented "Thoughts on Agamben's Remnants of Auschwitz: A Talk at the University of Minnesota." Prof. Mehlman's appearance was sponsored by University's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies as part of its "Alternative Narratives or Denial?" lectures.
You can read the paper by clicking on the link below.
Mehlman on Agamben 413011.pdf
Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive by Giorgio Agamben.

Alternative Narratives or Denial?

Godard's Wars
Philip Watts, Associate Professor of French, Department Chair, Columbia University

Thoughts on Giorgio Agamben's Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive
Jeffrey Mehlman, Professor of French, Department of Romance Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, Boston University

Wednesday, April 13
4:00 p.m.
Humphrey Forum, Humphrey Center

Godard's Wars

There has been much controversy about French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's relation to the Jews and the Holocaust. Godard was recently accused of anti-Semitism. Philip Watts will return to this recent affair by focusing on Godard's filmic representation of WWII, the Middle East conflict and the Holocaust.
How has the Holocaust figured in Godard's films since his earliest days as a filmmaker of the New Wave? What role has the memory of the Holocaust played in Godard's radical politics? What is the relation between the representation of the Holocaust in his films and his anti-Zionism? Do Godard's films somehow distort the memory of the Holocaust? Watts will tackle these questions by revisiting three Godard's films: "A Married Woman" (1964), "Ici et ailleurs" (1975) and "In Praise of Love "(2001) to examine Godard's problematic construction of the memory of the Second World War and of the Holocaust in particular.

Philip Watts, Associate Professor of French, Department Chair, Columbia University, received his BA at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1982 and his PhD from Columbia University in 1991. His research and teaching focuses on 20th-century French literature and film and the relation between politics and aesthetics.


Thoughts on Giorgio Agamben's Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive
Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has argued in several books that the concentration camp has become the paradigm of our life in modern, liberal democracies. His work has a vast influence on many different fields and disciplines: legal scholarship, social sciences (especially political science), and literary studies in the US, Europe and beyond.

Jeffrey Mehlman will examine the perils engaged and not always avoided when Italy's pre-eminent philosopher, perched between Heidegger and Benjamin, Foucault and Arendt, hurls the pre-eminent discourses of European modernity at the pre-eminent catastrophe of the twentieth century in what never quite coheres as the pre-eminent epistemological encounter of modern times.
Jeffrey Mehlman, Professor of French, Department of Romance Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, Boston University is a literary critic and a historian of ideas. Over a number of years, he has been writing an implicit history of speculative interpretation in France in the form of a series of readings of canonical literary works.
Thoughts on Giorgio Agamben's Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive(Scribd.com)
Co-sponsored by: Department of History, Human Rights Program, Department of German, Scandinavian & Dutch, Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, and the Department of French and Italian.

Reading Group "Alternative Narratives or Denial?" Discussion Notes from 2-15 Now available

The CHGS "Alternative Narratives or Denial?" Reading Discussion Group notes from the book "From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust" by Ester Webman and Meir Litvak are now available on the Reading Discussion Group blog.

The final meeting of the 2011 CHGS Reading Discussion Group will be on Tuesday, March 22. The group will meet at 12pm in room 710 in the Social Sciences Building. We will be discussing chapters 9, 11 and 12 from Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian.

CHGS "Alternative Narratives or Denial?" Reading Discussion Group

In conjunction with the spring lecture "Alternative Narratives or Denial," taking place on campus April 13 and 14, CHGS will facilitate a reading discussion group focusing on seminal works on the topic of Holocaust and genocide denial.

On February 15th, 2011, we will discuss Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust by Esther Webman and Meir Litvak.

Feel free to join us even if you were unable to attend the first meeting of the group.

Reservations required: Please email chgs@umn.edu or phone 612-624-0256.

For more on the discussion visit the CHGS Reading Discussion Group blog.

Conspiracy Theories, Anti-Semitism, and the Delegitimization of Israel

Abraham H. Foxman
National Director of the Anti-Defamation League
January 10, 2011 11:56 AM
The Huffington Post

We are living at a time when conspiracy theories are flourishing. Partly this is a product of the anxieties that suffuse civilization, about the economy, about terrorism, about global warming. Partly it is a product of the Internet, where conspiracies and rumors spread like wildfire and take on an aura of authenticity.

It is likewise not surprising that in this environment, conspiracy theories about Jews are surfacing and spreading in a way that we haven't witnessed for decades. Since at the very core of anti-Semitism as a phenomenon is a conspiracy theory writ large -- Jews are not what they seem to be but are a hidden, poisonous, powerful cabal -- when conspiracy theories are broadly popular they almost inevitably end up focusing on Jews.


We have seen this process at work regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the war in Iraq and, more recently, the WikiLeaks phenomenon.
Some of the conspiracy accusations are so ludicrous -- for example, the charge coming out of Egypt that a shark attack was a Mossad plant -- that it raises the question as to when such things need to be taken seriously and when they should either be ignored or parodied.
The temptation to play down some of the more outrageous accusations is undermined by the experience with two of the most dangerous and enduring ones: the denial of the Holocaust and the charge that the Mossad was behind the 9/11 attacks.
When the first efforts appeared in the 1970s to argue that the Holocaust was a fantasy concocted by Jews for a variety of nefarious purposes, the initial reaction was: who will pay attention to such nonsense? After all, even by then there were scores of books writing in detail about the horror, not to mention the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials and a variety of other documentations. And yet today,Holocaust denial has developed a life of its own, particularly in the Arab and Muslim world, but not limited to it. As absurd as the arguments by the deniers are, there is a market for such absurdities, whether to prove that Jews control all information in the world and can therefore get everyone to believe whatever they want; or to rehabilitate extreme right-wing parties who have been delegitimized by the Holocaust; or to show that the Jewish state has no moral justification. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is hardly alone in spouting these lies. Recently, a leading Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Zahar, shamelessly said that it is a "lie" that the Jews were victims of the Holocaust.
Similarly with regard to the 9/11 theory: When six days after the terrorist attack, Hizbullah television put out a short "news" item that 4,000 Israelis were working at the World Trade Center and none showed up for work that day, no one could have imagined how such a bold-faced fabrication would take off. After all, Israelis and Jews were among the nearly 3,000 who died that day, and Osama Bin Laden had taken credit for the attack, so who could believe that Israel was behind it all, as Hizbullah implied.
And yet, according to a Gallup poll more than a year after the event, millions of people in nine Muslim countries believed that it was Israel, not Al Qaeda, that was behind it all. This notion also continues to surface in Europe and elsewhere.
In the final analysis, while we don't have the luxury to dismiss any of these phony accusations, we need to distinguish those that are most dangerous from the others. None, in my view, is more threatening than the charge that Jews control American policy, particularly regarding the Middle East.
This notion, most prominently expressed by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, is in today's world the one that resonates the most, appears both in extremist and mainstream venues all over the world, and has the greatest impact on attitudes and policies toward the state of Israel and the Jewish people.
Here too, like other such theories, it is far more fantasy than a description of reality. As Edward S. Walker, a longtime State Department hand and former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt and Israel, put it, from the vantage point of decades of work in government on Middle East issues, he could not recognize how policy was actually made from the description of it by Mearsheimer and Walt.
The repeated pounding away of this message -- by the professors, by former President Jimmy Carter, by many left-wing and Muslim anti-Israel advocates in Europe, by Middle Eastern government officials, editorialists and cartoonists -- poses a threat to Jewish communities, to Israel's relations around the world, and to a rational approach to foreign policy decision-making. Much like the mother of all anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, if Jews have so much evil power, then anything one does to defend oneself against it is legitimate.
What to do about this proliferation of anti-Semitic theories? We must expose them for what they are. We must get good people, particularly non-Jews, to stand up. And we must deal rationally and responsibly with those global issues which create the anxiety that acts as a tail wind moving these dangerous fantasies swiftly through society.
Abraham H. Foxman,National Director of the Anti-Defamation League
Opinions expressed in articles posted do not necessarily reflect the view of CHGS but are pertinent to the debate that we at the Center are fostering.

Following the Story

Does Academic Freedom Protect Holocaust Deniers?

Replies from Cary Nelson and Naomi Schaefer Riley
The Chronicle of Higher Education

Please see the full article at The Chronicle for Higher Education for the complete article and other comments.

Cary Nelson Replies

It is not actually tenure that may shield Kaukab Siddique from sanctions for his public statements about the Holocaust; it is academic freedom, a value that survives only if it protects remarks we despise as well as those we endorse. If Siddique were to be punished, he would no doubt immediately claim that his academic freedom had been violated. That would trigger due process and a hearing before a committee of his peers, whether he was a tenured faculty member, a first-year assistant professor, or an adjunct faculty member teaching a single course.


Siddique is certainly trying to "game the system," but his fanaticism may nonetheless lead him where he should not go. The issue in a hearing would be professional fitness, which is a matter to be determined by a faculty review or hearing committee. That involves academic judgments about professional competence and professional boundaries. The American Association of University Professors distinguishes between speech that can be held to standards of professional competence and speech that has no bearing on professional competence. A biologist who asserts that the theory of evolution is a hoax would be in danger of demonstrating himself or herself unfit.
Holocaust denial may have comparable status for someone teaching world literature.
Disagreeing about the meaning of the Holocaust is entirely permissible and, indeed, inevitable. The meaning of a historical event is always open to debate. It cannot be permanently settled. Nor can one assume one has all the facts now. New documents may be discovered indefinitely. But the fundamental truth that the Nazis successfully carried out an organized, even industrialized, program that killed millions of Jews is not in dispute.
Some have claimed further that comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is a factual error comparable to Holocaust denial, but I cannot agree. Comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is a hyperbolic political analogy, an interpretation one may support or dispute, but it does not rise to the level of Holocaust denial. My reactions to Siddique's remarks are a mix of anger and sadness. He has absurdly asserted that there is "not one" document proving the Holocaust occurred. He has looked into the hollow gaze of concentration-camp victims and declared they were starving only because Allied bombing disrupted German food distribution. That suggests Siddique's humanity is distorted and degraded, but it is only his professional fitness that is at issue in reviewing his academic status.
♦
Naomi Schaefer Riley Replies
Lincoln University claims to be the oldest historically black college in the country. Its graduates include Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall. Today Lincoln is employing a professor who has called the Holocaust a myth. Kaukab Siddique's "humanity is distorted and degraded," in the words of Cary Nelson. And yet, unless Siddique is teaching something directly related to the Holocaust, Nelson believes he has a legitimate claim to keeping his position. The school's most prominent graduates and its namesake are probably rolling over in their graves, but in the name of academic freedom, Siddique must stay.
In the process of standing up for the "remarks we despise as well as those we endorse," Nelson has lost sight of the noble principles that undergird this country and its educational institutions. Defending hateful statements is not the only good here. Professors should be not only passers-on of information; they should be models of intellectual and moral integrity. The idea that we should overlook Siddique's "distorted and degraded humanity" and consider only his "professional fitness" is plainly offensive.
I would add that Cary Nelson's attempt to divorce tenure from academic freedom is nothing short of baffling. For decades we have heard that tenure is vital to protecting academic freedom, but now it turns out that the AAUP thinks professors without tenure would be protected just the same. In fact, the way tenure has evolved, it is virtually impossible to get rid of faculty members who have it, even if they are, amazingly, Holocaust deniers.
It is hard to imagine that Lincoln would keep on Siddique or that Northwestern would have continued to put up with Arthur Butz were it not for their tenured status. Maybe there are adjunct or assistant professors with similarly offensive views out there, but I haven't heard about them. Some may think that's a sign that universities are failing to defend remarks they despise, but I think a university free of Holocaust deniers is something to be proud of. Which goes to show how low we have set the bar.

Pennsylvania Board of Education chairman urges Lincoln to reconsider Siddique tenure

Yesterday we posted an article about Academic Freedom and the Holocaust in regards to the statements made by Kaukab Siddique, associate professor of English and journalism at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania. Today's article deals with the community's reaction to the professor and his statements.

Philadelphia Inquirer
By Jeremy Roebuck
Inquirer Staff Writer
October 28, 2010

The head of the Pennsylvania Board of Education this week joined a growing list of protesters urging Lincoln University to reconsider the tenure of a professor who has questioned the Holocaust and urged the overthrow of Israel's government.

Calling professor Kaukab Siddique's recent statements "disgraceful," board Chairman Joseph M. Torsella called on the Chester County school to repudiate the instructor's views and investigate whether campus resources have been used to support his cause.


"They really ought to take pains to determine to what extent the university - and by extension, public resources - have been used to support this," Torsella said Wednesday. "I'm confident that at the end of the investigation, they will appropriately denounce the substance of the views."
Siddique, 67, found himself in the middle of a media maelstrom last week when video of a speech he gave at an anti-Israel rally went viral on the Internet.
Backed by crowds of chanting demonstrators, the associate professor of English urged people to "unite and rise up against this hydra-headed monster which calls itself Zionism."
His statements at the Washington rally, and nonacademic writings that have surfaced in which he questions the significance of the Holocaust, have drawn scrutiny from the likes of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly - both of whom recently featured the professor on their Fox News programs.
Lincoln officials quickly responded that they were not aware of any instance in which the professor had shared those views in the classroom or at a university-sponsored public forum.
Torsella said that response did not go far enough. In a letter sent to Lincoln President Ivory V. Nelson late Tuesday, he urged the university to investigate whether Siddique had used campus resources to support the Baltimore-based version of the group Jamaat al-Muslimeen, which he leads in support of Muslim communities around the world, or its online newsletter, New Trends Magazine. The magazine's website proclaims that the publication is against racism, Zionism, and imperialism, but also declares that it does not endorse violence of any kind.
Recent writings in the magazine that have been attributed to Siddique refer to the Holocaust as a "myth" and a "story," and articles by other authors express support for the regimes of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. That should raise questions in the minds of university administrators, Torsella said.
"A professor expressing personal opinions (even extraordinarily objectionable ones) on current events is one matter," Torsella wrote. "Denying the Holocaust - a tragic historical fact - is another matter entirely."
Siddique has maintained that his critics have taken his views out of context.
"I am against Israel, not against Jews," he said in an interview with The Inquirer last week. He did not respond to calls or e-mails seeking comment Wednesday.

Academic Freedom and Holocaust Denial

Inside Higher Ed
By Dan Berrett

October 26, 2010

A Pennsylvania English professor whose anti-Israel rhetoric and denial of the Holocaust as a historic certainty have ignited controversy is citing academic freedom as his defense.

Kaukab Siddique, associate professor of English and journalism at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, appeared last month at a pro-Palestinian rally in Washington, where he called the state of Israel illegitimate. "I say to the Muslims, 'Dear brothers and sisters, unite and rise up against this hydra-headed monster which calls itself Zionism,' " he said at a rally on Sept. 3. "Each one of us is their target and we must stand united to defeat, to destroy, to dismantle Israel -- if possible by peaceful means," he added.



While many professors engage in anti-Israel rhetoric, Siddique is getting more scrutiny because his September comments prompted critics to unearth past statements that the Holocaust was a "hoax" intended to buttress support for Israel -- a position that the professor didn't dispute in an interview Monday with Inside Higher Ed.
Siddique maintained that his comments should be placed in the framework of academic freedom, as an example of a questing mind asking tough questions. He also warned of dire consequences if universities can be intimidated by politicians and outside commentators. "That's freedom of expression going up the smokestack here," he said.
"I'm not an expert on the Holocaust. If I deny or support it, it doesn't mean anything," he said before invoking the firebombing of German cities during World War II and the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as examples of the moral ambiguity of the war. "We can't just sit back in judgment and say those guys were bad and we were the good guys," he said. "I always try to look at both sides.... That's part of being a professor."
Siddique cited as scholarly evidence the work of notorious Holocaust denier David Irving, whom a British judge described as an anti-Semitic neo-Nazi sympathizer. "Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence," High Court Judge Charles Gray wrote in a ruling shooting down Irving's claim of libel against the historian Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University.
The Siddique case isn't the first one in which a tenured academic has been criticized for questioning whether the Holocaust happened. Northwestern University periodically faces debate over Arthur R. Butz, an associate professor of electrical engineering who is a Holocaust denier, but who has avoided the topic in his classes.
Siddique's embrace of Holocaust denial could be treated differently because of what he teaches. Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors and a staunch defender of the right of professors to take highly unpopular positions, said that academic freedom protects the professor's right to criticize both Israeli policy and the moral legitimacy of the Israeli state. Holocaust denial is another matter entirely, said Nelson.
"Were he an engineering professor speaking off campus, it wouldn't matter," said Nelson in an e-mail. "The issue is whether his views call into question his professional competence. If he teaches modern literature, which includes Holocaust literature from a great many countries, then Holocaust denial could warrant a competency hearing."
Siddique's anti-Israel comments were first seized upon by conservative Christian commentators; links to video of his remarks at the rally appeared on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. Siddique said the firestorm that has erupted has been stoked by allies of Israel, and he says his criticisms of the nation are no more harsh than those espoused by President Carter.
"This is actually a concerted act by the extreme right wing aligned with Israel to destroy someone who spoke out against them," said Siddique.
He said he had received hateful e-mails and phone calls every day since the controversy broke. Some simply bore four-letter words. Others threatened death. "I see this as a tremendous dumbing down of the discourse," he said.
Siddique's statements also prompted a letter from two Pennsylvania state Senators last week who questioned whether the professor had expressed these views in class and what steps were being taken to prevent him from doing so. Both Siddique and the university said he had never broached the subject in class.
Lincoln University sought to distance itself from the professor's comments, calling them "offensive" in a prepared statement, and adding that his "personal views and expressed comments do not represent Lincoln University."
Lincoln is a historically black college that is about 45 miles southwest of Philadelphia. It is one of Pennsylvania's state-affiliated institutions. In the current budget year, Lincoln is receiving more than $13 million in operating money from Pennsylvania, according to the state budget.
The letter from the senators follows a resolution introduced in the state Senate in April that condemns what it calls the resurgence of anti-Semitism on college and university campuses. The resolution calls upon the state's education agencies to "remain vigilant and guarded against acts of anti-Semitism against college and university students," though it recommends no sanctions for those who fail to do so.
State Senator Anthony Williams, who is one of the two who wrote to Lincoln, and who sponsored the resolution, took to the floor of the senate in April to speak on its behalf.
"I come from a community that has felt the sting of oppression and discrimination," said Williams, who is black. "To see that anti-Semitic feelings have evolved in this country on college campuses is not only paradoxical, but it is an oxymoron. It is absolutely polar to the example that universities should be establishing and setting across this great country."