The Ohio State Lantern’s explanation of why it let Smith have his “public say” despite the fact that it condemned Smith and CODOH as “racist, pure and simple,” was more disturbing than the decision itself. The Lantern argued that it was “repulsive to think that the quality, or total lack thereof, of any idea or opinion has any bearing on whether it should be heard.”74 It is breathtaking that students at a major university could declare repulsive the making of a decision based on the “quality” of ideas. One assumes that their entire education is geared toward the exploration of ideas with a certain lasting quality. This kind of reasoning essentially contravenes all that an institution of higher learning is supposed to profess.
The editors of Washington University’s Student Life demonstrated a similar disturbing inconsistency. They dismissed Smith’s claim to be engaged in a quest for the truth, describing him as someone who “cloaks hate in the garb of intellectual detachment.” They believed that Smith was posing as a “truth seeker crushed by a conspiratorial society.”75 Given their evaluation of Smith, his tactics, and the way conspiracy theorists have captured the imagination of much of American society, what followed was particularly disconcerting. Notwithstanding all their misgivings, the editors decided that they must give “Mr. Smith the benefit of the doubt if we mean to preserve our own rights.” In an assertion typical of the confused reasoning that student papers nationwide displayed on this issue, the Student Life editors acknowledged that they could have suppressed Smith’s views “if we attributed motives to him that contradict his statements. But we cannot in good conscience tell Mr. Smith that we ‘know’ him and his true intentions.” Was not the fact that he was denying a historical fact about whose existence there is no debate among any reputable scholars indicative of something significant? The editorial board had concluded that “if we refused Mr. Smith’s advertisement, we could censor anyone based on ulterior motives that we perceive them to harbor.”76 At what point would the board feel it was appropriate to make a decision based on the objective merits of the information contained in the ad?
In this instance what the paper considered to be ulterior motives is what scholars call coming to a conclusion based on a wide variety of facts, including historical data. In giving Smith the “benefit of the doubt,” the editors fell prey to the notion that this was a rational debate. They ignored the fact that the ad contained claims that completely contravened a massive body of fact. They transformed what the Harvard Crimson described as “vicious propaganda” into iconoclasm.
The most controversial interpretation about precisely what this ad represented was expressed by the Duke Chronicle. In a column justifying the paper’s decision to run the ad, Ann Heimberger contended that “Revisionists are . . . reinterpreting history, a practice that occurs constantly, especially on a college campus.”77 In a private meeting with Jewish student leaders on the Duke campus, the editors reiterated this argument. The students were told that the ad was neither racist nor antisemitic but was part of an ongoing “scholarly debate.”78 The Duke editorial board viewed the advertisement more as “a political argument than as an ethnic attack.”79 In editorials, articles, and interviews, those at helm of the Duke Chronicle repeatedly referred to Holocaust denial as “radical, unpopular views” and “disturbing ideas” and argued that the ad was not a “slur” but an “opinion”80 By doing so they not only clung to their First Amendment defense, they gave the ad historical and intellectual legitimacy.
The Chronicle’s acceptance of the ad and the editor’s defense of having done so elicited two reactions. Bradley Smith, quite predictably, praised Heimberger’s column as “fantastic” and an example of sound reasoning.81 A less laudatory response came from the Duke History Department, which, in a unanimously adopted statement, asserted that the ad aimed to “hurt Jews and to demean and demonize them.” It was particularly vehement about Heimberger’s contention that the ad was nothing more than a reinterpretation of history. The department observed that the “scholarly pretensions” of the ad were effective enough to deceive Heimberger so that she believed the ad’s claims were part of the “range of normal historical inquiry.” The statement continued:
That historians are constantly engaged in historical revision is certainly correct; however, what historians do is very different from this advertisement. Historical revision of major events is not concerned with the actuality of these events; rather it concerns their historical interpretation—their causes and consequences generally.82
If the ad convinced Heimberger, one can only imagine its impact on individuals who have had less exposure to history and critical thinking.
There were, of course, those college newspapers that had no problem evaluating the ad’s intellectual value. The Harvard Crimson repudiated the idea that the ad was a “controversial argument based on questionable facts.” In one of the most unequivocal evaluations of the ad, the Crimson declared it “vicious propaganda based on utter bullshit that has been discredited time and time again.” More than “moronic and false,” it was an attempt to “propagate hatred against Jews.”83 The editorial board of the University of Pennsylvania’s Daily Pennsylvanian argued that “running an ad with factual errors that fostered hate” was not in the best interests of the paper.84
The MIT Tech simply decided that it would not accept an ad that it knew “did not tell the truth.”85 For the Brown Daily Herald the ad was “a pack of vicious, antisemitic lies” parading as “history and scholarship.”86 The Daily Nexus, the publication of the University of California at Santa Barbara, refused the ad because of its “blatant distortions of truth and its offensive nature.” The paper described receiving the ad itself and the more than one thousand dollars to print it as “chilling.”87 The Dartmouth Review, no stranger to controversy, also rejected the ad. It acknowledged that by so doing it was denying “someone a forum through which to speak to the paper’s readership” but explained that it had a “bond of trust” with the public, which expected it to abide by “standards of accuracy and decency.” Accepting an ad “motivated by hatred and informed by total disregard to the truth” would be to violate that trust.88 The Chicago Maroon saw no reason why it should run an ad whose “only objective is to offend and incite hatred.”89 The Yale Daily News “simply” let Smith know that it found the ad “offensive.”90
Some of the papers that ran the ad did so on the basis of what may be called the light-of-day, defense, a corollary of the free-speech argument: In the light of day, truth always prevails over lies. Neeraj Khemlani of the Cornell Sun believed that by running the ad he had done the Jewish people a favor—reminding them that there were a “lot of people out to get [them],” which was something they needed to know.91 This attitude is reminiscent of the concept of “saving the Jews (or women, African Americans, or any other potentially vulnerable group) despite themselves. Michael Gaviser, business manager of the Daily Pennsylvanian, decided to run the ad because of his belief that Smith was a “dangerous neo-Nazi” of whom the public had to be aware. (His decision was reversed by the editorial board.)92
A number of the nation’s most prominent national papers echoed the light-of-day position. A Washington Post editorial rejected the freedom-of-the-press argument but accepted the light-of-day rationale. Acknowledging that college newspapers had no obligation to accept the ads, it argued that it was “bad strategy” automatically to “suppress” them. What the ad needed was the “bracing blast of refutation.” The Post did not seem to consider the possibility that an article fully analyzing the ad would have served the same purpose.93 In an archetypal deniers’ move Smith cited the Post’s editorial as proof that the paper believed it both “ethical and permissible” to debate the “Holocaust story.”94 He made the same claim about a New York Times editorial that left it up to each newspaper to decide whether to publish Smith’s “pseudo-scholarly” and “intellectualy barren” tract.95
The Rutgers Daily Targum contended that publication of the ad constituted a means of defeat
ing Smith. The editors argued that “you cannot fight the devil you cannot see.”96 Exposing Smith’s views through publication of his ad could thwart his objectives.97 The Targum correctly understood that the First Amendment did not apply—(“CODOH was wrapped itself so tightly in the First Amendment it borders on suffocation.”)—and the claim to be engaged in historical investigation was dismissed as “a sham.” Nonetheless it chose to reprint Smith’s ad in full on the editorial page, surrounding it with three op-ed pieces and an editorial, all of which attacked the ad’s contents. In addition, an editors’ note introducing the column noted that the ad had originally been rejected by the paper’s business section because of “its false content and antisemitic nature.” The editorial board argued that despite all this it was necessary to print the advertisement in full because, “more than anything else, [it] makes it painfully obvious that a clear and present danger exists.”98 Reiterating this point in a letter to the New York Times, Targum editor Joshua Rolnick argued that publishing the ad in its entirety was the best way of “mobilizing the community in opposition to its hateful ideas.”99
The Targum’s decision to print the ad as a column and surround it with dissenting opinion won it the editorial praise of the New York Times: “The editors thus transformed revulsion into education.”100 Nevertheless there is reason to question that decision. First of all it saved Smith the approximately five hundred dollars it would have cost to purvey his extremist arguments. The paper proudly proclaimed that it had “not accepted any payment” from him, as if the acceptance of money made them accomplices. In fact it was Smith, Rolnick acknowledged, who had “encouraged” him to run it as an op-ed piece. Smith may well have recognized that, the dissenting articles notwithstanding, the full text of his ad was likely to win converts to his cause even as it mobilized some people against him. Given the space the Daily Targum devoted to the topic, a lengthy analytical piece quoting heavily from the ad and demolishing it point by point would have served the same purpose and given Smith less of a chance to lay out his “argument.” Some wonder what was the danger of allowing Smith his say, particularly when surrounded by articles that firmly and swiftly refuted him. But the Daily Targum had given Smith just what he wanted: They made him the other side of a debate. Although it may not have been evenly balanced, although more room may have been given to the articles that surrounded his, and although editorials may have condemned him, he had nonetheless been rendered a point of view.101 Smith seems to be acutely cognizant of the efficacy of even bad publicity. That may well be why, when a rally at Rutgers denounced Holocaust revisionism and his ad, he declared himself “grateful and delighted” that the rally was held.102
In the spring of 1992 Smith began to circulate a second ad that was essentially a reprint of an article from the Journal of Historical Review by Mark Weber. The article, entitled “Jewish Soap,” blamed the postwar spread of the rumor that the Nazis made Jews into soap on Simon Wiesenthal and Stephen Wise—a claim that has no relationship to reality. Echoing the first ad, it charged that historians of the Holocaust have “officially abandon[ed] the soap story” in order to “save what’s left of the sinking Holocaust ship by throwing overboard the most obvious falsehoods.”103 The point of this second effort, Smith acknowledged, was to submit a piece that was thoroughly “referenced.”104 The ad was submitted with a cover letter that claimed that the original ad had been rejected by a number of papers because it was not “sourced.” In contrast, every “significant claim” in the second ad was backed up by sources.105 Entitled “Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus [False in one thing, false in all] . . . The ‘Human Soap’ Holocaust Myth,” the essay on soap was preceded by a statement citing Roman law: If a witness could not be “believed in one thing, he should not be believed in anything.”106
Most universities that received the second ad, including those who had accepted the first, rejected it out of hand. When it was submitted to the Ohio State Lantern, the editor immediately refused it, observing that “the only news value in this is that Bradley Smith is approaching schools again.” Having been burned once, the editor seemed far more cognizant of Smith’s motives. “The fact that it is Holocaust Remembrance Week indicates that he’s in to ruffle some feathers and stir up trouble again.”107 The arguments about the First Amendment and censorship no longer seemed to apply.5*
At the University of Texas the deliberations about the second ad were directly linked to what had occurred with the first ad. The editor of the Daily Texan, Matthew Connally, had wanted to run the first.108 However, after familiarizing himself with the “group behind the ad,” he reversed his decision. “They were not only showing a disregard for the truth but they were doing it with malicious intent.”109 The Texas Student Publication Board (TSPB), which has ultimate authority over the paper’s advertising and financial affairs, supported Connally and voted to reject the ad. After hearing Connally’s arguments, TSPB member Professor John Murphy, who initially voted in favor of running the ad, decided to oppose it.
But that was not the end of the story at Texas. In April the paper received Smith’s second ad. Though the Daily Texan’s editorial board was firmly against running it, they quickly discovered that the decision was not in their hands: They were told by the TSPB that they must run it. “We do not want to do this. But we’re being told we must follow orders,” a member of the editorial board told me sadly.110 This time Professor Murphy emerged as the ad’s most vociferous supporter. According to the Houston Chronicle, Murphy, joined by other faculty members on the TSPB, argued that the paper needed to publish “divergent and unpopular opinion.”111 Facing a situation in which it would be forced to publish something it “detested,” the editorial board considered leaving all the pages blank except for the ad. (They were told that since this would affect advertising revenues, they did not have the authority to do so.)
The ad was scheduled to run on Holocaust Memorial Day, Yom HaShoah, 1992. Students opposed to the ad discovered that the internal regulations of the TSPB prohibited the newspaper from printing opinion ads unless all persons cited in those ads had granted permission to be quoted. I was among the scholars quoted in the ad. Fortuitously, I was scheduled to visit the campus to deliver a lecture on Holocaust denial the day before the ad’s scheduled publication. When I indicated my opposition to being cited in the ad, an emergency meeting of the TSPB board was called to discuss the matter. I informed the board that I had not given my permission to be quoted in the ad and was opposed to being associated with it. I pointed out that the ad specifically violated their own regulations.6* Despite my objections and my announcement that I would explore the possibility of legal remedies should the ad be published, the TSPB voted to run it, postponing publication for a few days so that my name could be dropped and a rebuttal prepared. Two days later the university’s legal counsel suggested that because individuals quoted in the ad had protested—by this time other professors mentioned in the ad had joined the protest—the ad should be dropped.112 The TSPB then voted to reject the ad. But the story did not end here. In February 1993 the TSPB compelled the paper to accept an ad promoting a video exposé of the gas chambers by a CODOH member claiming to be a Jew. Based on advertisements and articles by this young man, the video apparently contains the same recycled arguments deniers have been making for years. Though the editorial board and the university president opposed the ad because it was “deceptively rigged,” the TSPB ran the ad. The TSPB’s three faculty members, two working professionals, and five of its six students voted for the ad.
During this period students were not the deniers’ only campus targets. For more than two years—not for the first time—deniers had tried to insinuate themselves into the scholarly arena by finding ways to place Holocaust denial on the agenda of organizations of professional historians. They sought to force these groups to treat denial as a legitimate enterprise. In the spring of 1980 all members of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) received a complimentary copy of the first issue of
the Journal of Historical Review. It was quickly revealed that the IHR had purchased the OAH’s twelve thousand member mailing list. Some OAH members protested the sale of the list to this neo-Nazi group. Others argued that to deny anyone the right to purchase the list would be to abridge intellectual freedom. The executive secretary of the OAH proposed to resolve the issue by inviting a panel of “well-qualified historians” to analyze the Journal and evaluate it based on the “credentials of the contributors and the use of evidence.” He would then transmit this evaluation to the OAH executive board so it could decide how to treat the matter.
Lucy Dawidowicz, a fierce critic of the OAH response, wondered what those historians would evaluate: “Perhaps that the neo-Nazis did not have proper academic credentials or that they failed to use primary sources?”113 Carl Degler, a past president of the OAH, defended the suggestion that the OAH should sponsor an analysis of the Journal. He argued that once historians begin to consider the “motives” behind historical research and writing, “we endanger the whole enterprise in which the historians are engaged.” Following the same pattern as the student editors who described the contents of the denial ad as opinions, views, and ideas, he described the articles contained in the Journal as “bad historical writing.” Given the Journal’s contents and its publisher’s identity, Degler’s categorization of it as bad history was described by Dawidowicz as a “travesty.”114
A far-less-ambiguous position was adopted by the editors of the Journal of Modern History, when the Liberty Lobby bought its subscription list and sent out antisemitic material. The journal’s editors sent a letter of apology to its subscribers acknowledging that an “antisemitic hate organization” had obtained its mailing list. It “repudiate[d] and condemn[ed] the propaganda” that readers had received and apologized that both the readers and the academic discipline had been “abused in this thoroughly scurrilous manner.”115
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