New Irainian president teaching at Northwestern?

[Justin_stacy]

NU rips Holocaust denial
President calls prof an embarrassment but plans no penalty

By Jodi S. Cohen
Tribune higher education reporter
Published February 7, 2006


Northwestern University President Henry Bienen said Monday that a professor's recent comments denying that the Holocaust happened are "a contemptible insult to all decent and feeling people" and an embarrassment to the university.

Bienen commented days after tenured engineering professor Arthur Butz commented in the Tribune and in the Iranian press that he agreed with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's assertions that the Holocaust is a myth.

Iran's semi-official Mehr News Agency and the English-language Tehran Times have published Butz's comments, promoting the Northwestern professor as one of the world scholars who support the Iranian president. Ahmadinejad, who also has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," recently ordered the restart of uranium enrichment, raising fears that Tehran could try to build a nuclear weapon.

Butz's comments did not address the Iranian president's statements about present-day Israel or nuclear issues.

"While I hope everyone understands that Butz's opinions are his own and in no way represent the views of the university or me personally, his reprehensible opinions on this issue are an embarrassment to Northwestern," Bienen said in a statement to be e-mailed Monday night to all Northwestern students, faculty and staff.

Northwestern's chapter of Hillel, the Jewish student organization, purchased a full-page advertisement, to be published Tuesday in the Daily Northwestern student newspaper. Hillel also called for a community meeting Tuesday night to address the topic: "Why does the Holocaust matter? How do we ensure that `never again' means never again?"

"We're frustrated because we feel forced to take action, but we don't want to dignify his lunacy with a response," the ad says.

Butz, a tenured Northwestern professor since 1974, is known for denying that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews during World War II. He promotes his views through his Northwestern-affiliated Web site, including a link to his 1976 book, "The Hoax of the 20th Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry."

Butz told the Tribune last week that he e-mailed comments to the Mehr News Agency after he was approached by an Iranian journalist.

Butz wrote that the Holocaust didn't happen, that it is a "deliberately contrived falsehood" and that its promulgation was motivated by the desire to create a Jewish state in the Middle East. About Ahmadinejad, he wrote: "I congratulate him on becoming the first head of state to speak out clearly on these issues and regret only that it was not a Western head of state."

He posted the same comments on his Web site.

Northwestern sophomore Stuart Loren, a history major from Highland Park, commended Bienen's response but said it wasn't enough. He wants the university to revoke Butz's university-provided Web site.

"This is so historically inaccurate and so biased that I think the university might need to do something more than a passive approach," Loren said. "The fact that he uses Northwestern as a forum to convey his views, that is where I get upset."

Bienen said in his statement that Butz is entitled to express his personal views, and the university will not take action against him as long as he represents them as his own and does not discuss them in class. He also noted that the university has a professorship in Holocaust studies and offers several courses on the Holocaust.

Butz did not return a call for comment Monday afternoon.

Adam Simon, Hillel's executive director at Northwestern, said he has fielded many calls from students, faculty and alumni upset by Butz's comments.

"There are two ways to respond: ignore it or convert it into something positive," Simon said. "Engaging in a conversation about whether the Holocaust happened is a waste of time. ... We are setting a different tone. We are going to talk about why it is important to remember the Holocaust."



and people wonder why so many have a problem with "academia"...



December 18, 2005

Recently I was asked for my opinion on the recent remarks of Iran's President Ahmadinejad on the subject of the Jewish "Holocaust". Here they are. I base my comments on the reports on these remarks that I have read in the Western press.

In 1976 I published a book, entitled "The Hoax of the Twentieth Century", in which I argued:

1. The alleged slaughter of millions of Jews by the Germans, during World War II, did not happen.

2. The extermination allegation is properly termed a hoax, that is to say, a deliberately contrived falsehood. It was not at its source an honest misunderstanding or accidental falsehood.

3. The hoax had a Zionist provenance and motivation. That is, while some of the original obscure stories did not come from Zionist sources, the elevation to allegations repeated by the American and other governments, and major institutions, was due to Zionist circles within those countries, who acted with Zionist motivations.

I continue to maintain those three theses, which have become core features of what is called "Holocaust" revisionism. Apart from some nuances of wording, the three theses were repeated by President Ahmadinejad. Therefore, there can be no question that I endorse his remarks in those respects.

In the years since the publication of my book in 1976 there were two developments that I did not expect:

4. Western countries undertook a massive repression of revisionism. In some cases, particularly in Europe, legally formulated persecution has sent revisionists to prison, in blatant contradiction of the sermons we have given the rest of the world on "human rights" and "freedom". In other cases, revisionists have been ruined professionally with the cooperation of government bodies.

5. The cognizance of the "Holocaust" in the West was transformed into a loud, never-ending series of ceremonies that can only be interpreted as religious in nature.

President Ahmadinejad's remarks also included the last two observations, so of course I also endorse the remarks in those respects. I congratulate him on becoming the first head of state to speak out clearly on these issues, and regret only that it was not a Western head of state.

His political remarks receive no comment on my side. By "political remarks" I mean those that deal with questions of what ought to happen now.

http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/dnews/Ahmadinejad.htm


I wonder if his job would be in jeopardy if he had questioned the reality of American slavery or the horrors of the pre-civil rights movement?

[gillianhsieh]

yeah i go to northwestern.

i don't really have a problem with him. he's an electrical engineering professor so his beliefs w.r.t. the holocaust like... never come up ever in class. i have met him on several occasions and have had many friends who have taken his classes (i'm a sciencekid) and i can assure you that he acts like a normal dude and doesn't behave antisemetically. i think that stuart loren (who is a huge douche) is making too big of a deal out of this considering that NU already went over this in the late 80s and again in the early 90s and again in the early 2000's.

his job isn't in jeopardy. he's tenured. his website specifically states that he has NO academic credibility in that field, and that again his expertise is electrical engineering, like fourier transforms and crap like that. furthermore all NU pubweb has a disclaimer that the views reflected in no way reflect the views of the university. He has the freedom to think what he wants to think. it's not like the university has to endorse the views of every single employee.

i also believe that he can say what he wants to say as long as it isn't in a classroom setting and he clarifies that they aren't the opinions of an expert. censorship of controversial ideas that result in absolutely no harmful behavior impinges upon natural liberties and should never be ok. when he starts failing all his jewish students then maybe the university can talk about firing him.

[gillianhsieh]

also the thread is mislabeled, butz is not iranian, he just commends the iranian president because he had the balls to say something that butz agrees with.

you guys should like..read his book. i mean i don't agree but i can see how he might think it could be true. it's not like he's some jew-hating ass clown who doesn't try to sound coherent.

yea and why do people have a problem with academia? no joke i have no idea why.

[Justin_stacy]

also the thread is mislabeled, butz is not iranian, he just commends the iranian president because he had the balls to say something that butz agrees with..

There's nothing wrong with it, I didn’t mean for it to be taken literally. It’s called a joke….The nut job “teacher” supported the ignorant remarks of the Iranian “leaders” so I combined the two for irony….got it?


yea and why do people have a problem with academia? no joke i have no idea why.

Your serious right? You have no clue why moderate minded individual have a problem with radicals getting tenured and being unaccountable in their actions towards impressionable students? Did you miss the whole ward churchill fiasco? Or the Students Bill of Rights controversy? Do you live in a hole?



his job isn't in jeopardy. he's tenured. his website specifically states that he has NO academic credibility in that field, .

It’s a shame I know, which is the exact problem with tenuring teachers. His expertise may be in another field but that doesn't mean he shouldn’t be accountable for what he says else where. College life is based on the almighty idea of being PC, but here is a man preaching and writing hate and obvious lies and no one cares because it is about Jews. I mean its not like I’m critizing someone like Chomsky who has extremist ideas, this man is writing obvious lies that are offensive, not only to Jews, but anyone with a common sense knowledge of history. And yet nothing can be done about him.

What if his comments were against blacks instead of Jews? What if he said slavery never happened, do you think his tenuring would matter? Or what if said the interment of Japanese Americans never happened in WWII, do you think his tenuring would matter?

[gillianhsieh]

Your serious right? You have no clue why moderate minded individual have a problem with radicals getting tenured and being unaccountable in their actions towards impressionable students? Did you miss the whole ward churchill fiasco? Or the Students Bill of Rights controversy? Do you live in a hole?

It’s a shame I know, which is the exact problem with tenuring teachers. His expertise may be in another field but that doesn't mean he shouldn’t be accountable for what he says else where. College life is based on the almighty idea of being PC, but here is a man preaching and writing hate and obvious lies and no one cares because it is about Jews. I mean its not like I’m critizing someone like Chomsky who has extremist ideas, this man is writing obvious lies that are offensive, not only to Jews, but anyone with a common sense knowledge of history. And yet nothing can be done about him.

What if his comments were against blacks instead of Jews? What if he said slavery never happened, do you think his tenuring would matter? Or what if said the interment of Japanese Americans never happened in WWII, do you think his tenuring would matter?
yeah listen, he doesn't claim those ideas are the ideas of the university and he doesn't preach them in class. his thoughts on the holocaust are completely divorced from his teaching, i mean he NEVER talks about it in class, he's a professor of electrical engineering.

he IS accountable in his actions toward students cause if he did say anything about this in class his ass would be fired immediately, but he doesn't. if you had him in class you would never have any idea that he was a holocaust revisionist. this is his independent side project/hobby and has nothing to do with Northwestern, it's just some douche students who want to fire him because he happens to have an opinion that he condemns. radicals that are tenured can still get fired if they do controversial things IN CLASS, what said radicals do in their own time is out of the university's control.

even if they're obvious lies to us, they may not be obvious lies to him. furthermore i don't believe that his comments are necessarily anti-semetic. he doesn't DENY that jews WERE killed in internment camps, he just says that they weren't necessarily as many jews as zionists claim. And honestly, I don't really know if this is true or not, i don't really believe it because the nazis were crazy good record keepers so they were probably half jewish, but fanatic dedication to being politically correct isn't the right way to go either - it makes you totally ignore what he's saying just b/c he even has a hint of offense directed at a minority group.

what do you want to be done about him? just because someone espouses supposed "lies" it's not like his students have an obligation to read his books. he's not making anyone do anything, and he's not out spreading revisionist propoganda to young impressionable kids. plus we've got so goddamn many sensitivity seminars here and a huge jewish population that it's almost impossible for any student to take him seriously.

and if he said slavery never happened or he said that the japanese internment never happened or that no abuse ever occured at guatanamo bay, of course i'd think he was wrong... but then i'd go read his book. i wouldn't ostracize him becuase it's not like he's forcing me to believe this. the societal impulse to deny his thoughts are so strong that it's not like he's going to develop some significant following. and the people who are probably goign to follow him, if you think he is so anti-semetic, were probably antisemetic themselves to begin with. and I think as long as you don't act based on racist impulses, it's ok to be racist because it doesn't hurt anyone. that type of thought is undesireable in society, but society is still functioning, plus censorship and thought control are just like fucking 1984.

AND i don't have a problem with ward churchill either. he wasn't actually calling those who got killed in the WTC people who had personally gone out and decided to kill tons of muslims on a genocidal whim. what he meant was that they were participating actively in the american economic machine which was slowly killing the middle east with economic sanctions and whatever else he made sound like middle eastern genocide. i mean...so he exaggerated. big deal. eveyrone exaggerates. he doesn't hate america, but he did say that if you don't listen to peaceful protests then you're going to get violent protests. why is that such an awful opinion? I read his essay and i don't think it trivializes the deaths of 9/11 victims. when someoen doesn't htink the same way you do, it doesn't mean they're a psycho radical that you should squash immediately, it means maybe you should consider what they are saying but feel free to reject it.

[Justin_stacy]

There so much here…but without having to go into any further..........

what do you want to be done about him? just because someone espouses supposed "lies" it's not like his students have an obligation to read his books. he's not making anyone do anything, and he's not out spreading revisionist propoganda to young impressionable kids. plus we've got so goddamn many sensitivity seminars here and a huge jewish population that it's almost impossible for any student to take him seriously. .

It’s very simple since this isn't a public institution (and firing is too extreme for some) they should censure him by cutting his access to preach hate and lies on a school provided website. This would stop the negative association with school and its faculty standards and hinder his ability to use his placement of prominence at Northwestern to validate his asinine beliefs. In fact this is all the "douches" (so nicely put by you, as if speaking out against hate makes one a “douche”) are asking for.........and is that really so much?

Further more a school has the right and the ability to set appropriate standards of behavior for its employees and just as with any other profession or job, these standards can be enforced outside of the institution. So there are things Northwestern can do legally to rid them of Butz and keep the concept of tenuring teachers intact.

I also must make comment about your use of the word “supposed” next to the word lie. Supposed implies that there is some question as to whether what he says is a lie or not, which is just foolish on your part. A comment that runs opposite of factual standings and shows an intent to deceive is a lie, not a “supposed” lie. Butz writings are works of fiction, they ignore all evidence that doesn’t corresponded to his preconceived conclusion(s) and are ground in hate and politically motive. Butz is neither a scholar nor a historian and his practices…..as one historian put it…

"Revisionists" depart from the conclusion that the Holocaust did not occur and work backwards through the facts to adapt them to that preordained conclusion. Put another way, they reverse the proper methodology […], thus turning the proper historical method of investigation and analysis on its head."

Your comments also go back to my original point that his position, although not connected to the history department in any way, gives his opinion a sense of validation. That if a teacher, a tenured one no less, can hold these views then maybe they are plausible, even though they are clearly factious and produced by hate. Putting the “supposed” pretext to the word lie shows a willingness on your part to question what is in reality a readily known fact, that the Nazi’s mass murdered Jews through a systematic process (of which there is numerous proof of), thus exhibiting the very impressionable mind you contend doesn’t exists on campuses.


AND i don't have a problem with ward churchill either. he wasn't actually calling those who got killed in the WTC people who had personally gone out and decided to kill tons of muslims on a genocidal whim. what he meant was that they were participating actively in the american economic machine which was slowly killing the middle east with economic sanctions and whatever else he made sound like middle eastern genocide..

What he was doing was justifying the murdering of innocent American civilians. And you do not see why people were even a little upset?

As for those in the World Trade Center, well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break…..If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

This from a teacher of ETHICS at a publicly funded school. People are outraged because extremist like this are left unaccountable because of tenuring.

he doesn't hate america, ..

He hates what we are, what we stand for, and what we do…..I mean the soils nice here, but I don’t think alone its much to love.

Although I’ll give you that his convictions may not be much since he has no problem being fund by the same people he refers to as “little Eichmanns”. So maybe he does love us after all…….?

but he did say that if you don't listen to peaceful protests then you're going to get violent protests. why is that such an awful opinion? ..

What peaceful protest? All I read was a weak attempt at total incrimination of the West for actions surrounding the Gulf War(s). That’s not a peaceful protest, but a one-sided bullshit feast. Ward forgets that IRAQ started the gulf war by invading a peaceful sovereignty nation, that IRAQ caused the bombings by building new military installations (which they purposely put next to civilians necessities), and that IRAQ caused the sanction(s) by ignoring UN mandates and inspections. The West is not the sole faulty party in the unfortunate deaths of those “500,000” Iraqi children, as the basis for Ward’s essay attempts to make. So what opinion is worthy of taking away from the essay? America is the big bad oppressor, and were all deserving of slaughter for being citizens?


I read his essay and i don't think it trivializes the deaths of 9/11 victims. ..

Well you obviously didn’t read it very carefully. The very first line of the essay “trivializes” their deaths…..

a few more chickens....came home to roost in a very big way at the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Well, actually, a few of them seem to have nestled in at the Pentagon as well.



when someoen doesn't htink the same way you do, it doesn't mean they're a psycho radical that you should squash immediately, it means maybe you should consider what they are saying but feel free to reject it. ..

Of course it doesn’t. But nor is every idea worthy of accepting as an equal.

And free speech is a great thing, but it is not without restriction or consequences. Ward spoke his mind, and you can commend him all you want for that, but now he should face the consequences. He shouldn’t be able to grossly insult people, then cower behind tenureship. Why should the very people he insulted and called “little Eichmanns” be forced to continue to pick up his tab (about $100,000 per year) without a say?

For me it all comes down to the difference between tolerating and acceptance. I can tolerate people like Ward, but I can never accept extremism (or extremist thought) as an equal. So Ward can cook anything he wants in his little black cauldron, but he must be responsible for it.

But you must also remember that we are not discussing average citizens here, but teachers. People that are given prominence over youths and who are intended to educate not indoctrinate, and so the standards are different. But I do not feel Ward should be fired, I used his name only as an example of why people are frustrated with academia. But those feelings aside, I do think that the people should have a say in whether they want him teaching their children….is that wrong?

Now with Butz there is obviously a difference. Ward’s speech is fanatically liberal, but it is not hate speech. Butz comments and ideas against Jewish individuals is hate speech and he is using the school and his title to spread those ideas. Through the Adelaide Institution, he has aligned himself with Neo-Nazi’s, White Supremacist, and international criminals. The fact is his beliefs are his and no one can take them away, but he is undeserving of being employed by an institution whose sole goal is to teach. But unlike Colorado, Northwestern is a private institution, so although the public should have an opinion in the matter, they shouldn’t have a say in what finally happens….but maybe the student should.