Humbug Ads About the Holocaust : Professional historical journals should feel no guilt about rejecting fraud
The factuality of the Holocaust--Nazi Germany’s attempt to exterminate the world’s Jews--is as well established among historians as the factuality of World War II itself. Given that certainty, what position should professional historians take toward a group that under the banner of “revisionist” history claims that the Holocaust never occurred? Does error enjoy the protection of the First Amendment? Does anti-Semitic fraud enjoy the same protection?
The Institute for Historical Review in Costa Mesa is a group devoted to propagating the view that the Holocaust never occurred. Last month, the prestigious Organization of American Historians, determined not to falter in its devotion to free speech, allowed the institute to call for “revisionist” papers in the OAH Newsletter.
Mary Frances Berry, a former OAH president, told the Chronicle of Higher Education: “I’m not in favor of hate speech, but I’m concerned about guaranteeing civil liberties for everyone.” In a dissenting view, Joyce Appleby of UCLA, current president of the OAH, deplored the decision: “This is not a question of respecting different points of view, but rather of recognizing a group which repudiates the very values which bring us together.”
Who is right?
We take our stand with Appleby. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of association as well as freedom of speech and, by the former guarantee, clearly permits the OAH to exclude fake historians from its ranks. By this constitutionally protected right, moreover, the OAH and all learned societies preserve the authority by which, for the common good, they spread truth and expose error.
The Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, a group akin to the Institute for Historical Review, has lately succeeded in placing ads in college newspapers at Northwestern, Cornell, Duke and the University of Michigan claiming, among other things, that the death camp gas chambers were “fumigation chambers” whose targets were lice, not human beings. Papers on some campuses rejected the ad. Others, apparently, concluded that as public entities open to all, they had to accept it.
The merits of that conclusion aside, it only underscores the indispensable role that the authentic learned society must still play as an independent guardian of truth both for the university and for society as a whole.