Jewish students at NU should enforce their own "penalty"...
Posted on 02/07/2006 7:10:23 PM PST by SJackson
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
From the University website.
Home Web page of Arthur R. Butz
A short introduction to the study of Holocaust revisionism, by Arthur R. Butz.
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Tenured professor’s views anger students, faculty, but no action can be taken
Daily Northwestern, by Jasett Chatham
February 07, 2006
A Northwestern professor’s support for the Iranian president’s denial of the Holocaust is angering students and faculty across the university.
McCormick Prof. Arthur Butz recently backed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in comments published by several Iranian news agencies. Calling the Holocaust a myth, Ahmadinejad said Israel should no longer exist as a country. The remarks are causing global controversy.
“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,” Butz said. His comments were reprinted in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune.
Butz’s statements circulated campus through student listservs, includes ones through Hillel Cultural Life and Shepard Residential College. One widespread e-mail asked students to sign a petition calling for the university to take action and prevent Butz from causing future embarrassment.
Butz did not return phone calls or e-mails asking for his comment.
In a statement released Monday, University President Henry Bienen said the university cannot take action against the tenured professor because Butz has kept his views out of the classroom and unaffiliated with the school.
“We cannot take action based on the content of what Butz says regarding the Holocaust — however odious it may be — without undermining the vital principle of intellectual freedom that all academic institutions serve to protect,” Bienen wrote.
Stuart Loren, a Weinberg sophomore, created the petition against Butz on Saturday after reading the professor’s statements in the Tribune. The petition has about 200 signatures.
“The importance of the petition is not so much whether he is fired or not, but to make a loud response from the Jewish community and the university as a whole,” said Adam Dorsky, a Communication freshman who signed the petition.
Loren said he hopes the petition will encourage NU to clarify its standard of conduct for faculty and make wiser decisions when giving tenure to professors.
“Northwestern should not serve as a forum or haven for the spread of hatred or historical inaccuracy,” Loren said.
Butz’ stance is nothing new. In 1976, just two years receiving his tenure, he published book denying the Holocaust titled “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century.” Since, his views have been published through various articles and speeches.
His latest statements have reverberated beyond NU’s campus. Since Saturday, Loren has received e-mails from NU parents, alumni and a Holocaust survivor.
“I think we’re forming a respectful and civilized platform to hold a dialogue on,” Loren said. “I’m glad people are being respectful.”
For many, the appropriate limits of free speech remain the salient issue. Some, like Chabad House Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein, define the professor’s message as “hate speech.”
“The pain and hurt associated with this is beyond words,” Klein said. “I just want to sit down and cry every time I think about it.” Rabbi Josh Feigelson from the Fiedler Hillel Center has also issued a response condemning Butz’ comments.
Aside from signing the petition, some Jewish students in McCormick also refuse to take courses that Butz teaches.
“I would never take a class with him; it would be very uncomfortable to take a class with someone who denies the Holocaust,” said Alex Thaler, a McCormick sophomore.
Students have taken action against Butz roughly every five years since he first published his book, said Prof. Peter Hayes, chairman of NU’s German department. Hayes, who teaches History of the Holocaust, describes Butz as “a crank and a fool.”
“I just hope people will not overreact to this,” Hayes said. “He loves the attention and why should we give it to him? This is how he publicizes his crazy views and we should just treat them with the contempt they deserve.”
A community forum on Holocaust denial will take place tonight at 8 p.m. in room 212 of the Fiedler Hillel Center.
So once again we see the Hysteric Left's basic intellectual incoherence on display. Insult Muslims belling telling the truth about them, BAD CARTOONIST! BAD!. Insult Jews with lies about their past...HEY no problemo!
The alumni should with hold all donations.
The backbone of liberalism in universities.
Yes it does, northwestern.edu.
Well, there is not much they could do to a tenured professor - unless he becomes criminally insane [mere insanity would not do] or commits a felony and is caught. So they are stuck with him. The best they could do would be to marginalize him and let him wither on the vine.
I am 66+ years old.
I have NEVER understood the purpose of tenure, nor where it came from in the first place.
This is the only job in the world that you get to hold as long as YOU want, no matter how badly you do the job nor how disgusting your thoughts or remarks are.
No wonder our kids are so screwed up and basically unemployable. Glad I don't have any. If I had some, I would have been a very early home schooler, I think.
No surprise -- just more liberal insanity from liberal academia -- the liberalism there is SO PERVERTED they are even denying blatant reality. These mental cases need to be thrown out of our schools and replaced with SANE COMPETENT non-political profs. (If you can find enough of them ).
Well, I don't want to sit down and cry. I want to kick somebody's ass!
Jewish students at NU should enforce their own "penalty"...
OK, ANOTHER picture with no explanation! Come on! What the heck is THAT all about???? EXPLAIN, please.
The world has just gone totally insane. Up is down, black is white, good is evil. History is now irrelevant. How you feel is all-important; facts are incidental.
Free speech is not without its consequences.
He should be fired, tenure or no.
This inoffensive old man was walking home after a rugby game, minding his own business, when a gang of "youths" (Muslim thugs) beat him within an inch of his life for no reason at all.
What has been the only response of the pathetically cowardly and incompetent British authorities? I quote from the article: "In a belated response to the problem, a multi-agency team has been set up to look at ways of improving the lot of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities."
This is the true face of Islam, everybody. Remember it well, and prepare to deal with it by any means necessary. Your government will do nothing but set up toothless "multi-agency teams" full of commie activists whose main goal will be to come up with mealy-mouthed multi-culti excuses for Muslim depredation.
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