Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Northwestern's tenured holocaust denier, Arthur Butz

Crosssposted on Marathon Pundit.

Known as a prestigious university, Northwestern University has a dirty secret: Engineering Professor Arthur R. Butz, a holocaust-denier.

Northwestern has been trying to find a way to get rid of Butz for almost thirty years. I first heard the name around 1978 while a student at Carl Sandburg High School in Orland Park. A speaker from the Anti-Defamation League was addressing an assembly, not only was Butz' name brought up, but the ADL guy said he heard a rumor his nephew was a student at Sandburg. He was, and not only that, he was seated not too far away from me at the assembly, looking pretty embarrassed.

I haven't seen the nephew since I graduated from Sandburg. I wonder how he's doing?

Sometime around 1980, Professor Butz, who received his coveted tenure right before he delved into denying the holocaust, reached an agreement with the Evanston college: He wouldn't talk politics in the classroom, and in his writings--and for promotions for his speaking engagements--he'd be identified as Arthur R. Butz, Northwestern University Engineering Professor.

With out the tagline of the final two words, the implication for the uninformed would've been that Butz was a history of political science professor at NU.

Of course, just south of Evanston at Chicago's DePaul University, Norman Finkelstein actually is a political science professor. He's been called a holocaust-denier by the Anti-Defamation League.

Butz was in the news today, as reports surfaced that he made comments supporting Iran's holocaust-denying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to the Daily Northwestern:

"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.

That provoked a reaction at Northwestern. From the same article:

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.

Good idea. Butz has tenure at Northwestern, but so does ex-Weather Underground terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, who made these 1969 comments shortly after the Manson "Family" committed the Sharon Tate murders:

Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim's stomach! Wild!

The storm of controversy at Northwestern is even spreading to one of its heroes, David Protess, a journalism professor at NU. There are allegation that an innocent man was framed so a convicted death row inmate, Anthony Porter, could go free.

I could limit this blog to writing about the insanity known as "higher" education, and never run out of material.

10 comments:

Anonymous,  9:50 PM  

Now in addition to 'Islamifascists' to worry about, we have certified tenured nutbags here at home in our own eeducation community.

Great.

Marathon Pundit 10:04 PM  

Butz is pretty old at least.

Anonymous,  10:39 PM  

Col, First I thought your post kind of funny - then I realized you were serious, and I realized it was sad.

Charlie Johnston 12:01 AM  

For the definitive work on these kind of nutbags and the danger they represent read Deborah Lipstadt's marvelous book, "Denying the Holocaust: the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory"

It was published in the mid-90's and is truly a marvelous read.

fedup dem 9:21 AM  

What do you expect from my alma mater?

By the way, Northwestern has a record in Electoral College history that no other university can match (or quite frankly would want to). Six times a Northwestern graduate was the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States (William Jennings Bryan in 1896, 1900 and 1908; Adlai E. Stevenson in 1952 and 1956; George McGovern in 1972). Each time they lost by a bigger and bigger margin.

I got screwed around by Northwestern in general and the Medill School of Journalism in particular. As it now stands, Hell will freeze over before I give that school another nickel.

RANDALL SHERMAN, B.S.J. '76

Anonymous,  11:15 AM  

"What do you expect from my alma mater?"

When framed that way, Mr. Sherman, not a whole lot.

Anonymous,  3:10 PM  

I just ignore these guys. He's got a tenure contract so he can't be fired, so just ignore the crack pots and have sex with your wife.

Anonymous,  3:26 PM  

Why don't we just have for the death penalty a stronger criterion than reasonable doubt. Instead of believing in guilt beyond reasonable doubt like you need to convict, juries should only send someone to death if they are sure of his guilt beyond ANY doubt (like in public cases or when you have 20 boys in the crawl space)

Anonymous,  9:44 PM  

I'll be at Northwestern this fall. Nice to know I won't be anywhere near the Engineering department due to complete lack of interest! Never know what lurks around there in whacked out academia these days.

I do think we ought to rethink tenure, follks.

Anonymous,  11:02 PM  

I think Northwestern should get rid of Arthur Butz just for his negligence of teaching instead of confinin him to a room similar to a rat hole that terrorists & fugitives use for hiding.

I would like to ask him that who gives him the privillege for teaching age-old and junk materials in a school where students pay hefty tuition. As a decent human being (even not considering his monstrous political views), I think a faculty member should pay attention to teaching and research, considering the fact that he is paid full time by the univeristy and not misuse University resources like using pubweb for propapgating his political views. Not sure, whether he has subscribed to a new website now after pubweb is gone!

If he had self respect at the very least he could have propagated his views on a presonal website outside school and have taken teaching more seriously. Honestly, in my lifetime, after having interacted with many Professors, students, etc, I haven't seen a person with less self dignity than Arthur Butz.

And finally, even though being an avid supporter of the Iranian President, I don't think the Iraninan President would have treated Butz kindly if he neglected teaching properly in a school at Iran!

  © Blogger template The Professional Template by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP