Editorial

Friend:

The Campus Project has had a fine fall season.

There was a strong, ongoing story at Hofstra U that pulled in national media. The Boise State Arbiter was not far behind. The second issue of The Revisionist is hot off the press, has a new wrap on front and back covers, and a content that equals and maybe surpasses that of issue number one. TR 2 was also easier to produce than number one, thanks to getting a little production experience under out belt.

Our Holocaust Studies advertisement, which was reproduced in SR 65, and is the “toughest” ad we have ever tried to place, has run at several more universities and liberal arts colleges, including U Wisconsin-Stout, Taylor U (IN), State U of New York-Stonybrook, Schoolcraft College (MI), Ouachita Baptist U (AK), Moorhead State U (MN), Hollins College (VA), and Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (VA).

Revisionist documents on CODOHWeb are being accessed at a rate of 15,000 to 20,000 times daily, and sometimes more. On 12 December CODOH documents were accessed almost 30,000 times (!). A surge like that typically suggests a story about the Campus Project has appeared in some prominent publication, which suggests in turn that the 10,000-access surge represents new people accessing revisionist documents.

With this issue of SR I’m reproducing three news articles written by U Delaware Review journalists Ryan Cormier and Melissa Hankins. Cormier is the one who contacted me and handled the email and telephone interviews. As usual, I didn’t know what to expect.

Once I read the articles I wrote to congratulate Cormier for his honesty, for actually quoting some of what I said without apologizing for it—almost unheard of among professionals. There is a good deal that can be objected to in the articles, but compared to what is written by professionals, I think the U Delaware reporters did a good job.

It’s not often you get this kind of behind-the-scenes reporting on the reaction to CODOH ads.

Boise State University. The BSU Arbiter distributed the first issue of The Revisionist in its edition of 17 November. I was unable to get plugged into it until about ten days ago. Editor Erica Hull is standing tall in the face of condemnation and—get this—death threats, just as Shawna VanNess is doing at Hofstra U. The strong American woman is still with us, even during the age of Generation X.

The Arbiter received the usual letters of outrage from faculty, as well as a couple encouraging ones from students, among them an apparent Buddhist. Thirty-six professors, among them 17 historians, signed a letter announcing their “outrage” at Erica Hull’s “lack of judgment” in distributing the “defamatory, anti-Semitic tract” without including “commentary from scholars who study the Holocaust…Well, I would like to see that too. That’s what I’m trying to encourage. I have a feeling the professors are protesting in bad faith.

The most interesting and most heart-felt letter printed in the paper was written by the Arbiter’s faculty advisor Peter Wollheim. Turns out his father was interned at Auschwitzand afterwards testified against Adolf Eichmann. He doesn’t say where or when.

Wollheim writes: “In three and a half years as faculty advisor of the Arbiter, I have never asked for personal space in this newspaper. Recent events have forced me to ask for this exception…. The recent spate of death threats, addressed to the editor and staff of The Arbiter, and the outright theft of copies of the last issue [the issue where TR was inserted—Ed.], represent far more than a personal irony. They are an outright insult to the memory of my parents, and of the other immediate family members I lost to the Holocaust.”

Professor Wollheim then addresses the thieves and threat-mongers: “If you have any shred of decency about you, surrender yourselves immediately – right this minute – to the proper authorities for the punishment you deserve. By employing these perverted, outright fascisitic [sic] tactics, you have handed the moral high ground right back to pro-Nazi sympathizes, confirming some of their worst racial stereotypes and blurring the ethical lines between you and them.

“Holocaust deniers can be refuted; your cowardice can not.”

Pretty good letter. He’s misinformed about revisionism and most revisionists, but a good honest letter.

The work is going well. With your continued support, it will continue to go well. Without you, it won’t go anywhere. So thanks, and have a good Christmas and (not all of you are Christians) a good holiday season.

Bradley