ADL Coordinates “Response” to CODOH’s Campus Project

They're saying as little as possible in public, they’re ashamed of what they're about, but electronic mail communications obtained by CODOH confirm that the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel are doing what they can, under the table, to stop CODOH advertisements from running in student newspapers across America.

It’s clear they’re worried—worried that these simple, inexpensive ads announce our World Wide Web address; worried that the ads encourage students—and faculty—to access CODOHWeb directly, to read and judge the evidence for revisionist theory themselves. On February 25, the following message went out to Hillel headquarters:

From: Ari Hoffnung <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:16:41 -0400
Subject: Holocaust Revisionist

We wanted to inform you that Bradley Smith, a Holocaust revisionist, recently placed a small ad in the Daily Texan (The University of Texas student newspaper). It did not contain any of his usual propaganda, but did contain his web site (www.codoh.com) and his email address ([email protected]) in case people wanted to “ignore the thought police” and “read the evidence” for themselves. This “subtle” way of advertising in college papers may be his new tactic to reach college students and must not be ignored. Please pass this message on to as many people as possible.

On March 7, in a somewhat more breathless communique (for the Campus Project had begun to roll with ads running on campuses in half a dozen states),

Luisa Ellenbogen, Assistant Director of Campus Affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, passed along, to campus Hillel offices across the country, the dread news that CODOH was calling for intellectual freedom on the Holocaust story, and worse, alerting readers to our high-tech center on the World Wide Web. ADL’s campus director told the Hillel rabbis and officers what to do:

To: [email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected]
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 1997
Subject: Holocaust Denial Advertisements: Important Information From The Anti-Defamation League.

Bradley Smith, a major proponent of the Holocaust denial movement, works through the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) to place Holocaust denial advertisements in college newspapers. Smith has recently submitted an advertisement that contains his web site and his e-mail address in case people want to “ignore the thought police” and “read the evidence” for themselves. This is a new tactic of exposing students to Holocaust denial.

This advertisement has been published at the University of Texas and at Georgia State. If you see an advertisement like this in your campus newspaper please CONTACT YOUR HILLEL DIRECTOR AND THE ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE IMMEDIATELY.

We need to respond to this new wave of Holocaust denial ads. You can e-mail me at [email protected]. The ADL’s Campus Affairs Department will help you respond to these two issues.

Luisa Ellenbogen
Assistant Director of Campus Affairs for the Anti-Defamation League

CODOH has been made privy to these two egrams thanks to watchful friends in cyberspace. They are two of what must have been an electronic firestorm. These two alone make it clear that the watchdogs are puzzled and perturbed. The messages establish a kind of functional hierarchy: the first goes forth from campus Hillel at the University of Texas, to Hillel central, warning of the local problem. The second, an alert from ADL headquarters to Hillel, directs Hillel’s college branches coast to coast to respond immediately.

ADL’s message states: “We need to respond to this new wave of Holocaust denial ads.” What that response might be is left unsaid. Based on past performance, though, we understand what is happening. In SR41 (March 1997) we related how student editors at The Signal, which had been running CODOH’s ad for several weeks, had been approached by two different Jewish groups and asked to suppress the ad. The first was made up of Jewish law students at the university. The second, when the efforts of the students proved unavailing, was “an off-campus Jewish organization”—would we be going too far by suggesting that this “off-campus” group was the local office of the ADL?—that threatened “pressure” if the ad weren’t killed forthwith.

The Georgia State Signal, however, signed up for an additional six weeks, making 18 weeks in all that they will have run the ad. This has simply never happened before for the Campus Project. The Red & Black at University of Georgia and The Daily Texan at University of Texas (Austin), both of which it is certain have been contacted by the Hillel rabbis or the strong-arms who represent them, continue to run the ad as if to do so is an everyday expression of campus independence and a sense of what is, simply, right.

As the behind-the-scenes squawks from ADL and Hillel make clear, these ads matter!—and they matter now in ways they couldn’t have mattered a couple years ago. At the three campuses named above, alone, tens of thousands of students and faculty have instant access to CODOHWeb, and thus the most devastating archive of revisionist scholarship and information available either on or off the Internet.

Campus Hillel is a peculiar organization. It’s fronted almost entirely by rabbis in an attempt to give the organization a patina of religious sensibility. Yet the rabbis and other Hillel officers act out the role of mere political operatives, denouncing those who disagree with Zionist and establishment orthodoxies on the Holocaust story, working to limit intellectual freedom, and leaning on student editors with accusations of anti-Semitism and threats of economic boycott.

As a matter of fact, it no longer matters—not the way it used to—what Hillel and the ADL and the rest of these campus Mafiosos do. As I reported here last month, we changed Internet service providers. It turns out that our new provider provides us with more sophisticated statistical information than our previous one did. The upshot? CODOHWeb is getting many more visits than we could clock before—or had reason even to imagine!

During the first two weeks in March that we have figures for, more than 17,000 (!) documents on CODOHWeb were accessed by readers eager to learn more about revisionist theory. Some of these new readers were certainly introduced to us by Hillel’s Ari Hoffnung when he thoughtfully mentioned our Web address in that egram we’ve reprinted on page one. We trust they learned a few things they didn’t expect to learn.

POSTSCRIPT: The Michigan Daily, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, has signed up to run the ad. Student enrollment at Michigan is 35,000, with more than 3,300 faculty. Also, The Washington Square News, New York University, signed on board. NYU is the largest private university in America, with a student body of 47,000 and faculty and staff of 15,000. No ad is run until it’s run, but are these the kind of people we want to introduce to CODOHWeb and the pleasures of revisionist theory—or aren’t they?

[Muchos thanks to all of you who helped sustain the Campus Project with your contributions and extra contributions this past month. I only regret I can’t thank each one of you personally. To those of you who can, our warmest thanks for your continued help in whiting out the Holocaust blackout with freedom and truth. It takes $80 to $120 per month, on average, to keep the ad running at important universities around the country.]