“No subject enrages the Thought Police on campus more than Holocaust revisionism. Students are encouraged to debate every other great historical question as a matter of course, but influential pressure groups with private agendas have made the Jewish Holocaust story and exception. I believe students should be encouraged to investigate the Holocaust controversy the same way they are encouraged to investigate every other historical controversy. This isn't a radical point of view. The premises for it were worked out a while back during a little something called the Enlightenment.”
Bradley R. Smith, Break His Bones: The Private Life of a Holocaust Revisionist, p. 99
Starting in the late 1980's, Bradley Smith began a campaign to publish advertisements in college newspapers. The intention was to foster open debate on the Holocaust story throughout the country. What follows is a partial list of those advertisements, reactions to them by students, professors, pressure groups and the media, as well as additional information which has been collected over the years. A few of the ads offered financial compensation for promoting the controversy in a national forum. The terms of these ads have expired and are presented here for historical and research purposes only.
What became known as the “Campus Campaign” was discussed in some detail, albeit a very biased account, in a chapter entitled “The Battle for the Campus” in Deborah Lipstadt's highly subjective book Denying the Holocaust. While Smith argued directly for intellectual freedom and open debate on campus, Lipstadt, a professor, took the opposing view — that ideas, especially dissident ideas regarding the Holocaust story, were not worthy of discussion in America's colleges and universities.
By Jett Rucker ∙ May 26, 2013
When national guardsmen came to the Kent State campus that terrible day in May 1970, you didn’t have to pay to get to see them. In fact, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder may never have seen them at all as they walked between classes, until the guardsmen’s bullets came from nowhere and snuffed out their…
By Mark Weber ∙ December 15, 1999
Bradley Smith reports on his work at the Eleventh IHR Conference. Bradley Smith is back in the news. The veteran revisionist activist has touched off a major furor that has received nationwide newspaper and television attention with the distribution at Hofstra University in Long Island, New York, of his new 28-page magazine-format publication. He arranged…
By Mark Weber ∙ July 1, 1995
During the 1994-95 academic year, Bradley Smith – probably America's most prominent revisionist activist – succeeded in publishing a large-size advertisement calling for open debate on the Holocaust issue in 17 student newspapers across the country. Through his “Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust” (CODOH), Smith has been publishing these ads since 1991 as…
By Mark Weber, Greg Raven ∙ July 1, 1994
During the past year Bradley Smith – America’s most prominent revisionist activist, and a good friend of the Institute for Historical Review – has succeeded in generatingunprecedented nationwide publicity for Holocaust revisionism as part of his “Campus Project.” Defying a well-organized campaign of threats, intimidation and smears, he and his Committee for Open Debate on…
By Mark Weber ∙ November 1, 1993
Bradley Smith, intrepid chairman of the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH), attracted nationwide notoriety in late 1991 and early 1992 as a result of his success in placing advertisements calling for open debate on the Holocaust issue in student newspapers at several major universities. After something of a lapse, Smith has recently…
By Theodore J. O'Keefe ∙ May 1, 1993
A Sacred Cow Is Gored Among the Longhorns Theodore J. O'Keefe is an editor with the Institute for Historical Review, and former editor of the Journal. Educated at Harvard University, he is the author of numerous articles on historical and political subjects. On February 19, after 15 months of intimidation and pressure by the Anti-Defamation…
By Zan Overall ∙ September 20, 2012
On Wednesday, Sept. 5, I walked into the offices of the CSUN student newspaper, The Sundial, to discuss the rejection of Bradley's ad, a text link that reads: “Holocaust History: the Question of Academic Conformity.” I encountered Nicole Maddocks, the person who had communicated the rejection to Bradley. It turned out that, in spite of…
By Bradley R. Smith, Zan Overall ∙ September 20, 2012
Ms. Sara Bloomfield, Mistress of the mighty United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has sent an appeal nationwide asking for donations to “Confront Holocaust Denial.” Mistress Bloomfield singles out the work of Bradley Smith and CODOH to establish, yet again, how the publication of simple advertisements in student newspapers puts at risk everything her monumental Holocaust-promoting…
By Bradley R. Smith ∙ September 20, 2012
This is the moment to introduce Mr. Zan Overall, “The Wise Old Man.” Zan is working with me on the Cal State Northridge campus. Zan is a straightforward, out-front activist—never mind that he is 87 years old—who shows up at such venues as the Academy Awards ceremonies and the Stephen S. Wise Temple with placards…
By Bradley R. Smith ∙ March 1, 1998
For much of the past decade, the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust has made America’s colleges and universities the chief target of its campaign to open minds to the case for Holocaust revisionism. We have run advertisements at more than two hundred campus newspapers; more than a million students, faculty and other staff…
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