The Campus Project
WINTER 1990/91: Northwestern University deserves our immediate and very serious attention. There is an opening there to promote open debate on the Holocaust that is so promising we cannot afford to not take advantage of it. I want to pursue that opportunity with a series of actions that are simple, direct and comprehensive. Here is what I plan to do, with your support:
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Place a one-column one-inch announcement in the Daily Northwestern offering access to Revisionist writings. The ad will look like the following, but will be typeset:
ARE THE GAS CHAMBER STORIES FALSE?
IS OPEN DEBATE SUPPRESSED?
For Information Contact:
Committee For Open Debate
On The Holocaust
PO Box 3207, Visalia, CA 93278
Tel: (209) 733 2653This little announcement works wonders. I know. I've had substantial experience in using it. It only bas to run once a week, so it's not expensive. I've used it to get very good results at Penn State, USC, Stanford and other campuses. Students and professors both contract us for Revisionist literature. More important in the short run is that it lights a fire under those individuals and organizations on the campus whose mission it is to protect the orthodox Holocaust story from free inquiry at all costs. They have to either let the ad run, in which case Revisionist literature begins to seep all through the campus, or they have to kill the ad, in which case they create a censorship issue for themselves—and for us.
- Monitor the press at Northwestern and respond to articles on the Holocaust that appear there. Do the sale for the Chicago Sun Times and the Tribune. the trick here is two-fold: if CODOH's response is published, all is well. If it isn't, then we have to be prepared to send photocopies of the response to 100/150 student leaders and other VIPs on campus so that they all understand the issues at stake and how they are being stonewalled.
- Use direct mail to solicit speaking engagements from recognized campus student organizations.
- Use direct mail to focus on soliciting interviews with Chicago media, including TV, radio and the print press.
- Identify supporters in the Chicago area who will volunteer to monitor the college press at other campuses, including University of Chicago, Chicago State, De Paul and Loyola. I have little doubt but that the Revisionist issue, or the Revisionist/censorship issue, will spill over onto some of these other campuses. It's too hot and to important a subject not to.
This means that what we do at Northwestern should be replicated, as the opportunities arise, at other major universities in the Chicago area.
- None of the above is being proposed as a one-time effort. The process has to be repeated over again at each turn in the story as it develops on campus. While I can guarantee you a big important story at Northwestern around the Holocaust story, there is no way to predict the twists and turns it will take. We have to be flexible and ready for surprises.
COMPARING THE OPPORTUNITY AT NORTWESTERN WITH THE VERY SUCCESSFUL EFFORT AT PENN STATE UNIVERSITY IN 1989/90. We started at Penn State by running the open debate announcement illustrated above, and after eight weeks a Penn state professor went to the ADL, which sent a secret dossier on myself to the managinq editor of the campus newspaper, with the result that we were prohibited from running it any longer. I then started a campaign like the one I am putting in place at Horthwestern. Before we were through, we had involved students, professors, the local community newspaper, Jewish organizations and even the president of Penn State in open debate about the Holocaust. Early this year the dean of the Penn State School of Communications wrote a letter to the community press claiming that no historian had ever stated that there were gas chambers at Dachau and no survivors had ever claimed to have seen them. I responded with six pages of data demonstrating that the dean was wrong on both points, and sent it to 220 student leaders and VIPs on the campus. From that day to this nothing more bas been published on the Holocaust by either Penn state or the community newspapers. It was very interesting to see them give up so completely, and to simply shut down the debate that had developed.
NORTHWESTERN PRESENTS A VERY DIFFERENT SITUATION. While Penn state was geographically isolated and associated with one small town, Northwestern University is in the great metropolitan center of Chicago. There is major media of every kind to work with. There are a dozen other major colleges ad universities in the area. There is an immense and ethnically disparate population.
WE CANNOT BE SHUT OUR OF CHICAOO OR SHUT DOWN IN CHICAOO. Everything is in our favor. This can be very big. The Penn State file bas 40 pages of extremely revealing published and unpublished correspondence (ask for a copy of it – it's very interesting). At Northwestern, in all likelihood, we will develop a file extending to hundreds of pages.
This Is What We Want
- PROVIDE ACCESS TO REVISIONIST SCHOLARSHIP TO STUDENTS AT NORTHWESTERN. We must have access, in turn, to the campus press there.
- PLACE REVISIONIST LITERATURE IN THE NORTHWESTERN RESEARCH LIBRARY AND THE CAMPUS BOOKSTORE.
- ARRANGE SPEAKING DATES FOR REVISIONIST SPEAKERS AT NORTHWESTERN
- ARRANGE FOR A PUBLIC DEBATE AT NORTHWESTERN BETWEEN REVISIONIST AND ORTHODOX HOLOCAUST SCHOLARS
- INITIATE THE PROCESS TO INTEGRATE REVISIONIST SCHOLARSHIP INTO HOLOCAUST STUDIES PROGRAMS
- INVOLVE ALL CHICAOO AREA MEDIA IN THE PROCESS
- INVOLVE ALL OTHER MAJOR COLLEGES IN THE CHICAGO AREA IN THE PROCESS
- INVOLVE NATIONAL AND LOCAL ANTI-CENSORSHIP ORGANIZATIONS IN OUR STRUGGLE ON OUR SIDE
- USE THE NORTHWESTERN PROJECT AS THE GUIDEPOST FOR SIMILAR PROJECTS IN OTHER CITIES
THE SUCCESS OF THIS PROJECTS DEPENDS GREATLY ON HOW MUCH SUPPORT YOU THINK IT IS WORTH OF. I need your financial support to:
- run inexpensive ads in campus newspapers, beginning with Northwestern
- subscribe to those periodicals that I cannot get monitored on site
- to pay for typesetting, printing, postage, telephone bills, etc.
- to handle all the other incidental exigencies and research costs that arise
I believe the Northwestern project will be THE break-through campus project. I believe that we can produce open debate on the Holocaust at Northwestern for the first time on any campus in the U.S. I believe Revisionist speakers are going to address student audiences at Northwestern. I believe we can prepare the ground so that Dr. Arthur Butz will be offered his first public platform at Northwestern, after twelve years of the despicable bigotry that has kept him silent on the very campus where be teaches.
I believe so strongly in the Northwestern project that I am going to focus everything I do with media and the colleges on Northwestern. I'm not going to spread myself thin like I have in the past. 1'm going to focus at this one point, relentlessly, with everything I have.
THE TIME IS RiGHT! Let's do this project. Give me your support. I'll keep you fully informed of everything that transpires. When the time is right, I'll go to Northwestern myself. I'll talk to everyone on campus. I will do everything I can to promote this project. I need your financial help. And if you live in the Chicago area or have contacts there and want to volunteer some time, that would be moSt valuable to me.
Best wishes,
Bradley R. Smith
Bibliographic information about this document: Smith's Report, no. 2, November 1990, pp. 5f.
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