A few months ago, I heard through the grapevine that the newspaper at my alma mater had printed an ad from a Holocaust revisionist. I was mildly upset at the time, mostly because when I stopped to think about it, I realized that it had been exactly four years since the same newspaper had printed a similar ad. Four years, of course, is the exact amount of time it takes to rotate out an entire undergraduate institution, meaning that no one who attended Vassar when the first ad ran was still a student there. It seemed almost inevitable.
The newspaper's earlier decision to run an ad from a Holocaust revisionist coincided with my entry into Jewish life on my campus‹a group of students were in the process of starting a Jewish journal. And undoubtedly the ad, or more specifically the community's and our own reaction to it, helped to push the endeavor forward. We received a number of articles inspired by the incident and the subsequent fallout. In response to the ad controversy, I took charge of writing an op-ed/letter condemning the editor's decision to publish, which was to be signed by all of the major campus student groups and then printed in the next edition of the offending newspaper. Two other students organized a well-attended speak-out. Overall the community reaction was swift, forceful, and unified.
So now, four years later, the same newspaper has once again printed essentially the same ad. The circumstances were somewhat different‹this time the editors never saw the ad whereas the first time a few had seen and approved it‹but similar damage was done. People were offended; descendants of survivors were hurt; the newspaper's incompetence was put on full display. Perhaps a few seeds of doubt about the veracity of the Holocaust were planted among the hundreds of students that read the paper each week.
Several months have passed since the reprinting of the ad, and at the time I was not inspired to write about it. Last week I was at Lights In Action's first national conference, held at the Brandeis Bardin Institute in Simi Valley, California. I ran a session in which students were formed into groups of five. Each group pretended that it was the editorial board of a school paper. Each board was confronted with three publishing decisions: whether or not to print an antisemitic column, letter, and a Holocaust revisionist ad. All had been printed in other newspapers.
The faux editorial boards reconvened, and read their decisions. With only a few dissenters, all wanted to print the ad in one form or another. Creative solutions were suggested, like running an editorial next to the ad or placing it on the front page under a sensationalist, tongue-in-cheek headline. But if a vote had been taken, the ad would have run in all of the papers, despite editorial boards comprised entirely of Jewish student leaders.
Two schools of thought are at work here: the Free Speech school and what I will call the Kill Dracula school. Each puts forward a different argument supporting publication of the ad. The Free Speech school declares that they are willing to print anything under the guise of the First Amendment (when pressed, few would publish an ad for a porn line. The real logic at work is that the denial ads, which are mostly text and resemble miniature articles, allegedly present opinions or views). Those who rationalize abdication of a publisher¹s essential prerogative invoke freedom of speech; but they fail to understand freedom of the press‹also a First Amendment right‹a freedom to publish or not to publish as they wish. The Kill Dracula school of thought believes that by exposing Holocaust revisionism to the light of truth, it will eventually die. Thus the ads are printed along with a corresponding article, and the situation is seen as an opportunity to educate the paper's readership about the dangerous falsehoods peddled by the likes of Bradley Smith and Ernst Zundel.
After some serious thought, I felt compelled to question why, exactly, I am so opposed to the printing of denial ads. And after some serious thought, I realized that although I dislike the ads themselves, I am more upset by the fact that after all these years it is still an issue that students are forced to confront. It is the cycle that upsets me. The refusal to print Holocaust denial ads would correct two profoundly embarrassing phenomenon. College editors, ignorant about the First Amendment, assume that freedom of the press is a passive freedom. And the number of your ³active or concerned² Jewish students on campus triples in the days following the ritual publication of poisonous drivel by antisemites with academic degrees. The Jewish community becomes a Chia Pet: add the water of Holocaust revisionism and watch it grow!
The time has come to end the cycle. Hillels and other Jewish student groups should meet with editorial boards of the school papers at the beginning of every year to preempt the printing of these ads. Nothing else will work. Reactive community engagement, no matter how vociferous, will be forgotten every four years. And although the Anti-Defamation League undoubtedly manages to prevent hundreds of ads from being printed, others continue to slip through. Students concerned that too many Jews place antisemitism at the center of their identity should work with those who have more traditional concerns about Holocaust denial. Their goal? To ensure that a meeting with the newspaper's editors is as routine as the annual bagel brunch for new students.
Mik Moore is the editor of New Voices