ADL condemns Arkansas university for honoring Holocaust denier
According to the ADL, a 2005 graduate seminar by Link used antisemitic, neo-Nazi articles as historical texts and numerous students have testified against his use of bigotry in the classroom.
By MENACHEM SHLOMOUS academic Deborah Lipstadt (C) exults 11 April 2000 the High Court in London after winning a libel case brought against her and Penguin publications by British revisionist historian David Irving.(photo credit: MARTIN HAYHOW / AFP)
The Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federation of Arkansas and more than 40 Holocaust scholars have written a letter to Arkansas Tech University criticizing it for naming a scholarship after Dr. Michael Link, a known Holocaust denier.According to the ADL, a 2005 graduate seminar by Link used antisemitic, neo-Nazi articles as historical texts and numerous students have testified against his use of bigotry in the classroom.Link taught at the Arkansas university for over 50 years."Over the course of Dr. Link’s tenure, the university allowed him to expose thousands of students to these odious, dangerous mistruths under the guise of three deeply disturbing and absolutely intolerable tactics," the letter reads."First, Dr. Link presented misinformation as history. Second, he presented the antisemitic nature of this misinformation as though it were truthful, correct, and acceptable. Third, he presented the question of whether the Holocaust occurred — an irrefutable historical fact — as though it were an appropriate, valid point of debate."The letter was addressed to the president of the university and called on him to rethink the university's decision. It was signed by numerous scholars and organization leaders, including Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, the leading world expert on Holocaust denial, and Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the ADL.“We condemn the inaction of Arkansas Tech University in the strongest possible terms," the letter reads. "By simultaneously honoring and seeking to conceal the antisemitism of Dr. Link, the university has become complicit in his hate. We call upon Arkansas Tech University to immediately remedy this situation.”
