January 10, 1997

Professor Puts Holocaust Theories Online, Prompting Accusations at Northwestern

By PAMELA MENDELS

uch to the consternation of his employer, Arthur R. Butz, a tenured associate professor of engineering at Northwestern University, has long espoused the view that the genocide of European Jews in World War II is a myth.

Butz first published his opinions 20 years ago, in a book called The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Scholars, and, indeed, the university president, say his ideas are to history what theories of a flat earth are to geography. But school officials also believe that to silence Butz would be to thwart academic freedom, and note that over the years Butz has complied with a university policy of teaching students only his area of expertise, electrical engineering, leaving his Holocaust theories at the classroom door.

Old arguments about the limits of intellectual freedom are thrust into cyberspace.

Now, however, Butz has used his Northwestern University Internet access to publish his views on a Web site. That -- and the fact that an opponent of Butz was not asked to return to teach in the engineering school -- has stirred an intense debate about academic freedom and the Internet.

On one side are those, including Northwestern University officials and many scholars, who believe that academic freedom means the protection of all ideas, even those that are "idiotic" and "monstrous," two of the adjectives Northwestern's president, Henry S. Bienen, uses to describe Butz's theories.

On the other side are those, such as officials of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, who believe some ideas are so outrageous that they have no place in an academic forum, including a university-sponsored Internet presence.

What almost everyone agrees on, however, is that the debate about Butz's Web site is the newest version of old arguments about the limits of intellectual freedom. "What it all tells me is that the same problems that have been troublesome in print are likely to recur in cyberspace," said Robert M. O'Neil, past president of the universities of Wisconsin and Virginia and now the director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression in Charlottesville, Va. "Because of the far greater impact of electronic media, communication is likely to be wider-spread geographically and more immediately available, but the issues raised by it are not qualitatively different."

In recent years, stories of students' abuse of Internet privileges have become almost commonplace. Typically these incidents revolve around pornographic or harassing or racist comments. O'Neil believes it is inevitable that controversies involving professors, especially when they hold unorthodox and even offensive views, are bound to occur also as the Internet becomes more firmly planted in university life.

We can deal with the fact that we have online Holocaust deniers, but the idea that that should come via Northwestern is absolutely unbelievable. Rabbi Abraham D. Cooper Associate Dean of the Wiesenthal Center

Bienen believes that principles of academic freedom must apply not just to speech in print, on a campus quad or other traditional academic venues, but to the Internet as well. Therefore the university's computer use policy says that "the network is a free and open forum for the expression of ideas, including viewpoints that are strange, unorthodox, or unpopular" and that no sanctions will be taken against such views, provided it is clear that they do not represent the university.

Butz's web page, which includes such a disclaimer, was first posted last spring. It caught the attention of a Chicago-area Jewish newspaper, and then of Sheldon L. Epstein, a lawyer and engineer who had also been teaching, as a volunteer, a course in engineering design at Northwestern for two years.

Epstein was outraged by the site, which he describes as "a libel against the victims of the Holocaust."

He told university officials that he intended to respond by incorporating into his course discussion of the Holocaust, crafted as an exercise in thinking out an engineer's social and moral responsibilities in the face of genocide.

University officials disapproved, Epstein says, and asked him not to bring the Holocaust into his class, which was called "Engineering Design and Entrepreneurship." Epstein persisted with his plans, however. And several months ago he learned that his appointment at the school would not be renewed.

Jerome B. Cohen, dean of Northwestern's Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, acknowledged that he asked Epstein to refrain from discussion of the Holocaust of his class. The reason, according to a Web site Cohen has posted on the matter, is that the material had no bearing on engineering design. Furthermore, Cohen's Web site says, there were other ways for Epstein to answer Butz, such as by giving a public lecture, having an out-of-class discussion with his students or "via the same Net."

Cohen said in an interview that Epstein's decision to teach the Holocaust matter anyway played no role in the decision to drop him as an instructor. The Cohen Web site cites, instead, a high dropout rate for Epstein's course and other reasons.

But Epstein insists that the reason he is no longer an instructor at Northwestern was his determination to refute Butz in his class. "I was not re-appointed because I chose to use the Holocaust as an example of irresponsible and unethical behavior by engineers in the Second World War," He said. And he argues that this was a necessary lesson to teach in part because he found that many young people were ignorant about World War II atrocities.

We are an institution committed to the open expression of ideas. Thus it is of particular importance that, inside the boundaries of the law, we err on the side of offending people. Henry S. Bienen Northwestern University President

Whatever the reasons he was removed from instructing, Epstein is angry that the university continues to be the host for Butz's Web site, and says his reaction today is what it was when he first discussed the matter with engineering department officials. "I told them I think it is unconscionable to publish that kind of material on a university server, that the university had a responsibility under its trademark rights, if nothing, else, to maintain the quality and caliber of its scholarship and that Butz should be told to move his article over to that of an independent Internet service provider, where it would be clear that he was not being published under the imprimatur of the university," he said.

Epstein is not the only person who believes this. Rabbi Abraham D. Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, which has begun a campaign against hate speech online, has written to complain about the site and does not buy the university's free speech argument. "So long as Butz is able to promote his product -- his book -- under the umbrella of Northwestern University online, they are in effect giving him a mantle of legitimacy reaching out potentially to millions of people," Cooper says. "We can deal with the fact that we have online Holocaust deniers, but the idea that that should come via Northwestern is absolutely unbelievable."

Bienen, the president of Northwestern, has several responses. For one thing, he notes, the appearance of the site on a university server in no way means that the university is lending endorsement to Butz's ideas. In fact, in compliance with the university computer use policy, Butz writes at the beginning of his home page that his views "are outside the purview of my role as an Electrical Engineering faculty member." And elsewhere on the university Web site, Bienen has posted a response to Butz in which he calls attempts at rewriting Nazi genocide history "a contemptible insult."

But, Bienen said in an interview, to ask Butz to remove his page would be to undermine the university's reason for being: free inquiry. "We are an institution committed to the open expression of ideas," he said. "That is what a university is all about. We are that. Thus it is of particular importance that, inside the boundaries of the law, we err on the side of offending people."

Bienen's views are seconded by Peter F. Hayes, a tenured history professor, who teaches a course in modern Germany and the Holocaust at Northwestern.

Hayes is appalled by Butz's views. And yet he would not like to see the university take action against Butz's Web site, for fear it would put other sites with controversial views in danger. "If the argument is that we can't have on the Web site things we regard as offensive or erroneous, then any other faculty member's Web site would be susceptible to challenge on either of those grounds: offensive or erroneous." he said. "The university would begin to exercise a kind of police power over Web sites."

And what does Arthur Butz have to say about the debate? Butz did not wish to speak at length about the matter, but agreed to a brief phone interview in which he said he thought even his ideas should be protected by notions of intellectual freedom.

"This is the argument that I think even a person who doesn't agree with my history thesis should nevertheless accept," he said.

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Related Sites
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• Butz home page

• University response

• NWU Engineering Department response

• Sheldon Epstein on the controversy

• The Wiesenthal Center

Pamela Mendels at mendels@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.