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from exercising independent judgment, Deborah Lipstadt, Professor of Jewish and Holocaust studies
at Emory University, believed an author’s reputation alone could warrant the suppression of his or her
work. Professor Lipstadt, whom Mr. Irving would eventually sue unsuccessfully for libel—as well as her
British publisher, Penguin Books, Ltd.—told the Washington Post (April 3, 1996), “Of course the
reputation of the author counts. And no legitimate historian takes David Irving’s works seriously.”
According to Mr. Irving only six copies were in the United States and all were in the possession
of St. Martin’s Press (e-mail to author, July 29, 2004). Hence an unexamined biography of Dr. Joseph
Goebbels, a major historical figure of the twentieth century that contained the first utilization of
Goebbels’s Moscow-archived diaries, was suppressed due to rage over the reputation of its author and
not the content of the work. While the censoring of any book, even if content based, raises significant
questions of free speech and the public’s legitimate access to information, banning the dissemination
of a historical work, for reasons other than content, should prove troubling for historians as un-
American and a threat to the enterprise of historical scholarship. Imagine if the next Howard Zinn
book were not published due to influential-elite opposition that claimed his prior writings were
seditious and a clear and present danger to the vital interests of the United States.
Mr. Irving, however, was not without defenders on the implications of censoring history.
Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair (June 1996) charged that St. Martin’s “disgraced the business of
publishing and degraded the practice of debate. David Irving is not just a Fascist historian. He is also a
great historian of Fascism.” Raul Hilberg, who wrote The Destruction of the European Jews, told Mr.
Hitchens: “I have quoted [Adolph] Eichmann references that come from a neo-Nazi publishing house.
I am not for taboos and I am not for repression.” E. J. Hobsbawm was interviewed by D. D.
Guttenplan, the author of The Holocaust on Trial: History, Justice and the David Irving Libel Case .
The illustrious Marxist historian noted that “most historians” have political viewpoints, and that Mr.
Irving’s politics are irrelevant since historians should be judged “whether they produce work based on
evidence.” (New York Times, June 26, 1999) Indeed many who oppose censorship have explored
vigorously this dimension in assessing Mr. Irving’s scholarship.
Another opponent of quashing Mr. Irving’s revisionist history of National Socialism is Gordon A.
Craig , J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Stanford. In a dramatic book review
of Goebbels in the New York Review of Books ( September 19, 1996) he wrote: “Silencing Mr. Irving
would be a high price to pay for freedom from [his] annoyance...Mr. Irving, then, ha[s] an
indispensable part in the historical enterprise and we dare not disregard [his] views.” Since the tumult
over the publication of Goebbels, Mr. Irving has been largely confined to publishing his works,
including Goebbels, under his own imprint, Focal Point Publications.
I accepted a speaking invitation from a historian who has been castigated as anti-Semitic—a
charge that Mr. Irving has consistently denied—and denounced for a falsified revisionism of Nazi
Germany and the destruction of European Jewry. My mission, since my egregious suspension on
Veterans Day, November 11, 2002, for an act of conscience through a harshly worded antiwar e-mail, is
to demand academic freedom for university historians and no censorship of any historian for antiwar
or historiographical incorrectness
As an outspoken peace activist, pacifist and war resister, which were the underlying reasons for
my suspension in the twelfth week of a semester, I commend Mr. Irving’s courageous and febrile
opposition to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I was not
unmindful of this when I agreed to speak at his conference. If antiwar advocates can build coalitions
across the ideological divide, then future degradations of the Palestinians, future Holocausts, future
illegal walls of separation, future attacks on Jewish interests and future neoconservative crusades
against nonthreatening Islamic nations may be averted. Of course, an acceptance of a speaking
invitation does not connote uncritical acceptance of the host’s ethos. While disagreeing profoundly
with Mr. Irving on the importance of racial diversity and the value of embracing ardently
multiculturalism, I would neither stifle his speech nor banish his provocative and intrepid revisionism
of World War II.
I believe historians should welcome the opportunity to address any audience that is willing to
listen and respond to their ideas. I stand in solidarity with all historians and other academics who have
suffered for their views due to an intolerance of unpopular or infuriating speech. Any McCarthyite
suppression of historiography or radical antiwar speech—no matter how offensive to
some—must be challenged and condemned as anti-intellectual and antithetical to the
advancement of knowledge in an open society.
Without hectoring or condescending to an attentive and receptive audience of history buffs, I
articulated my views on racism and war at Mr. Irving’s “Real History Conference.” In my remarks,
“Historians v. American Militarism: Resisting Censorship,” I averred:
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