Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2000/04/24/truth_and_politics.php
Monday, April 24, 2000
On April 15, Opole University in Poland dismissed history professor Dariusz Ratajczak for publishing a book that claims the Nazi Holocaust never occurred. It was an appropriate move—an example that Northwestern University should follow. Ratajczak's book, Dangerous Themes, claims that the gas chambers at Nazi death camps were intended to kill lice on prisoners, that testimony from Holocaust eyewitnesses is 'useless,' and that academic researchers of Nazi crimes are 'followers of the religion of the Holocaust,' who perpetrate 'a false image of the past.'
Ratajczak is a kook, an anti-Semite, and also a shoddy historian. The Holocaust is about as well documented as any event in history, as a recent ruling in the British courts observed (see page 6), and anyone who claims it never occurred surely isn't fit to teach at a legitimate university. 'Academic freedom' may be difficult to define, but it shouldn't be a license to perpetrate lies, especially those with odious political purposes.
It may be equally hard to set precise guidelines for 'scholarship,' but one easy requirement is that the research should not be demonstrably false.
But it's not so easy to impose that requirement in the postmodern academy, with its reliance not on historical truth, but on disparate 'narratives' of history, on larger 'truths.'
Take, for example, the case of Rigoberta Menchu, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for an autobiographical account of her family's mistreatment by the Guatemalan army during that country's civil war. Academics champion Menchu as a central figure in the 'peace and social justice' movement and her testimonial is assigned reading at most universities, including Dartmouth.
The problem, though, is that the pivotal facts of Menchu's book are untrue. Menchu's brother—who, according to her autobiography, starved to death—is today living comfortably in Guatemala. And Menchu, who claimed to have never received any formal education, it turns out, attended two private boarding schools. David Stoll, a professor of anthropology at Middlebury College, catalogues an impressive list of fabrications in his book, Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans.
But the academic left doesn't really mind that Menchu's book is fraudulent: 'Whether the book is true or not, I don't care. We should teach our students about the brutality of the Guatemalan army and the U.S. financing of it... Even if she didn't watch her little brother being murdered, the military did murder people in Guatemala,' Wellesley College professor Marjorie Agosin told The Chronicle of Higher Education. 'I think Rigoberta Menchu has been used by the Right to negate the very important space that multiculturalism is providing in academia.' Menchu is a political icon, and her book jibes with a liberal political agenda. So Dartmouth professor Marysa Navarro, as well as others nationwide, still assign Menchu's book to their students.
'There's something wrong with scholars who say the facts don't matter,' said Daniel H. Levine, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. 'People don't want to discuss this because Rigoberta Menchu is an icon.'
Menchu's book is fiction presented as fact, and shielded from criticism with a postmodern-multiculturalist reliance on 'narrative': 'My truth is that my brother was burned alive,' Menchu told the Washington Post. He wasn't, though, but in today's academy, politics trumps scholastic integrity every time.
Campus Women's Resource Centers tout the 'fact' that 150,000 women die of anorexia every year. In fact, official data show that 150,000 women may suffer from the disease, but only about 100 die each year from it. College faculty, however, are more concerned with politics than with veracity—so people with accurate statistics are decried as sexist, and David Stoll—an ardent left-winger—is labeled an arch-conservative.
Colleges often use more than intimidation tactics to silence dissent from the party line. Michael Hollister, a professor of literature at Portland State University, is currently engaged in a lawsuit with PSU. Hollister's colleagues, he claims, conspired to deny him merit pay and salary raises after he made comments ridiculing feminist criticism (see page 7). In short, Hollister's speech cost him his pay.
Recently, China ousted two scholars from the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, after the scholars published an essay calling for political and economic reform. They are prohibited from ever again publishing their views in government publications.
The liberal educational tradition of the West, in contrast, has historically relied not on a particular ideology, but on the quest for truth. No longer.