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U.S. professor supports Iranian president's Holocaust statements(Chicago Tribune (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CHICAGO _ A Northwestern University professor known for denying the Holocaust happened has publicly sided with Iran's hard-line president, who has been on a campaign against Israel. Engineering professor Arthur Butz said that he agrees with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remarks calling the Holocaust a "myth." Butz said his comments supporting the president recently were published by the English-language Tehran Times and Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency. Butz, a tenured professor whose views have been known in the United States for years, is being promoted by Iranian news sources as one of the world scholars who support Ahmadinejad's views on the Holocaust. "I congratulate him on becoming the first head of state to speak out clearly on these issues and regret only that it was not a Western head of state," Butz said in a Mehr news report. He posted the same comments on his Northwestern-provided Web site. Jewish leaders expressed fear that support from a United States educator could add credibility to Ahmadinejad's comments about Israel and the Holocaust. "Butz's most recent invective demonstrates the power of hate to rally extremists, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers out from under their rocks throughout the world," said Richard Hirschhaut, executive director of the Holocaust Foundation of Illinois. A report published Wednesday by Mehr said Butz was interviewed Dec. 26 "in the wake of the international uproar that arose" after Ahmadinejad questioned the Nazi killing of 6 million Jews and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Iran also recently announced plans for a conference to examine evidence of the Holocaust. Butz did not comment in the Iranian press or on his Web site about Ahmadinejad's views on the destruction of Israel. Butz told the Chicago Tribune Friday that his comments supporting Ahmadinejad were first published in December in the Tehran Times after he e-mailed a statement to an Iranian journalist. He said the reporter asked him more questions by e-mail, and his response was published this week by the news agency. Butz said he spoke to the Iranian press because "sometimes I just talk about the things I'm interested in." Butz said in the Mehr report that the Holocaust didn't happen, that it is a "deliberately contrived falsehood" and that its promulgation was motivated by the desire to create a Jewish state in the Middle East. "I continue to maintain those three theses, which have become core features of what is called `Holocaust revisionism.' Apart from some nuances of wording, the three theses were repeated by President Ahmadinejad. Therefore, there can be no question that I endorse his remarks in those respects," Butz wrote. Since 1996, Butz has posted his views about the Holocaust on his Northwestern-affiliated Web site, including information from his 1976 book "The Hoax of the 20th Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry." Northwestern University spokesman Al Cubbage emphasized that the university does not agree with Butz. "As certainly has been made clear on many occasions, Northwestern University as an institution obviously does not endorse or agree with the personal opinions of professor Butz," Cubbage said. "At the same time, however, the university does believe that its faculty members are entitled to express their own personal opinions." ___ (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com/ Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail [email protected]. |