Response to Ralph Luker's Question

by Liberty and Power

Ralph Luker has asked me the following question:

Assume, just for the purpose of discussion, that an administration knows that it has a tenured bigot on its faculty. And assume, for the purpose of discussion, that he offers a generalization in class that seems reasonable, given the known, maybe even the knowable, facts. The generalization may be a function of his bias. It offends some people. It is probably contestable. What, if anything, is the administration's appropriate action? Should it: a) fire the faculty member? b) suspend the man? c) deny him a year's salary increase and put a letter of reprimand in his file? or d) insist that he take sensitivity training?

I believe that in almost all cases, the administration should do none of the above. Prof. Hoppe's case is certainly one that it should ignore.

But the administration's non-response should not be interpreted as a vindication of his ideas or as a ban on all future criticism of them. An academic freedom that only cuts one way is no better than an academic fascism.

Academics who disagree with Hoppe--or with any similarly controversial figure--have a responsibility to speak out against that individual, and to counter his doubtful claims not with punishment, but with better, more substantive counter-claims. What astonishes me most in the PC wars is how eager some people are to defend dubious assertions merely because criticizing them will suggest that they bear some superficial similarities to the left. Real academic freedom is going to upset everyone, not just half of everyone.

There are very few places where I think the administration ought to discipline academics. Fraud clearly deserves punishment, as does neglect of one's academic duties. I am inclined to think, for instance, that a professor who taught his students that the Holocaust never happened--or that it was merely a"theory"--is necessarily engaging in a knowing misrepresentation of the facts. Such a person should be fired, and I would feel not the least sympathy for him.

Happily, Prof. Hoppe is no such fraud. He's merely made a doubtful claim that seems likely based on personal bias. He deserves to have a bunch of other academics howl at him for a few days, and then we'll all move on.

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More Comments:

Jason Kuznicki - 2/8/2005

I should stress that the Holocaust is not my area of expertise, but it has always struck me as bizarre, the talk of which regime was "worse," communist Russia or Nazi Germany.

Both were thoroughly vile, and for precisely the same reason: They both considered the individual as merely an instrument toward the ends of the collective. That one killed more than the other in no way exonerates either of them, nor does the allegation that in one regime the deaths were more predictable than in the other. (Is predictable violence--against Jews only--really better than unpredictable violence--against the vaguely defined class enemies of the regime--when both forms of violence are clearly premeditated and implied in the political principles of a regime? And can we split those hairs any more finely?)

William Marina - 2/8/2005

What you quote from Hoppe on Germany is essentially correct.
Even on the Holocaust, of 4million, not 6 million killed, a horrendous number by any measure, there were haters in the Nazi movement worse than Hitler, who until the Final Solution in early '42, was talking about deportations to Madagascar, etc., for blood money. Even Himmler in E. Europe was forced to act when Police Death squads from Hamburg started killing on a random basis, when any "good" German would want careful records kept, as was then done.
Bill Marina

Bill Woolsey - 2/8/2005

I don't believe a university should
fire a Professor if he or she suddenly claims
to be convinced by some version of holocaust
revisionism.

While I might believe that the most likely
explanation is that the person doesn't really
believe it and has some ulterior motive, using
such a rationale to overturn tenure is fraught
with difficulty.

For example, suppose one of my colleagues claimed
a sudden conversion to Marxist economics. I don't
believe that moonshine is any more plausible than
holocaust revisionism. Surely, such a person must
have some ulterior motive--lusting for power in
a post-revolution world. Right?

I don't believe that universities are required to
hire people with kooky notions. I think they can
require that Professors cover the standard material
on a common syllabus. That is, Professors can't spend
all their time in class promoting kooky notions. But to
describe having wrong,even outlandish ideas to be
fraud, and so allow for a loss of tenure--what a
mess.

Steven Horwitz - 2/8/2005

...about old Hans. I don't think he's a Holocaust denier, but he's sure said some interesting things about Germany of that period. http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=3638 . You're the historian, so you render your own judgment.

"While the facts and the conclusions reached are largely correct and reasonable, the book is not without shortcomings. Even a professed revisionist such as Ebeling cannot free himself entirely from orthodox-leftist historical myths when he appears to liken and classify as on a par the evils of Stalin and Hitler and the socio-economic character of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. From 1929 to 1939, in peace time, Stalin and the Bolsheviks killed about 20 million Soviet citizens, for no predictable reason. Hitler and the National Socialists ruined the businesses and careers of hundreds of thousands of German citizens, but the number of people killed by them before the outbreak of the war was only a few hundred, most of them fellow Nazis and all of them for a predictable reason. Even immediately after the onset of the war, when it became known that the Nazis had begun to engage in mercy killings of the incurably insane (euthanasia), the Catholic bishops, led by Bernhard von Galen, openly protested, and German public opinion compelled the Nazis to halt the program. Bishop (later: Cardinal) von Galen survived the Nazi regime. Under Stalin and the Bolsheviks, any such opposition was impossible and Bishop von Galen would have been quickly disposed of. Also irritating is Hornberger's inclination toward psychobabble, according to which Hitler and national socialism are somehow the outgrowth of parent alcoholism and child abuse. "