🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Btup2s.970@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca> hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) writes:
>In article <BtpD25.44u@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca>, shallit@graceland.uwaterloo.ca (Jeffrey Shallit) writes:
>> He had been invited to speak to the Carleton University history department
>> in 1989, but that invitation was cancelled when they found out who
>> he really was.  Similarly, a talk before the Royal Military Institute 
>> in Toronto was cancelled when they found out his real message.
>> According to the Globe & Mail (March 8, 1989), "Col. Hardie said
>> the institute was unaware of Mr. Irving's controversial [sic] views."
>
>  We can't let people with "controversial views" speak to a forum, can we?
>  Instead of attempting to silence those academics with these views, why
>  not show the errors in their conclusions via academic means?  Surely
>  that's the best way to discredit academic liars.
>
>  When Rushton's results got press time, nobody bothered to look at his
>  method.  Later, when his method came to light, everybody laughed.
>  Similarly, with the recent gender-difference brain-size study.  
>
>                                                               Herb... 


First, Mr. Irving is not an "academic", as you assert, since he holds
no post at "an academy or school esp. of higher learning" (quoting Webster's).

Second, he is not even an historian, since several have discovered that
he has falsified the historical record (for one, omitting lines from Goebbels'
diaries that would have contradicted his thesis; see newspaper articles
cited in previous messages).

Third, Carleton cancelling a talk by this charlatan cannot be equated in my mind
as "attempting to silence" him.  Mr. Irving is free to speak elsewhere, and does.
(Just recently, he addressed neo-Nazis in Germany, as the approving crowd
shouted "Sieg Heil".) Would Mr. Kunze welcome cranks coming to
speak in his department?  I'm the colloquium chairman for the CS department:
should colloquium slots be allocated to anyone, no matter how dishonest or inept?

I welcome honest researchers with controversial views.  I don't generally
welcome hate-mongers, liars, and convicted criminals.  Irving is all three.

Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.

Jeff Shallit