A Panacea of Toleration?

Abstract

During the early 1990s Bradley Smith sent ads denying the Holocaust to student newspapers across the country. While most papers rejected the ads, a sizable minority ran them. This chapter looks at four campuses where the campus paper ran an ad denying the Holocaust. The first two cases come from 1991, the first year of Smith’s campaign. At the University of Michigan, the college newspaper ran the ad by mistake but then defended itself on free-speech grounds. At Ohio State, the paper’s decision to run the Smith ad touched off a pitched battle between pro- and anticensorship factions. The next two cases come from the 1993-94 academic year. In December 1993 the Smith ad ran at Brandeis University, a traditionally Jewish institution. Once again, there was controversy. By contrast, when the same ad ran at Queens College, which also has a large Jewish population, there was less furor.