Oct. 30



FRANCE:

French Professor Faces Suspension for Comments About the Holocaust


The president of a university in France has asked the country's education
minister to suspend a professor for comments he made this month that
called into question the existence of Nazi gas chambers.

Guy Lavorel, president of Jean Moulin University, in Lyon, acted following
remarks by Bruno Gollnisch, a professor of languages and Japanese culture
who is also a member of the European Parliament and the deputy leader of
the National Front, a far-right political party.

Mr. Lavorel said he would also pursue university disciplinary measures
against Mr. Gollnisch. The president's options are limited because, like
most French universities, Jean Moulin, which is known as Lyon III, is a
public institution and therefore falls under the ultimate authority of the
education ministry.

Denying that the Holocaust happened is against the law in France, but like
employees at other public institutions, Mr. Gollnisch is shielded by
stringent worker-protection laws that make it extremely difficult to
dismiss civil servants.

Lyon III has long been at the center of controversy related to Holocaust
denial and anti-Semitism in France. The university was founded in 1973 by
conservative faculty members and students at Lumire University, also known
as Lyon II, who felt alienated by that university's leftist leanings.
Since its establishment, allegations of extreme right-wing sympathies have
dogged several people associated with Lyon III.

In 2002, Jack Lang, then the minister of education, ordered an inquiry
into racism and Holocaust denial at the university. Critics of the
university charged that the president of Lyon III at the time, Gilles
Guyot, was excessively tolerant of faculty members who espoused far-right
and "negationist" views. The latter is the French term for Holocaust
denial.

The government-appointed Commission on Racism and Negationism at Jean
Moulin University Lyon III, a panel headed by the renowned historian Henry
Rousso, just published its final report, and it was in response to
portions of that report that were published in a leftist newspaper that
Mr. Gollnisch made his comments, at a news conference and in a later
television appearance.

The 263-page document says that "it is incontestable that the founders of
Lyon III more than just tolerated the expression of extreme-right ideas."
Despite the university's history, the report concludes that "the current
situation at Lyon III is not comparable to the situation 20 or 30 years
ago."

"To write that the university is a 'fascist school,'" the report
continues, "does not correspond to reality, unless you think that a few
extreme-right militants, even if they are still active, are enough to make
a university of such a size this kind of place. To do so would be to
ignore all the advances of the past decade by student groups and
professors combating racism and negationism."

A Horror

The report singles out Mr. Gollnisch as "an interesting case." It says of
him: "He is by far the most important political personality at Lyon III,
and the only one with a national and international profile in the French
extreme right. This could no doubt have reinforced, deliberately or not,
the idea that Lyon III was a 'bastion of the extreme right.' But at the
same time he was the least directly criticized for his university-related
activities."

In his comments, Mr. Gollnisch said that Mr. Rousso is a "Jewish
personality" and made clear that he was fully aware of how provocative he
was being.

"I don't know if I will be chased out of my teaching post or even put in
prison for this phrase, but I assume so," he said. "There is not a serious
historian who adheres completely to the conclusions of the Nuremberg
trials. I do not call into question the existence of the concentration
camps, but as to the number of dead, historians could still have something
to argue about. As to the existence of the gas chambers, that is up to the
historians to determine."

In a written statement, President Lavorel said that he had reacted with
"stupefaction" to Mr. Gollnisch's comments and that he was asking the
minister of education to suspend Mr. Gollnisch. The minister, Franois
Fillon, expressed his "indignation" with Mr. Gollnisch's statements in an
interview with Agence France-Presse, but did not say what his official
response would be to Mr. Lavorel's request. He referred instead to the
disciplinary action the university has already taken against Mr. Gollnisch
and said that the professor's peers must decide his fate: "Those who work
at the university are protected by this liberty. The minister does not
have the right to intervene."

Mr. Fillon's office does indeed have final authority over whether Mr.
Gollnisch remains a public employee, but for now the minister seems to
prefer for the politician-professor to face other sanctions rather than
embroiling himself too directly in a dispute with political overtones. The
justice minister has shown no such reluctance and said that Mr.
Gollnisch's comments were completely unacceptable and that his office
would examine the possibility of bringing legal proceedings against the
professor. Several antiracism organizations have announced that they will
file legal actions against Mr. Gollnisch.

The leader of Mr. Gollnisch's political party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has also
called into question the magnitude of the Holocaust, most notoriously when
he referred to the gas chambers used to kill Jews and other victims of the
Nazi regime as a mere "detail of history." Mr. Le Pen was convicted and
fined for that remark, and he was later stripped of his seat in the
European Parliament.

Prepared for Legal Action

The French Union of Jewish Students pursued and won a lawsuit against Mr.
Le Pen, and according to Mikael Benfredj, one of its national secretaries,
it is prepared to do the same against Mr. Gollnisch.

Mr. Benfredj said his organization was not surprised by Mr. Gollnisch's
remarks, adding that "Lyon III is one of the hearts of negationism in
France."

Mr. Rousso's report notes that differing views about the Holocaust can
arise within academe, raising legitimate questions about academic freedom.
But academic freedom, it says, "does not mean a total license for those at
a university."

The report distinguishes between the opposing demands of, "on the one
side, respect for the liberty of expression of those at a university and,
on the other, the need to suppress scientifically inept discourse, which
legitimizes racist and anti-Semitic theories."

Mr. Rousso, who is the director of the Institute of Contemporary History
at the National Center of Scientific Research, near Paris, said that "it
was not a surprise for me to see that Mr. Gollnisch is an anti-Semite and
a negationist." The personal comments directed against him by Mr.
Gollnisch were in keeping with a long tradition of French anti-Semitism,
he added.

Mr. Rousso did say that he was heartened by the swift condemnation from
Lyon III of Mr. Gollnisch's remarks. "Usually in the past, the first
reaction was to say that this is not our problem," he said. "The reaction
by President Lavorel is reassuring."

(source: Chronicle of Higher Education)