Deborah Lipstadt, a historian who was sued for calling a British author a Holocaust denier, will speak at Ithaca College on Thursday, October 25, at 7:15 p.m. in the Klingenstein Lounge, Campus Center. Her talk is free and open to the public.
Lipstadt is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, where she directs the Institute for Jewish Studies. Her most recent book, History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving, is the story of her libel trial in London, in which she was sued by Irving for writing that he was a Holocaust denier who had manipulated and distorted real documents in his books on Adolph Hitler and World War II. After a legal battle that lasted nearly six years, a judge ruled in Lipstadt's favor, finding that Irving was not only a Holocaust denier, but also anti-Semitic, a racist, and an associate of right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.
The trial was described by the Daily Telegraph as having "done for the new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations," while the Times of London said of Lipstadt's win: "History has had its day in court and scored a crushing victory."
It was Lipstadt's groundbreaking 1994 work, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory -- the first full-length study of those who attempt to deny the Holocaust -- that drew Irving's libel suit. She is also the author of Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, an examination of how the American press covered the news of the persecution of European Jewry between 1933 and 1945.
Lipstadt served as a historical consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and was appointed by President Clinton to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. From 1996 through 1999, she served as a member of the U.S. State Department Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad. The Forward newspaper named her number two on its list of the top fifty Jewish newsmakers for the year 2000.
Lipstadt's talk is sponsored by the Ithaca College Jewish studies program. Arrangements for her visit were made through the B’nai B’rith Lecture Bureau. For more information, contact Jill Goldsmith at 607-274-1988 or [mailto:jgoldsmith@ithaca.edu].
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20071022120649893