A Danish denier and irate Israelis

The recent decision by the Danish Arts Council to grant research funding to a holocaust denier has attracted criticism from commentators in Israel. This is both baffling and alarming when you consider that the subject of the student’s study is the involvement of Danes in Hitler’s SS, and not the existence or otherwise of the Final Solution. There is no need here to extrapolate from the particular abhorrence of holocaust denial, the legitimacy of the moral indignation that it provokes, and the need for it to be fought wherever it raises its ugly head. But it must be fought on the proper grounds, using the proper tools; and that is the ground of open and informed debate, using the tool of reasoned argument. What is not acceptable is the attempt to suppress unfavourable beliefs through legislation or through the refusal of funds for academic study.

The fact is that morality and moral censure, no matter how justified, have no say in the process of allocating research funding. It is worth remembering that some of the greatest advances in human history have been the product of research considered heretical or immoral at the time. In the context of fund allocation, the only relevant criterion is the academic merits of the scholar's submission. This doesn’t mean that, free from the shackles of moral oversight, any offensive crackpot theory may count on megabucks for its investigation as, clearly, part of what it means to have academic merit is not to fly in the face of extensively researched historical data. If the Danish student in question had attempted to get money for a project on holocaust denial, it would have been rejected on this basis.

But the fact is, he did not. His submission wasn’t a crackpot theory, but a legitimate area of study. It was merely his incidental belief in an offensive theory that has attracted so much controversy. Not only is this idea absurd (should hard-line but non-violent Muslims be barred from studying the ecology of the Galapagos Islands? Are anti-immigration campaigners to be denied access to Quantum Theory?), but it is hugely dangerous and self-defeating for a thriving democracy. The moment the determination of government funding for students depends on the applicant’s personal beliefs is the moment academic freedom wheezes its last breath, to be replaced by a stultifying and oppressive conformity in the academic community - supposedly the vanguard in thought and attitude - which would then suffuse society as a whole. The fact that such obvious dangers are lost on the detractors of the Danish Arts Council’s decision is worrying, and indeed hypocritical given the much-lamented boycott by British institutions that Israel’s academics are currently enduring. So it seems that denial and myopia are the order of the day.

Beau Hopkins