Carnegie Mellon in Middle
Pittsburg Tribune-Review
© Pittsburg Tribune-Review
Two former students of Carnegie Mellon and Stanford universities have throse
those schools into the center of a national storm over pro-Nazi literature
on the Internet.
The former students posted the entire book-length tract of Holocaust
revisionist Ernst Zundel on World Wide Web sites of their schools' computer
networks, in an attempt to protest Germany's ban on a California Web server
that originally carried the so-called Zundelfile.
"He's a liar," 25-year old Stanford alumnus said of Zundel, the German-born
Canadian now considered the most prolific exponent of the theory the
Holocaust never happened. "The things he publishes are clearly untrue, and
he knows it."
But Graves, who now runs Stanford's SUNet computer network, and Declan
McCullagh, a former CMU student body president and self-described
cyberspace activist, wanted to show the futility of censorship in the
current global village of telecommunications.
So they posted the 1.3 megabyte Zundelfile last Monday and crowed that
Germany's state-owned Deutshe Telekom would now have to block out whole
university networks to keep Zundel's banned materials from its
subscribers.
By Thursday, they had made their point.
At least six other Web sites, most of them networks of major universities,
were offering Zundel "mirrors" copied from Stanford's or CMU's files.
The Simon Weisenthal Center, the world's leading anti-Nazi organization,
was fuming however -- faxing indignant messages to the presidents of CMU,
Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of
Pennsylvania.
And Ernst Zundel was exulting.
"I'm delighted to hear that at least 10 or 11 [sic -- "sic" was in
original article, not my addition] universities have posted (my
material)," the 56-year-old Zundel said in a telephone interview from his
home in Toronto. "The people who have tried to censor us are just getting
their comeuppance. There's a German side to the whole story of World World
II, and the so-called-Holocaust story, which hasn't been told.
Univeristies, which customarily grant computer accounts to any students
requesting them and may let those students retain accounts after they
leave, usually cannot control what their users post or download.
Scrambling to distance itself from the Zundelfile flap last evening, CMU
issued a statement emphasizing McCullagh was no longer enrolled. "The
information he has posted using his account is his and his alone,"
university spokesperon Don Hale said. McCullagh's account on the Andrew
network would "be discontinued in due course" as are those of other
departed students, Hale said.
Mark Weitzman, the director of the Wiesenthal Center's Task Force Against
Hate, said he had heard nothing by late yesterday afternoon from CMU
President Robert Mehrabian, whom he had urged by fax Wednesday "to address
this issue as quickly as possible."
McCullagh, who insisted he "detested" Zundel's views, said yesterday any
move to get rid of the postings would be wrong.
"The best way to respond to lies and deception is by rebuttal and
refutation, and this is true also for cyberspace," McCullagh, 24, said.
Linda Hurwitz, director of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, criticized
the postings, saying while she didn't approve of censorship in general,
some lies were so harmful that they were tantamount to yelling "fire" in a
crowded theater.
Weitzman, who acknowledged the protest as an end-run around German law --
which prohibits written denials of the Holocaust -- said he considered the
protesters "really naive historically."
"These are kids who see a new invention (the Internet) and have ideas of
how it's going to change the world and create a Garden of Eden," Weitzman
said. "The reality is there are thorns on this rose bush, and Zundel is
one of those thorns."
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of InterNet Flap
February 2, 1996
By Lillie Wilson