The Morning News – Birnbaum v. Deborah Lipstadt

PUBLISHED AT THEMORNINGNEWS.ORG ON 4 MAY 2005 Birnbaum v. Deborah Lipstadt Prejudice cannot be defeated entirely, but it can be fought and with courage and stamina, and with really good lawyers. Our bookish reporter in Boston Robert Birnbaum has a fascinating conversation with scholar Deborah Lipstadt about her six-year battle with Holocaust denier David Irving.

Despite personal and familial connections (or perhaps because of such) I had, to date, not paid much attention to the pernicious movement that presumes to deny the Holocaust. This is in keeping with my conscious decision to spend as little intellectual and emotional energy as possible on lunatic fringe movements and other idiocies. Deborah Lipstadt’s six-year legal ordeal, which she compellingly narrates in History on Trial , changed that.

The story begins as such: British author David Irving sued Lipstadt for libel in London after she called him a Holocaust denier and right-wing extremist in her 1994 book Denying the Holocaust . Deborah Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and Director of the Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. She has taught at UCLA and Occidental College in Los Angeles.

She received her bachelor’s degree from City College of New York and her master’s and doctorate from Brandeis University. In addition to History on Trial and Denying the Holocaust , she is the author of Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust. She has appeared on CNN , 60 Minutes , The Today Show , Good Morning America , Fresh Air, and The Charlie Rose Show , and is a frequent contributor to and is widely quoted in a variety of periodicals.

She is currently working on a book on Jewish responses to the new anti-Semitism. The conversation that follows ranges over a wider terrain than the riveting details of the libel trial. What seems obvious to me in the aftermath is that hateful ideologues such as David Irving, while not being defanged or declawed by intelligent and conscientious scrutiny, are less likely to be accepted as legitimate scholars. Unfortunately, even the truth seems not to derail their specious efforts.

But it is not for the lack of effort by Deborah Lipstadt and others. For which we all should be grateful. All photos