Emory University, Atlanta, Friday, March 25, 2005 Prof declines Book TV over Holocaust denier By Jennifer Sutcliffe Senior Editor March 25, 2005 DIRECTOR of the Institute of Jewish Studies and Professor of Jewish and Holocaust Studies Deborah Lipstadt has again come at odds with the man who sued her five years ago for portraying him as a Holocaust denier. David Irving comments: A GOOD article, with some odd English in parts; but distinguished by original investigative reporting.    Jennie Sutcliffe is the only reporter so far to have asked me for my side of the controversy (the NY Times tried, but failed to reach me in time, and gave up).. Lipstadt planned to see a feature of her book about this court battle on the March 16 broadcast of C-SPAN's "Book TV." She granted C-SPAN permission to tape a speech she gave that day at Harvard Hillel, a Jewish organization at Harvard University. But Lipstadt cancelled these plans when C-SPAN told her that a broadcast of English historical writer David Irving, an expert on the Hitler regime who she has called "a liar and a falsifier of history," would be stacked with hers on the show. According to Lipstadt, Irving's claims that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and that Adolf Hitler had no role in the Final Solution, among other things, implicate him as a Holocaust denier. But Irving said such notions are part of Lipstadt's "obsession" with him. "I am not a Holocaust denier," Irving said. "I am bored by the Holocaust and I think most of the world is, too." In 2000, Irving sued Lipstadt for her cutting portrayal of him in her book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, which was published in 1993. After a three-month trial, a British judge ruled in favor of Lipstadt, finding that testimony and documents that pictured Irving as an anti-Semite who distorted facts gave an apt portrayal. Lipstadt said C-SPAN's decision to "balance" her views with those of Irving was illogical. "It would be like airing someone who wrote on slavery and someone who said slavery didn't happen," Lipstadt said. Lipstadt refused C-SPAN coverage of her speech, which was based on her book History on Trial: My Day in Court With David Irving. However, C-SPAN taped a recent speech Irving gave at the Landmark Diner in Atlanta. According to Irving, Lipstadt did not originally write her 1993 book with his mention. He said the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum wrote her with the suggestion that he should be included in the work. "When someone calls you this it is the same as being called a pedophile," Irving said. "It's a label you can't shake off." Irving said [that] at the trial Lipstadt brought in an "army" of defenders while he defended himself. More than 200 historians at colleges nationwide have sent a petition to C-SPAN to protest the airing of Lipstadt's speech alongside Irving's. C-SPAN issued this response last Thursday: "Book TV was interested in Deborah Lipstadt's new book about her British libel trial. Our interest in covering David Irving was to hear the plaintiff's story of the trial. Since Professor Lipstadt has closed her book discussions to our cameras, we are still discussing how to cover this book and we don't have an immediate timetable." This statement is near all Lipstadt has heard from C-SPAN. "They have been totally uncommunicative," Lipstadt said. "I have no idea what their plans are." Lipstadt said C-SPAN had planned to show Irving's Atlanta speech on the show with or without her appearance. "He didn't have to be balanced, but I did," she said.   Index to the media scandal surrounding Prof Lipstadt's attempt to silence C-Span and the history debate Lipstadt writes a paid OpEd in New York Sun: 'Why I said No to C-Span'