Protests over Holocaust Denier

Is it right or appropriate for a major university to invite a convicted Holocaust denier to debate on its campus?  Many say no at Oxford.

In the face of angry protests, the Oxford Union debating society went ahead on Monday with plans for an evening debate featuring David Irving, a British author jailed in Austria in 2005 for denying the Holocaust, and Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right British National Party, acquitted by a British court last year of stirring racial hatred.

The invitation to the two rightist speakers plunged the Oxford debating society into one of the fiercest controversies in its 184-year history. In 1933, it stirred anger in Britain with its notorious “king and country” debate, in which members voted they would in no circumstances fight a war against Nazism.  Although an independent body with no formal links to the University of Oxford, many of the union’s members are Oxford students, and many of the union’s leaders have gone on to prominent roles in British politics.

D. Irving

See also this follow article from the BBC.