Canterbury University's "appalling" treatment of so-called Holocaust detractor Joel Hayward has prompted some leading New Zealand academics and political figures to mount a campaign to clear his name.
ACT MP Rodney Hide and the executive director of the New Zealand Business Roundtable, Roger Kerr, are among dozens of national and international community leaders and academics to put their names to a petition printed in two major metropolitan newspapers today.
Petition organiser, Martin Lally, Associate Professor at Victoria University's School of Economics and Finance, alleges the university working party set up in 2000 to investigate whether Dr Hayward's masters thesis should be revoked "set in train a process that destroyed this man's life".
Other academics had said they supported the campaign but did not wish to sign a petition because their chances of promotion would be impeded, he told NZPA today.
However, Canterbury University chancellor Robin Mann said the matter of Dr Hayward had been dealt with and there was no intention to reopen the matter.
The furore over Joel Hayward's 1993 thesis, which questioned whether Hitler personally ordered the extermination of the Jewish people and suggested it was impossible to know how many were killed, dates from 2000, when a working party concluded it was "flawed" and downgraded it.
Today's petition states that Dr Hayward resigned from his position at Massey University in 2002, "apparently as a result of ongoing hostility towards him arising from the previous events".
The row was reignited in May, when Canterbury University ordered the destruction of copies of the history department's journal, History Now, which contained an article on the alleged persecution of Dr Hayward.
The article's author, history lecturer Thomas Fudge, has lodged a formal complaint with the university council over Vice-Chancellor Professor Roy Sharp's management of what some regard as a book burning scandal.
The complaint has been referred to the vice-chancellor's employment committee, which is due to report to a full university council meeting tomorrow.
- NZPA
Campaign seeks to clear holocaust thesis author's name
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