Canterbury University's "appalling" treatment of so-called Holocaust denier Joel Hayward has prompted some leading academics and political figures to mount a campaign to clear his name.
Act MP Rodney Hide and the executive director of the Business Roundtable, Roger Kerr, are among dozens of national and international community leaders and academics
to put their names to a petition printed in the Press and the Dominion Post yesterday.
Petition organiser Martin Lally, associate professor at Victoria University's School of Economics and Finance, says 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".
He said other academics had said they supported the campaign but did not wish to sign a petition because their chances of promotion would be impeded. However, Canterbury University chancellor Robin Mann said the matter of Dr Hayward had been dealt with and there was no intention of reopening it.
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.
The 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 today.
Professor Lally said while some signatories to the petition had misgivings about the thesis, which has since been repudiated by Dr Hayward, the real issue was academic freedom.
"It makes it apparent what the true situation is.
"When you have people saying, 'We'd like to support your petition but our promotion prospects at Canterbury University would be destroyed if we did' or academics elsewhere saying they'd like to sign [but fear harassment] that shows you what's wrong."
- NZPA
