Holocaust Denial on Campus: The Case of Pacifica Forum (1994-2010)

Abstract

Pacifica Forum began as a Eugene, Oregon pacifist group in 1994 but quickly devolved into a hotbed for Holocaust denial and other antisemitic conspiracy theories until its dissolution in the early 2010s. The Forum met on the University of Oregon campus during the final six years of its existence, sparking community debate on the limits of free speech on college campuses, especially after Pacifica Forum hosted Holocaust deniers Mark Weber and David Irving in 2007 and 2008. In 2010, the University of Oregon relocated Pacifica Forum to an off-campus but university-owned building in downtown Eugene. While this relocation eventually led to the Forum’s dissolution, it came several years after significant protest from Eugene residents, particularly the Jewish community. This thesis uses twenty-four boxes of previously unanalyzed archival material to argue that the tardiness of the university’s response was due to two interdependent phenomena. First, the relocation was a response to student and faculty protest, which came significantly later than the first Jewish protests of Pacifica Forum. Second, as Pacifica Forum became more identifiably right-wing in its latter years, Eugene residents considered the group less of a misguided amalgamation of neighbors and more of an extra-societal clan that did not share the community’s ethos and was, thus, worthy of censorship