Deranged Jews Force Apology Out of University
Source: Stuff.com | New Zealand | October 9, 2002
University Apologises to Jewish Community
Waikato University will apologise to the Jewish community, including Holocaust survivors, for pain and anguish they suffered during the controversial Kupka Holocaust denial case.
The university today released a report concluding two years’ investigation by former Education Department head Bill Renwick into the 1999 enrolment of German doctorate student Hans-Joachim Kupka.
Mr Kupka left the university and New Zealand in June 2000 after accusations that he had denied the Holocaust in internet chat rooms grew into a campaign to have his enrolment reversed.
Mr Kupka’s internet writings were not part of his proposed thesis on German language use in New Zealand. But the university’s senior academics feared that Mr Kupka was going to contact German-speaking Jewish migrants during his research, and they called this “culturally unsafe”.
In his 160-page report, Mr Renwick concluded that the university failed to act with appropriate sensitivity to Jewish concerns.
At the start of the investigation Mr Renwick found Mr Kupka’s internet opinions were “racist, anti-Semitic, and Holocaust-denying”.
He concluded that through its actions the university lost the confidence of Jewish community leaders – the same standards the university had in place to apply to Maori issues were not applied to Jewish interests.
He recommended apology letters from chancellor Caroline Bennett be sent to the Jewish community – including Holocaust survivors and families who were part of a protest vigil at a university council meeting – and a range of policy changes.
Mr Renwick said his focus was not Mr Kupka’s extreme views, but on examining issues surrounding his enrolment.
Mr Renwick found some of the university’s systems were “ineffectual” at handling an “entirely unprecedented” affair, and that it lacked sufficient procedures to scrutinise the ethics of research that included human subjects.
If the university had applied its procedures to assess Mr Kupka’s doctorate enrolment more rigorously the affair would probably not have happened.
The university missed chances to stop misinformation about Mr Kupka’s intentions which inflamed Jewish emotions.
Vice-chancellor Bryan Gould said: “Areas where the university has been at fault, particularly in matters of communication and in dispelling misinformation, will be thoroughly examined and improved”.
Mr Renwick said the most serious shortcomings were at a personal level, including Professor Gould’s decision to not talk to his campus critics or discuss points they raised when replying to their letters.
“By not opening a dialogue with Jewish colleagues and their supporters in the second half of March 2000, Prof Gould missed an important opportunity…”
It was a mistake for Prof Gould to express the university’s view that Mr Kupka was not a Holocaust denier.
Today Prof Gould said he accepted the entire report, and felt it showed the university had handled the difficult case with “reasonable correctness”. He hoped the report would be a platform on which the university and Jewish community could rebuild their partnership.
