When Deborah Lipstadt authored her first book on the subject of Holocaust denial, the “revisionist” historian David Irving took her to court. Because of the idiosyncrasies of Britain’s libel laws, Lipstadt and her lawyers had to prove that the Holocaust actually happened. The trial is the subject of the recent film Denial. In his review, Gavriel Rosenfeld writes:

Denial . . . portrays Irving as a self-described “outsider” who seeks to provoke an establishment whose acceptance he secretly craves. . . .

Denial thus joins the growing chorus of opposition to the epistemological skepticism that came with postmodernism. As the prominent theorist Bruno Latour recently argued, the postmodern notion that “facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth” has been exploited by “dangerous extremists.” . . . As conspiracy theorists and others abuse the idea that facts are socially constructed, the time has arrived, Latour concluded, to get “closer to facts.”

This injunction is not, of course, a specifically Jewish one, but Denial shows the dangers of spurious skepticism by showing the continuing threat posed by the epitome of unreason: anti-Semitism. . . .

Beyond defending reason and truth, Denial suggests that an effective response to hatred may be found in the unapologetic embrace of one’s own identity. Lipstadt is seen in the film quietly chanting the traditional funeral prayer El maleh raḥamim together with [the historian Robert Jan] van Pelt on their visit to Auschwitz. In an even more revealing scene, she is horrified by the passive attitude of some British Jews toward anti-Semitism. When some guests at a dinner party organized to help support her defense suggest that she just settle with Irving, she rejects the request out of hand, calling it “appeasement.”

Although the world faces new dangers, Denial shows how an important victory over an age-old prejudice can inspire us to trust our convictions.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.