“Florida Principal Who Wouldn’t Call Holocaust ‘Factual’ Is Fired Again” (NYT):
A high school principal in Florida whose refusal to acknowledge the Holocaust as a “factual, historical event” in an email led to a national backlash, his firing and then his rehiring has been fired for a second time.
The Palm Beach County school board on Tuesday voted 7 to 0 to fire the principal, William Latson, who was removed from his post last year at Spanish River Community High School in Boca Raton, Fla., after a 2018 email exchange with a student’s parent became public.
What did the guy say?
“I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee,” Mr. Latson stated in one of the emails, which were obtained by The Palm Beach Post. Mr. Latson said he had to stay “politically neutral” and separate his personal views about the Holocaust from his job as a public school official.
“I do allow information about the Holocaust to be presented and allow students and parents to make decisions about it accordingly,” he wrote. “I do the same with information about slavery.”
His answer would have been perfect for a deposition. He wasn’t alive in the 1940s. He is not a historian. He doesn’t have any better information regarding what happened during the 1940s than anyone else. Being a school system administrator does not qualify him to offer a history lesson. Also, he did clarify his personal beliefs regarding this period of history:
“I am not a Holocaust denier,” he says in the video. “I have never been a Holocaust denier. I am sorry that my comments caused people to think that.”
What was the point of firing this guy (twice!)? Just to show that even a hint of dissent cannot be tolerated?
Seems that he a purported educator was fired for at best gross ignorance — like saying he is not in a position to say whether the earth is round or flat because he has never been up in a spaceship and is not a geophysicist. Seems he is saying that reasonable people could differ on the issue of whether the holocaust happened, that he is not a “denier,” that it is open to debate. And why not have free and open debate on whether African Americans were kept as slaves? Like, I am not a slavery “denier” but I wasn’t in Virginia in 1858? That’s a “hint of dissent” that should be tolerated? Wow. Doesn’t sound to me like the kind of guy who should be educating children in the public schools.
They should have fired him once and that’s it. This is really a commentary on how difficult it is to fire public school employees. It reminds me of Massad Ayoob talking about “duty to kill” in self-defense with handguns:
“You’re there watching the Manson Family standing over Sharon Tate with a meat cleaver. But you don’t want to get involved.”
Phil …
The trouble is “both side-ism” that implies that well established realities are equally likely to be true or false.
It’s a well worn technique used to unfairly cast aspersions on reality while leaving a technical escape hatch for the speaker.
Christians wrote extensively about the subtlety of the devil’s lies some time ago – a lesson I think worth remembering no matter who plays the role of the devil.
Gill
In the video apology he issued, that you linked to, he admitted he was wrong when he denied that the Holocaust was not an historical fact.
I am sure there were more communications than this one inflammatory email, but we cannot read them. Lacking the full context of his remarks, we should hesitate to guess what he meant to say.
In NYC schools, Art Spiegelmann’s Maus comics are central texts in teaching about the Holocaust.
I found the jailhouse confession of Rudolph Hoess, Commandante of Auschwitz, to be the most moving and illuminating of any written text I have read on the subject, mostly because of his supremely unique perspective.
https://archive.org/details/rudolfhoesscommandantofauschwitz
Twenty years ago, the Brooklyn Museum hosted a large travelling exhibition about the Holocaust, with the best documents and artifacts available. I was struck by how relatively uncompelling the physical evidence was.
The TV miniseries War and Remembrance (1988) gives a stark and accurate portrayal of the death camps. I highly recommend it as the most approachable way to get a visceral feel of what it was like to be a Jew under the Nazis, with all the attendant horrors. No punches are pulled.
Escape From Sobibor (1987), dramatizes the only successful uprising at a death camp. It stars Joanna Pacula, Alan Arkin, and Rutger Hauer. It is both inspiring and disheartening. Inspiring in that they succeeded at Sobibor. Disheartening in that it was an isolated incident.
My studies of the Holocaust are ultimately disheartening because the more I study, the less I find redeemable, especially from the victims. This was the true horror of the holocaust. It was not just lives that were lost, but basic humanity itself, on all sides. Eli Weisel’s Night drives this point home.
I wonder how Kurt Vonnegut’s novels Slaughterhouse 5, Deadeye Dick, or Mother Night, all of which deal with culpability and death and Nazis as central themes, would fare in this academic environment,
So it goes.
@Mememe: It’s appropriate and strange that you mention Vonnegut because I was thinking of him the other night, since I’ve read – well, almost – all his books. I think the sad thing is that Vonnegut would have a hard time “in these times.” I attended a halfway fun, halfway sad appearance of his at Johns Hopkins back in the early ’90s, right after “Hocus Pocus” was published and Salman Rushdie called him a “burnt-out case.” I think Vonnegut would be censored today, not from the right, but from the left. He’d be all fucked up by the current environment.
“Throughout the novel, Hartke wants to write a list of all the women he has made love to and another list consisting of all those he had killed during the Vietnam War. He becomes fascinated with how large each number will be. At the end of the novel, Eugene says that these numbers are the same and gives a method for calculating the number using other numbers mentioned in the book (e.g., “… the greatest number of children known to have come from the womb of just 1 woman”). The number is 82.”
“Eugene is fired from his job as a college professor after having several of his witticisms surreptitiously recorded by the daughter of a popular conservative commentator. ”
At this point in our glorious history, that college professor would be fired by other college professors, all more liberal than he is!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hocus_Pocus_(novel)
> I was struck by how relatively uncompelling the physical evidence was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Warsaw
https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous-women/sendler.asp
“The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation.”
SS chief Heinrich Himmler, SS officers’ conference, 17 October 1944
Suppose a parent had asked for classes in global warming, or benefits of recycling, or systemic racism, and the principal responded similarly. Would he be fired?
The Allies refusal to meaningfully aid the Warsaw Uprising, and their subsequent betrayal of Poland by ceding control to Stalin are good examples of crimes against non-Jewish people that get overshadowed when we focus on the Jewish Holocaust.
That many Poles, like Irina Sendler, risked their lives to save Jews is often forgotten as well. Poles are often mocked and villainized for their role in WWII.
I do not think my conclusions were the purpose of the links you provided, and that indicates the difficulty in learning and teaching about history.
I think you misunderstood the snippet of mine you quoted. Reading an article online is very different than seeing an actual artifact of the time, let alone galleries of such artifacts, which is what I was describing. The physical evidence is scarce and incomplete, forcing us to rely on testimony and artistic interpretation.
Understanding the past is hard, especially in this year zero of politically-correct historical revisionism, when history has become politically charged with present-day prejudices.
It is really best to shut up and not upset people, rather than challenge their pre-conceived notions.
Don’t shut up. I refuse to shut up, you should too. 🙂
Mememe …..Bravo! Very enlightening.