By Lea Wolf, JNS
Viewpoints rooted in distortion do not deserve a podium.
During a recent House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s congressional hearing, Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) asked Secretary of Education Linda McMahon a simple question: “Does refusing to hire a Holocaust denier as a member of Harvard’s history department faculty count as an ideological litmus test?”
McMahon responded with a general defense of “diversity of viewpoints” without directly answering whether Holocaust denial should disqualify a faculty candidate.
This brief and consequential exchange speaks volumes about the state of higher education and the perplexities in today’s political landscape. When does viewpoint diversity stop being inclusive and endanger civility on our campuses and streets?
Holocaust denial is not a controversial viewpoint. It is a willful, documented distortion of fact. Treating it as just “one side of a debate” is not intellectual diversity. It’s misinformation.
Such false ideas have consequences. As witnessed on college campuses across the country, the distortion that Israel is a genocidal, apartheid state has led to harassment of Jewish American students. Notions of Holocaust revisionism and denial have also entered that fold, as some demonstrators have raised signs saying “final solution” or “the irony of being what you once hated” with an Israeli flag and a swastika to promote a total inversion of history and reality.
America’s universities are built on the principle of academic freedom, but that freedom is not a license to teach falsehoods under the guise of scholarship or expertise. If a school knowingly hires a Holocaust denier to teach history, that’s not inclusion. That’s a breach of duty.
Professors standing at the front of a lecture hall are revered as ambassadors of truth, entrusted by their institutions and students to uphold the highest standards of academic integrity. By employing and endorsing these instructors, universities confer authority and legitimacy upon their teachings. Students, who may be young, impressionable and unaware of academic manipulation, accept their teachings as fact, believing them to be grounded in scholarship and evidence.
Curriculum and programs, like lectures, conferences and training, are not casual speech offerings. They are implied educational services bound by legal and ethical obligations, rooted in evidence and factual accuracy. As such, they are not insulated from scrutiny under academic freedom or First Amendment protections when delivered in a formal educational setting. They are institutional services governed by ethical obligations, codes of conduct and adherence to state and federal laws.
Federal law limits what can be presented as legitimate in federally funded institutions. Under the False Claims Act, EDGAR, and provisions of the Higher Education Act, public and private institutions receiving federal aid must not promote materially false or misleading content, whether in financial reports or academic programs.
Additionally, the U.S. Department of Education-approved accreditation bodies require instruction to be evidence-based, professionally delivered and free of academic misconduct. Introducing known falsehoods into the curriculum violates the public trust, funding requirements and accreditation standards.
We are living in a moment when “both sides” rhetoric is being weaponized. Not every assertion deserves legitimacy in the classroom. False equivalence and comparison weaken critical thinking and promote extremism under the dubious banners of fairness and justice.
Take, for example, the growing number of academic programs that allow professors and guest speakers to accuse Israel of being an “apartheid state” or of committing “genocide,” terms with heavy historical, legal and moral implications. Today, these terms are often stripped of factual accuracy and used as ideological weapons against Israel and the West. Yet attempts to present Israel’s democratic foundations, legal safeguards or wartime ethics—such as efforts to avoid civilian casualties or uphold international law—are often censored or dismissed.
Scholars failing to educate students about Hamas’s designation by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization, and worse, portraying the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as moral resistance, is not scholarship but indoctrination dressed as discourse. To conflate legitimate historical scholarship with deliberate revisionism is not tolerance. It is an abdication of duty of care, faculty codes of conduct and scholarship itself.
As institutions navigate ideological diversity and free speech, they must hold to one uncompromising standard: truth.
Academic freedom allows space for dissent, debate and rigorous inquiry, but it stops short of disseminating lies. The job of educators is to open minds, not manipulate them. This is why viewpoint diversity bound by factual integrity is the anchor of academia. Viewpoints rooted in distortion do not deserve a podium.
Faculty members who promote lies or distortions under the guise of scholarship must publicly retract, correct or revise their statements. Universities must not only refuse to platform falsehoods, they must demonstrate a willingness to hold those in breach of scholarly standards accountable through clear review, disciplinary action or removal if warranted. Universities or independent watchdog organizations must be transparent about these measures so that students, parents and educators can see clear accountability.
If we want students to become critical thinkers and responsible citizens, then we must ensure that professors teach facts accurately, free of manipulation and distortion. Institutional leadership must uphold moral clarity by championing truth and upholding the very values of education itself. Refusing to hire a Holocaust denier isn’t a political filter, but a professional obligation. Refusing to promote false claims of genocide while censoring factual defense isn’t bias—it’s educational responsibility.
