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More Holocaust Scholars Press George Washington U on History of Hosting & Honoring Nazis
By: Fern Sidman
Prominent historians are rallying in support of a Holocaust scholar’s appeal to George Washington University to make amends for hosting Nazi diplomats in the 1930s and later honoring a Nazi collaborator.
The controversy began last month, when Holocaust scholar Dr. Rafael Medoff published evidence that GW welcomed Nazi representatives to its campus in 1933, 1934, and 1937. The university also hosted screenings of films that were supplied by the Nazi embassy in Washington.
In addition, Dr. Medoff reported that in 1985, GW awarded an honorary doctorate to Mircea Eliade, who was an official of the Nazi-allied “Iron Guard” regime in Romania during the Holocaust. After the war, Eliade became a prominent scholar of religion.
Medoff, who is director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of more than twenty books about the Holocaust and Jewish history, urged GW to apologize for hosting Nazi officials and revoke the doctorate it gave to Eliade.
Dr. Mordechai Paldiel, former director of Yad Vashem’s Department of the Righteous Among the Nations, told the Jewish Voice he agrees that GW should apologize. Doing so would help “make amends for its timid and hesitant response to the recent demonstrations by [pro-Hamas] students and agitators on its campus, that included targeting Jewish students,” Paldiel said.
Regarding Eliade, Paldiel said that “while no one disputes Eliade’s contribution to the history of religions, it is distressing that 40 years after the Holocaust, an elite university fully overlooked Eliade’s known role as part of a regime that was allied to Nazi Germany and partook in the death of so many Jews under its control.”
Prof. Gil Troy, presidential historian, prolific author and widely published columnist, praised Medoff’s research for showing “how slow many major institutions from GW to Harvard to Ford were to standing up against the Nazis.”
In a statement to the Jewish Voice, Troy said that while in general he does not favor “cancel culture or delayed apologies,” in this case it is GW itself that has “set the precedent.” He was referring to the fact that in 2022, GW removed the name of its longest-serving president, the late Cloyd Heck Marvin, from the university’s student center because he advocated racial segregation. Also, the GW administration last year changed the school moniker from “Colonials” to “Revolutionaries” because of the injustices associated with colonialism.
“Because GW set the precedent of editing history and backtracking and apologizing, it’s worth asking: why not for antisemitism?,” Prof. Troy wrote. “Has it somehow become the acceptable bigotry, the okay hatred? The thought sends shudders down my spine—and makes me sick to my stomach.”
Prof. Steven Katz, founding director of Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies and a professor of Holocaust studies, said he “fully agrees” with Medoff that GW “should publicly express regret for having hosted Nazi officials.” As for the Eliade question, that is “a little more complicated,” Katz told the Jewish Voice, because it is not clear what GW knew about him when it awarded the doctorate in 1985. “This said, however, now that there are no secrets, the honorable thing for the university to do would be to revoke the doctorate,” Katz emphasized.
As for GW’s sensitivity to the concerns of other minorities but not to Jews, Prof. Katz said: “There is no doubt that the university is now being two-faced. It responds to racism but not to antisemitism. Clearly there is a double standard operating, which raises unpleasant questions about the views of the current administration at GW.”
Dr. Steven Jacobs, professor at the University of Alabama and author of Antisemitism: Exploring the Issues, likewise endorsed the calls for restorative action by the GW administration. “Acknowledgment of [GW’s] own sorry participation along with revoking the honorary doctorate of the late religious studies scholar Mircea Eliade would send a strong message locally and nationally to the academic communities and Jewish communities that at this moment of rising antisemitism, it rejects any and all expressions of such hate,” Jacobs told the Jewish Voice.
He noted that on his own campus in Alabama, several buildings have been renamed because they were originally named after slave owners. “I applaud GW’s rationale for doing the same thing,” Prof. Jacobs said, “but in light of its own past, GW must also understand that this relatively small and comfortable step must and should be seen as part of a larger effort to confront not only the past, but the present and future as well.”
For Prof. Alan Berger, the Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair in Holocaust Studies at Florida Atlantic University, the historical context is crucial. “Unhappily, America has a long and sordid history of pro-Nazi and pro-facist sympathizers,” he wrote. For that reason, “definitely [GW] should express its regret” for contributing to that troubling history by hosting Nazi officials in the 1930s. With regard to the Eliade doctorate, “the university should fight to reclaim its good name by withdrawing the honor bestowed on him.”
There should be financial consequences if GW refuses to apologize and revoke the doctorate, says Prof. Gershon Greenberg of American University.
Greenberg pointed out in a statement to the Jewish Voice that “a university draws federal funds and is awarded special privileges in society—with the expectation that is serves the truth and ethical ideals.” If the GW administration “is not going to take responsibility for its institutional past, and instead continues to fail to evince decent, moral standards, then society as represented by the government should have [GW] renounce any claims for special status in society, including tax benefits,” according to Greenberg.
Prof. Greenberg, who has written extensively on the religious and philosophical meaning of the Holocaust, urged: “Universities are the last bastion of American society largely outside the rule of law. Having lost all moral authority on the institutional level, it’s time the law and government get ahold of them and force them into some serious self-reckoning.”
GW spokesman Joshua Grossman told the Jewish Voice that the university “will take under advisement” the calls for an apology and withdrawal of the Eliade doctorate.
