“He is more and more convinced of the notion that the Holocaust is a fraud,” said Saltonstall Professor of History Charles S. Maier ’60, another signatory. “He has the potential to be a good historian, but he has become twisted by this point of view.”

Other scholars offered even more pointed critiques.

“The notion that one gives this man David Irving room on C-SPAN is outrageous,” said Baird Professor of History Emeritus Richard E. Pipes, who signed the petition.

Lipstadt said Irving is a “fabricator of evidence and a liar.”

Irving defended his reputation and refused to be deemed a Holocaust denier.

“I think the epithet is completely undeserved,” Irving said, adding that American publishers have refused to print his books since the controversy.

“I don’t use the phrase the ‘Holocaust’ because I don’t believe in the marketing approach of the ‘Holocaust,’” he said. “But I went into more detail about the individual aspects of the Nazi atrocities against the Jews and used original sources.”

Irving called Lipstadt an “upstart young professor,” and criticized the scholars who signed the petition for engaging in censorship and submitting to departmental peer pressure.

In a column by Richard Cohen that appeared in The Washington Post on March 15, Senior Executive Producer of “Book TV” Connie Doebele explained the decision to include Irving’s lecture: “You know how important fairness and balance is at C-SPAN....We ask ourselves, ‘Is there an opposing view of this?’”

Irving said this mindset was “in the best traditions of American journalism.”

But on “Book TV’s” Sunday night edition, Doebele said she regretted her choice of words.

“Using the word ‘balance’ is kind of an internal jargon that we use here in the newsroom,” she said. “What it means really is looking for another voice out there.”

All of the petition signatories who spoke with The Crimson agreed that including Irving does not promote journalistic objectivity.

“It is a distortion of the concept of ‘balance’ to give publicity and legitimacy to Irving and his proven falsehoods,” petition signatory and Sociology Department Chair Mary C. Waters wrote in an e-mail.

“An issue of fact is being confused with an interpretation of significance,” said Maier.

“If C-SPAN wants to cover him, let them cover him,” said Marvin Kalb, a senior fellow at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and a signatory. “But C-SPAN should not be balancing the Holocaust with a denier.”

“This is not balance,” said Lipstadt. “This is a guy who is saying the historical equivalent of ‘the earth is flat.’”