[IntLawProfessors] CITING HITLER?

[William Slomanson]

Many thanks for your insightful response! While providing his really surprising quotes---which sound like a passage in the US Constitution---might have gone a long way toward ameliorating any related angst, your points are quite well-taken.

Thanks,
Bill
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From: TILDS at yahoogroups.com [TILDS at yahoogroups.com] on behalf of Davis, Ben [ben.davis at utoledo.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2012 3:08 PM
To: 'TILDS at yahoogroups.com'; 'intlawprofessors at mailman.anu.edu.au'; 'administrator at pilpg.org'
Subject: [TILDS] RE: CITING HITLER?



Question 2 no answer.

Question 1 -  I think there are students who might be so offended by a reference to Hitler at a start of a chapter like this that it might be too much for them to deal with it in a textbook.  Where it might be possible would be in a setting trying to address hypocrisy or instrumentalization of international  law rather than as the beginning quote.  For example, de las Casas as the father of human rights and his solution to the Indian subjugation being seen to be importing blacks as slaves from Africa is the kind of irony that strikes a chord.  Showing the author of the final solution expounding on human rights in 1924 in prison might be a little known fact that would point out to students powers rejection of constraint.  Hitler and his lawyers were very good at finding the appropriate legal arguments to justify their acts if memory serves right (Geneva Conventions applicable on Western Front but not on the Eastern Front).

As to using such a book, given the ambient tendency to be suspicious of black professor’s motives (see Derrick Bell’s harassment as a mentor of Obama since Bell’s death) in the media and/or academia, I would fear that someone would think my use of such a book meant I was a Nazi sympathizer or an anti-Semite and I would get a whole hassle about it.  Among the battles to fight, that is not one that I wish to have to fight if I can avoid it in good conscience.  Now if this was a terrific international law book, I would think to use it if it seemed to be the best instrument for my students to gain knowledge.

Sometimes the things I read about torture by the supporters have an effect on me that just shuts me down because I find them so profoundly offensive.  No doubt Pavlov’s dog and I have similar automatisms.  If I had lost whole parts if not all my family in the Holocaust, I could understand shutting down in front of that evil.  Happens to me sometimes when things come up that in my mind relate back to slavery.  Don’t know why but I suspect some deep wound that remains on the psyche that is not a rational wound but is there and blocks me.  It is not trying to deny the evil or hide it – it is more about the melancholy it induces when it rears its head (if that makes sense).

Hope this helps.
Best,
Ben

From: TILDS at yahoogroups.com [mailto:TILDS at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of William Slomanson
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2012 4:23 PM
To: TILDS at yahoogroups.com; intlawprofessors at mailman.anu.edu.au; administrator at pilpg.org
Subject: [TILDS] CITING HITLER?


Assume that an Int'l Law textbook cites Hitler's Mein Kampf (possibly on two occasions) as chapter-opening two-sentence vignettes/food for thought/incredible ironies. Each passage contains language that sounds like the French Revolution or American Constitution---written when he was in jail in 1924. After he came to power, he then totally disregarded his pre-Furer human rights musings. One underlying purpose would be to futher expose Hitler's hypocrisy and, as they say, to illustrate how absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Question #1: Would you NOT do so, if this were your textbook? Would you NOT use a text that thus cites Hitler? Would it NOT make a difference?

Question #2: Would the mere citation of Mein Kampf in that textbook bar it from being used in certain countries?

Thoughts?
Bill


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