ASUO President Sam Dotters-Katz said he is taking steps to remove the Pacifica Forum from the EMU. The group was recently designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, though its members insist it is a “free speech group.”
At the group’s Friday afternoon meeting in the EMU Board Room, Dotters-Katz announced his intention to push to revoke the group’s privilege to meet in the EMU. Because the Pacifica Forum is headed by University Professor Emeritus Orval Etter, University rules allow it to use space in the student union.
Critics of the forum point to its decision to invite speakers who have denied the existence of gas chambers at Nazi camps during the Holocaust and discussed literature blaming Jews for World War II-era atrocities.
Several attendees said the forum is misunderstood and said the majority of its speakers and discussions are not anti-Semitic. However, Etter began the meeting by discussing the reaction of the Eugene Jewish community to a speech by University President Dave Frohnmayer.
Frequent forum attendee Dawn Coslow pushed Etter’s wheelchair into the board room and prompted him several times as he spoke. She said there was “no such thing” as a Holocaust denier, and said one author who had denied the existence of a gas chamber at a death camp had been imprisoned in Germany for “telling the truth.”
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