I find it hard to believe that those who lead Northwestern University find it either beneficial to their reputation as a center of learning or morally defensible to employ and support a professor who is an outspoken denier of the Holocaust.

Northwestern University President Henry Bienen said Monday that a professor's recent comments denying that the Holocaust happened are "a contemptible insult to all decent and feeling people" and an embarrassment to the university....

"While I hope everyone understands that Butz's opinions are his own and in no way represent the views of the university or me personally, his reprehensible opinions on this issue are an embarrassment to Northwestern," Bienen said in a statement to be e-mailed Monday night to all Northwestern students, faculty and staff.

Views? Opinions?!? There's no frickin' opinion on whether the Holocaust happened! An opinion is that the Jewish people benefitted in the long-term due to the creation of Israel. You can even debate that Jews deserved to be exterminated. But anyone who says the Holocaust just never happened is either a liar or mentally unstable or both.

There would have been no occasion for the University to be embarrassed had they fired this "gentleman" a long time ago. As Americans, free speech is a right that we are obligated to defend, but providing a platform and megaphone for the morally repugnant is not a part of that obligation.