Word: apologist
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Richard von Weizsacker is not Kurt Waldheim. He should not be placed on any watch list. He should not be excluded from polite company. He should even be welcomed at Harvard, to lecture, to debate, to honor others. But should this apologist for his father's Nazi war crimes be among the two handfuls of distinguished people from around the globe honored by Harvard? Many survivers of the Holocaust and others who care deeply about justice do not believe so. They do not want the Harvard honor to be understood as helping Richard von Weizsacker "rehabilitate his family name...
...Japanese-Americans and in refusing to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz). Among those whom Harvard has neglected (at least thus far) have been Anatoly Shcharansky, Nelson Mandela, and Elie Wiesel. Fifty years ago Harvard honored actual Nazi leaders. Today we dishonor their victims by selecting an apologist for a Nazi war criminal to receive one of our highest honors. Confucious condemns "honors acquired by unrighteousness...
RUSHDIE GOES farther than simply presenting the straight "party line," however. He comes across as an apologist for Managua. For example, he announces that the Sandinistas can be excused for their past repression of the Miskitos because that tribe, he claims, bullied its neighbors. Yet even the Sandinistas admit their guilt on this matter. Rushdie makes excuses for past Sandinista excesses which now even they find inexcusable...
...Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life, Hook established a well-founded reputation as a secular humanist. He questioned received ideas and challenged those who substituted passion for logic. The professor played no favorites, and few were happy with his investigations. To '30s conservatives, he seemed a Marxist apologist; to '60s New Leftists, he was a cold warrior. But as his autobiography proves, the only group to whom Hook paid strict allegiance was the party...
...toleration. Since Professor Womack has been a beneficiary of that hospitality, he should be the first to defend that rather than seek to impose a form of thought control on the University. But, perhaps, if Professor Womack did realize that, he might not be a Marxist and an apologist for Castro...