EVANSTON, Ill., Feb. 5 (UPI) -- A Northwestern University professor who has maintained for almost 30 years that the Holocaust is a myth praised Iran's president for his Holocaust denial.
Arthur Butz, a tenured engineering professor, supported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in statements on his Web site and to Iranian news agencies, the Chicago Tribune reported.
"I congratulate him on becoming the first head of state to speak out clearly on these issues and regret only that it was not a Western head of state," Butz told the Mehr news agency.
Butz published "The Hoax of the 20th Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry" in 1976. The book argued that the account of the Holocaust was manufactured to help bring about a Jewish state.
"Butz's most recent invective demonstrates the power of hate to rally extremists, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers out from under their rocks throughout the world," said Richard Hirschhaut, executive director of the Holocaust Foundation of Illinois.
The university said professors are free to post what they want on their university Web sites.
