Gabi P. Remz

The group’s complexion changes every few minutes. It starts with a girl from Korea, a Panamanian Jew and a redhead dragging around a large acoustic bass. But moments later, that same group has transformed into an African-American bobbing his head and listening to his headphones and a tall white guy in a kippa. This group, though, shares little more in common than the fact that all these people go to Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. And they all are waiting in line to eat kosher food at Northwestern’s Allison Dining Hall.

Students don’t have too many nice things to say about Arthur R. Butz. He is a professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University, and according to his students, he is boring, his handwriting is too small to make out on the board and he leaves all the real teaching to the teaching assistants. While their words about Butz are harsh, students tend to keep their silence when it comes to a darker part of his work, one that extends far outside the realm of electrical engineering. Butz is a prominent Holocaust denier, but many students walk into his classes without knowing it.

The scene at Norris University Center looked more like a Middle Eastern flea market than a student center. Recruiters yelled and sweet-talked, handed out candy and business cards as students squeezed through the packed aisles. Cultural groups, sports teams and even some students who developed a solar-powered car were trying to convince incoming Northwestern University students to listen to their pitches so that maybe, just maybe, the new students would make an appearance at their first meeting of the semester. This chaotic scene was the annual activities fair at Northwestern University, where student groups debated, pressured and begged freshmen to give their groups a chance. But several groups with a common denominator were noticeably more subdued, or even absent from the fair. The link between them? They were Jewish and Israel-centered groups.