Posted on January 10, 2011 at 5:17 pm

Ethics Essay Deadline Draws Near

Has conformism completely overtaken free, questioning, adversarial minds on today’s university campuses?

February 1^st is the deadline for us to receive essays in our “A Question of Ethics” Essay Contest, for which we have $1000.00 set aside for prizes. That is just 21 days from the date of this posting, yet we have not, as of this date, received even one.

Can it be that $500.00, $250.00 and $125.00 doesn’t tempt even a few students out of the thousands at Boston and Chapman Universities, where we have advertised our contest? According to the odds, we could expect at least a handful who would be independent enough, and smart enough to figure out that the fewer the entries, the greater the chance of winning. After all, the prize essays would not necessarily have to be of doctoral dissertation quality! They would only have to follow the evidence presented on this website, use proper grammar and punctuation, and be posted here with the winner’s name.  Ay, there’s the rub.

Your name and your essay will be posted on this site. What sort of retaliation by teachers, administrators, and your fellow students would you have to endure? And would the stigma follow you for the rest of your life? Might you possibly have difficulty, as someone identified as flirting with “holocaust denial”,  with that post-graduation trip to Europe that you’re hoping to make?  The idea of such repercussions makes even the $500 of little value, and the intellectual challenge that may have lit a small fire in your mind is easily damped down and put out. Why chance it? The drawbacks outweigh the benefits.

Yes, we understand. We offered this essay contest for straightforward reasons, but we also knew it would be a good lesson in how the weight of political correctness on our college campuses, particularly around this issue and even more particularly around the person of Elie Wiesel, is strangling freedom of thought, freedom of intellectual pursuit in areas of politically-enforced belief structures, and freedom to express your “different” views openly.

Our contest will either bear fruit in the form of essays to read, judge and discuss, or it will bear fruit as an example of the suffocating, silencing effect of the politically-enforced “new religion” of our time—the sacred, unquestioned memory of “holocaust survivors.” But bear fruit it surely will.  It is up to you, students of Boston University and Chapman University in Orange CA, which it will be.

Herewith, for the last time, is our original announcement:

 “A Question of Ethics” Essay Contest announced for Boston and Chapman University students; $1000 in prizes      

We are pleased to announce the first East Coast—West Coast “A Question of Ethics” Essay Contest for students enrolled at Boston University in Massachusetts and Chapman University in Orange, California. 

The winning essay will be awarded $500; second prize will receive $250; two honorable mentions $125 each. The winning essays will be published on the web site Elie Wiesel Cons The World.

 The essays must analyze one or more ethical issues surrounding Elie Wiesel as they are presented on the pages of the website Elie Wiesel Cons The World. These issues may include [not in order of importance]

• Prof. Wiesel’s refusal to show his claimed tattoo.
• The documents from Buchenwald that do not support Wiesel’s presence there.
• His claim to be in the famous Buchenwald Liberation Photo when, according to his book, he was deathly ill in the hospital at the time.
• His close association with the Irgun terrorist gang in the late 1940’s.
• The questions surrounding the authorship of his first book, Un di Velt Hot Gesvign, allegedly 866 pages written in less than two weeks while on a ship crossing the Atlantic.
• The insistence that his book Night, read by school children all over the world, is a factual account of his experience at Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

 Though the essays must utilize the information made available on Elie Wiesel Cons The World, information from other sources is acceptable as additional material. Our objective is for the essayists to examine the ethics challenges facing Prof. Wiesel in light of the information we have provided at our website.

Deadline for essays to be received is Feb. 1st, 2011. To be considered for a prize, essays must be a minimum of 500 words. Proof of registration as a student at Boston or Chapman University must accompany the essay. This can be a copy of one’s current semester course registration along with a University ID card. Manuscripts should be emailed to [email protected] with the subject line: Ethics Essay Contest.

Contact:

Carolyn Yeager

 c/oCODOH,  PO Box 439016
San Ysidro, CA 92143
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.eliewieseltattoo.com