I have withdrawn this comment under the new comment management system that you have put in place. I mistook Professor Wertheim for another man of the same name. I do not know what Professor Wertheim's views are, so I cannot say that I agree with him, or disagree. I do not agree with his treatment of you, however. Thank you, Kevin.

NO ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WILL BE POSTED

I appreciate your concerns, but I am not for one minute going to apologize for my response to Prof. Wortheim. I welcomed his comments and continued to allow him to respond on this site even after he insulted me twice on another blog. He has attacked my integrity as a teacher, student, and historian while I refrained from responding in kind. My last comment is an honest response to what he has said here. It is indeed clear as to why he was unable to find students to study under him in his 30 years at WPC. My mentor in the Philosophy Department attracted roughly 15 during his first two years and continues to produce top quality undergraduates who have gone on to graduate studies and beyond.

As for Pluss I fail to see why you are so concerned about him. Yes, I studied under him and worked as his TA. l learned quite a bit about teaching from him and was deeply saddened to learn of his associations and beliefs a few years ago. He is apparently a deeply disturbed individual. That said, I refuse to turn this thread into a forum about Professor Pluss. It has nothing to do with him.

I apologize if I seem a bit emotional, but this thread has gotten completely off track because some disgruntled professor can't handle the fact that a graduate of his institution had a positive experience and was able to take what he learned and further his education and even contribute something scholarly to the field in which I studied in while a student there. Have you ever heard of anything so bizarre before? I can't possibly imagine attacking the accomplishments of a graduate of the school in which I teach because of my own experiences. I can't think of anything more pathetic than that.

Please, I am asking everyone to stop insulting one another. You did not hurl the first insult, but you can keep the insults from continuing. After one and a half years of interacting with you, you know how much I personally admire you, and how brilliant I find you to be.

It is beyond disturbing that Jacques Pluss was on the faculty of a university; it is terrifying. The man is truly insane, and apparently schizophrenic enough to live a double life. I am including an article from History News Network. Everyone please read this article.

Professor Wertheim is doing very good work. I linked to a site that speaks of the attempts of Arab Americans and Jewish Americans to bridge differences. The site is entitled : “Ishmael and Isaac Unite”. Professor Wertheim is involved in this.

You are doing tremendous work to promote awareness of how our memory of the Civil War has helped to promote racism, Kevin. Your contributors are also doing tremendous work in their various fields, so again, I am asking–no I am pleading–for this thread not to turn into a public humiliation of either you or Professor Wertheim. Professor Wertheim is obviously not familiar with blog forum. Blogs can be very treacherous places within which to communicate. Luckily for me, my foray into the world of blogs has been a positive experience, because I entered the blogosphere through your blog, Kevin, and I admire you for so many reasons, not the least among them being that you understood that I did not understand this new technology, and you helped me not to say and do things that I would regret. Kevin, you are a wonderful man, a brilliant man, and a man of true integrity. I thank you for everything, I truly do. I just want to do that publicly, here. Now. As I said earlier, you are not Jacques Pluss. You are Kevin Levin. Jacques Pluss is a dangerous man. Why was he teaching at a university? University officials need to answer that, and answer for it. Sherree

Here is the article:
3-12-07

Jacques Pluss Now Says He Is a Nazi–And Proud of It
By Troy Vettese
Mr. Vettese is an HNN intern.

In March 2005, Fairleigh Dickinson University fired Jacques Pluss, a popular and outwardly tolerant professor who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in medieval history. It was reported that Pluss was a neo-Nazi. But to avoid controversy, FDU cited Pluss’s alleged numerous absences for his dismissal, not his beliefs.

HNN has closely followed this story since then and kept in contact with Pluss. Pluss has even posted on HNN forums, and wrote an article to defend himself against defamation, which was published by HNN in January 2006.

This article, titled, “Now It Can Be Told: Why I Pretended to Be a Neo-Nazi,” explained that he was posing as a Nazi to collect research for his book on fascist movements in the US. He later went on to confess that he was responsible for his own firing by writing a letter to the university newspaper disclosing his involvement in the National Socialist Movement (NSM). This contradicted his earlier assertion that a “watchdog group” unmasked him. He went on to claim that he allowed himself to be vilified to use himself “a human literary experiment.” This enabled him to experience personally what the people he was writing about experienced–what he called Geistesgeschichte (‘spirit of history’).

Six months later, in August 2006, he repudiated this version of events, but insisted that he “never claimed not to be a National Socialist.” He is currently an unrepentant National Socialist and has dedicated himself to this cause. He maintains a blog concerned with right extremist politics and Nazi ideology.

Since losing his job, Pluss has become increasingly strident in his pronoucements and has admitted on his blog to being disingenuous to reporters.

He has recently stated that he lied to interviewers from the Jewish Standard and Citizens Against Hate. He was mendacious because he wanted to use these reporters to give him publicity and a forum for denigrating his erstwhile organization, the NSM. This was justifiable because “spreading disinformation to gain knowledge or make a point was a value that Heinrich Himmler's SS held quite dear.”

Another opinion he shares with Himmler seems to be the support of genocide. Pluss has “clarified” several “racial questions,” that presumably have been asked by his neo-Nazi peers. In regard to African-Americans he maintains that:

Negroes are not humans. The True National Socialist view of the Negro is that each one of them should be liquidated, that is, killed immediately or after performing forced labor without shelter or food. The elderly, women and children should probably be wiped out first, since their labor potential is less than that of a healthy male. Special Action Squads should be formed, made up of Aryans, and charged with the rapid liquidation of the Negro blight amongst us.

Not surprisingly, Pluss does not hold a high opinion of Jews (who, according to him, are also sub-human), but rather exhorts fellow neo-Nazis to:

Liquidate them wherever you find them. If they hide, search them out and execute them. They are, by nature, dangerous sub-humans who have developed clever ways to cheat, lie and steal from others. Remember that no Jew has ever done an honest day's work in his or her life. Hence, they represent the ultimate parasite.

Aside from writing on his blog, Pluss claims to run the American branch of Stille Hilfe (Silent Help), an organization that provides assistance to Nazis from the Third Reich (not surprisingly, this is a clandestine organization, and Pluss refused to disclose any details of his work). Pluss has recently said that his “infiltration” of NSM was not simply for book research, but also done under orders from his Stille Hilfe superiors to “find out whether it was a real National Socialist group or not.”

And in his opinion, it wasn’t, and that is why he left the NSM in October 2005. He left on bad terms and Pluss is estranged from his former colleagues. Many of their forums dedicate themselves to deprecating Pluss, and cast doubt on his military experience and even allege that he is a Jew. In turn, Pluss contends that American Nazi groups are racially impure, ignorant of Nazi theory and history, and led by “mediocrities.” So far are these groups beyond the pale, that the NSM, he claims, is actually a front for a Satanist cult (Pluss referred to the scandal as “Satangate”). Pluss sees himself as one of the last true Nazis in America, and these extremist outfits are simply not up to snuff.

After his disastrous involvement with the NSM, Pluss has dedicated his time to Stille Hilfe Amerika. This new endevour marks a return to Pluss’s roots, as his childhood home was also a refuge for fleeing Nazis. Pluss says his childhood was suffused with Nazi influences. His grandmother, who raised him, was an ardent National Socialist, and provided shelter to many Nazis fleeing the law. Pluss reminisces that “My initial instruction in NS (Nazism) began at their hands.” It is in this environment that the young Pluss imbibed the National Socialist dogma and marked the beginning of his life long devotion to this cause.

Since the last HNN report on Pluss, he has changed his stance greatly. Far from denying his Nazi beliefs, he has embraced them wholeheartedly. His blog has revealed the true depths of his adherence to the genocidal ideology of National Socialism. This change over the last couple of years is best described by Pluss himself: “the constant pressure to hide my true self finally burst forth, and I've lost a lot because of it, but I regret nothing.”

NO ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WILL BE POSTED

I appreciate your concerns, but I am not for one minute going to apologize for my response to Prof. Wortheim. I welcomed his comments and continued to allow him to respond on this site even after he insulted me twice on another blog. He has attacked my integrity as a teacher, student, and historian while I refrained from responding in kind. My last comment is an honest response to what he has said here. It is indeed clear as to why he was unable to find students to study under him in his 30 years at WPC. My mentor in the Philosophy Department attracted roughly 15 during his first two years and continues to produce top quality undergraduates who have gone on to graduate studies and beyond.

As for Pluss I fail to see why you are so concerned about him. Yes, I studied under him and worked as his TA. l learned quite a bit about teaching from him and was deeply saddened to learn of his associations and beliefs a few years ago. He is apparently a deeply disturbed individual. That said, I refuse to turn this thread into a forum about Professor Pluss. It has nothing to do with him.

I apologize if I seem a bit emotional, but this thread has gotten completely off track because some disgruntled professor can't handle the fact that a graduate of his institution had a positive experience and was able to take what he learned and further his education and even contribute something scholarly to the field in which I studied in while a student there. Have you ever heard of anything so bizarre before? I can't possibly imagine attacking the accomplishments of a graduate of the school in which I teach because of my own experiences. I can't think of anything more pathetic than that.

http://www.bookfinder.com/author/stanley-wertheim/

In the interests of historical accuracy, Dr. Wertheim has coedited several books, prepared an encyclopedia, and prepared a bibliography. I don't see a monograph in the bunch. Perhaps the list is incomplete.

If nothing else, the professor should have recognized the collaborative nature of his labors, especially if he's going to beat his chest about his accomplishments. Let's not inflate our resumes along with our own sense of self.

“I am in an excellent position to attack/demean your experience as a student at William Paterson College because, as a full professor at that institution, for 30 years, I know much more than you do about how it functioned, although I know little (not “nothing”) about you.”

I'm puzzled. Why would anyone ridicule an institution that saw fit to elevate the critic to the rank of full professor? And why would anyone who held that institution in such contempt be there for three decades? After all, if it was a “diploma mill,” who ran the mill?

“I was fully aware that the Philosophy Department at WPC had one or two real scholars and attracted most of the intellectiually competent students at WPC, all 12 of them. I was quite jealous. I wondered what their secret was. In our 28 member English department we had six or seven excellent scholars and critics. Yet, we almost never attracted intellectually competent students. None of the few decent students I had in my 30 years at the institution was an English major.”

From reading these answers, I think I have a very good idea of why students avoided this professor.

As for Pluss being recognized as a Nazi by his colleagues at William Paterson, what exactly did they do with this information? Did Professor Wertheim ever make public Pluss's political philosophy? Where? You would think this would have been a matter for public discussion at the time, and not after Pluss moved elsewhere. Pluss seems to be something of a sick, twisted fool, but I'd be interested in seeing what other faculty, including Dr. Wertheim, made of these beliefs at the time, and how they balanced them with the concept of academic freedom. Surely, if the professor can go after Mr. Levin with such passion here, there must be evidence of his going after Pluss in public at the time.

All personal animosity that has developed between you and Kevin aside, this has been a productive exchange. Your viewpoint is appreciated, and by Kevin himself, I would venture to say. You are also correct concerning Jacques Pluss; he is quite insane. In addition, he is a racist and an anti Semite.

Kevin Levin is not Jacques Pluss, however. He is Kevin Levin. And he has quite a gift for teaching, as well as a considerable intellect, so I would ask you, as a reader of this blog, to please refrain from insulting him.

Students are most definitely indoctrinated into whatever the prevailing ideology of the time happens to be–and that includes students at Yale and students in European universities as well. Education itself is a form of indoctrination. That does not mean that those students remain indoctrinated throughout their lives.

Yes, America is an exceptional nation. It is very moving to hear you speak of America in the way in which you do. To hear your words helps to further the appreciation of America for those of us who had the privilege to be born in this nation.

You know of the turmoil in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. Those were difficult decades, in which tremendous change took place. I attended the university shortly after women were first admitted. America still had a long way to go, at that time, to bring equality to its own citizens. We did it, though, and we are still striving to achieve a more perfect union, and yes, that is exceptional.

In closing, the experience you related concerning the Statue of Liberty resonated with me. Kevin posted a comment that I made ten months ago that expresses a similar sentiment as expressed by friends who defected from Russia. I include it below. Thank you.

As President-elect Obama said, we are a nation held together by a set of ideas, and even as our nation failed to live up to those ideas and the ideals they inspired over the centuries, still the core idea of freedom for all and the equality of all remained–the flame–and now that flame truly is a beacon again unto the world, held high by Lady Liberty, as a friend of mine who defected from Russia to America in the 1970s and who lived through the siege of Leningrad said as she described the Statue of Liberty to me and why SHE loved America so much: “In Russia there is not that lady!!” my friend said at the time, “She does not exist!” “What Lady?” I asked. “The Lady Liberty with the flame of freedom in her hand.”

It takes a lot of work and dedication to keep that flame burning, Professor Wertheim. And that is what Kevin is helping to do by running this blog, as are you, by publicly denouncing men like Jacques Pluss. I hope that you and Kevin begin to converse. Sincerely, Sherree Tannen