Campus BDS activists, please take note.

Mariana Barillas of the College Fix reported.

Holocaust author: Professors prefer ignorance to truth about Middle East

Editor’s Note: The article has been updated.

Nearly all modern genocides “begin on the campus,” the author of controversial books on the Holocaust and U.S. indirect financing of terrorists told the University of Michigan-Flint Thursday night.

Edwin Black, an investigative journalist and human-rights activist, assailed academics who fail to adequately teach students the “facts” they should know.

“They ain’t got the brains. They don’t know their history; they haven’t dug into it,” Black said, referring to professors in general during a Q&A session after his talk on the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Black is touring in support of his latest book, Financing the Flames, which claims that American taxpayers are effectively subsidizing terror and instability in the Middle East through public support of nongovernmental organizations.

“How come you now know more than all the teachers in this city about the history of international law in the Middle East?” Black told students, faculty, and community members. “They don’t know because it’s easier not to know.”

Black argued that academics are afraid to admit to factual mistakes or omissions in their work and that people in general are fearful of investigating the “uncomfortable truths” that he has devoted his life to uncovering.

“There were hundreds of thousands of books on the Holocaust … not one of them bothered to mention that every concentration camp had an IBM customer site in that camp to organize the whole thing,” said Black, referring to his New York Times bestselling book IBM and the Holocaust.

Black said that his previous work was revelatory because no one had investigated nor had the courage to write about IBM’s involvement in organizing the Holocaust. He then encouraged audience members to “learn about the stuff they don’t want you to know.”

“It’s not a secret, it’s not a secret history, it’s open history if only we can see it in front of us,” said Black, the son of Polish Holocaust survivors.