The University of Oxford is girding for protests following the announcement that members of the Oxford Union Debating Society have upheld invitations to two controversial right-wing figures to take part in a free-speech event on Monday evening, according to a report in a British newspaper, The Guardian.

In a vote on Saturday organized in response to pressure to deny the speakers a forum, union members decided by a ratio of two-to-one to affirm the invitations to David Irving, a British historian who has served prison time in Austria for denying the Holocaust, and Nick Griffin, the leader of the far-right British National Party, who has also been convicted of incitement to racial hatred on charges related to denying the Holocaust.

In a statement posted last month on the debating society’s site, the Oxford Union’s president, Luke Tryl, responded to the avalanche of criticism directed at the organization for considering invitations to such controversial figures. “These people are not being given a platform to extol their views, but are coming to talk about the limits of free speech,” Mr. Tryl wrote. “What is more, they will be speaking in the context of a forum in which there will be other speakers to challenge and attack their views in a head to head manner and with the opportunity for students to challenge them from the floor.” He insisted it was “patronizing to suggest that Oxford students aren’t intelligent enough to debate with these people.”

The American historian Deborah E. Lipstadt, who was cleared of libel accusations in 2000 after a protracted legal battle with Mr. Irving, called Mr. Tryl’s statement “a clear example of really muddled thinking” in a posting on her blog. “Challenging someone such as David Irving has little to do with intelligence, it has to do with knowing how he is lying and distorting the facts,” she wrote. “And as smart as Oxford students may think they are, just because they are at Oxford does not mean they have the knowledge — Mr. Tryl does not seem to recognize the difference between intelligence and knowledge — to catch a liar who distorts and falsifies.”

Trevor Phillips, chairman of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission and a former president of the main national student union, agreed that the invitations were a mistake. The Associated Press quoted Mr. Phillips calling the union’s move “an absolute disgrace” on the BBC. “As a former president of the National Union of Students, I’m ashamed that this has happened,” he said. “This is not a question of freedom of speech; this is a juvenile provocation.” —Aisha Labi