DePaul denies tenure for controversial professor

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"For a man who has just lost his job after a highly public battle, DePaul University assistant political science Professor Norman Finkelstein is calm and accepting.

That's because Finkelstein, whose tenure bid drew widespread interest because of the Jewish professor's blunt criticism of Jews and the state of Israel -- and the attack on those views waged by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz -- stands firmly on the beliefs that may have got him fired.

"There is a song by the folk singer Keith Seeger, 'Die Gedanken sind frei,'" the controversial academic reflected in a rare interview with the Sun-Times.

"That means, 'thoughts are free.' No one can deny that 'die gedanken sind frei.' They can deny me tenure, deny me the right to teach. But they will never stop me from saying what I believe."

What Finkelstein -- the son of Holocaust survivors -- believes is that his people are culpable in the plight of the Palestinians. He drew wrath from prominent Jewish leaders when he accused some of exploiting Jewish suffering to block criticism of Israel, and made other enemies when he accused some survivors of conducting a "shakedown" to get payments from Germany."

more

[EST]

1. Crosschecking my academic knowledge-

Not achieving tenure, when the time frame for awarding tenure is up, pretty much represents the death knell, the pink slip, the old heave-ho and you'd best be finding some sort of secure assistant professor position at a community college, somewhere?

It's been a lot of years but it seems to be the way I remember it.

[Douglas Carpenter]

13. Dr. Finklestein's ltr from De Paul's President notified him of that

the 2007-2008 academic year will be his last as a full time faculty member:

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/pdf/tenuredenial/Finkelstein,Norman06.08.2007.pdf

[Igel]

16. Not necessarily.

When it's plausibly a political issue--politics can affect tenure decisions, but in this case I don't think so--you can be rehabilitated. Hell, I've even seen examples of guys denied tenure at one school go off, get a good job, rise in prestige, and get hired back at their first school.

If he decides to stay in academia, there's a 99% chance, IMO, that next April he'll be able to announce that he's hired tenure-track at another fairly good school.

[Malikshah]

2. A death knell to academic freedom in the US.

Shameful example of the power of Dershowitz and Co.

So long to the Academy.

At least Finklestein knew it was coming.

[Lithos]

3. As much as I am against

Academic boycotts, I am also against political lobbying as was done against Finkelstein.

Short sighted and destructive.

L-

[msmcghee]

4. Being against political lobbying is the same . .

. . as being against free speech. Anyone should be free to register an opinion on any matter they wish.

The only problem comes if those making the decision do so using the wrong criteria. That's what would be short sighted and destructive. There's no indication that this happened in Finkelstein's case - AFAIK.

I have no opinion as to the advisability of Finkelstein getting his tenure or not.

[Malikshah]

5. The various committees did the research, did the footwork.

Tenure cases tend to go from the bottom up.
First the Department, then the College, then the University.
Dershowitz' actions were unprecedented and done from a position of safety.

The Depaul statement is made from safety.

Finklestein's Teaching, Research, Service were all more than enough to have him granted tenure.

http://normanfinkelstein.wordpress.com/tag/news/

Read the reports and statements.

In the end, Finklestein was a victim of the enemy he researched.

Sometimes speaking truth to power will lose you your job; in academia this should not traditionally happen. Unfortunately, it did in this case.

Time will tell, but I believe this is not the end of the purge.

[Lithos]

7. Tenure

Should be based on academic issues, publish or perish, peer status, etc.

As for free speech, well, as they say in the US, money is free speech. For you to make that claim is to endorse the idea of boycott for after all, that is the exercise of "free speech".

L-

[msmcghee]

8. It's interesting how I can never quite tell . .

. . if you are disagreeing with me - although I suspect that is usually the purpose of your posts to me. And if so, about what.

Lithos: "Tenure should be based on academic issues, publish or perish, peer status, etc.

That's what I meant when I said "The only problem comes if those making the decision do so using the wrong criteria. That's what would be short sighted and destructive."

Lithos: "As for free speech, well, as they say in the US, money is free speech. For you to make that claim is to endorse the idea of boycott for after all, that is the exercise of "free speech".

I can't remember ever speaking out against the idea of boycott. And it is a form of speech.

[Lithos]

10. LOL

Sometimes we disagree sometimes we don't. I think you posted once that you are anti-aggression which is more or less how I view things in the ME. While I probably would express this differently, the tone is right.

And unless I've got my mod hat on and directly quizzing someone about a specific viewpoint for which all subtlety is lost (not this case btw), there is usually no purpose behind my posts other than to discuss the particular topic.

[oberliner]

9. The politcal lobbying had no impact on either the process or the outcome of this case

That's according to the President of the University.

Do you think he is lying?

[Lithos]

11. Yes

His department peers voted for tenure, the administration against. The lobbying effort was to the administration.

L-

On Edit:

I've read the memo by the Dean which was endorsed by the University President. Essentially, Dean Suchar's main complaints had nothing to do with any academic issues, but rather felt that Dr. Finkelstein had engaged in too strong of language in the exchanges against Prof. Dershowitz and others. Most of the memo consisted of innuendo on Dean Suchar's part, the like which strongly smacks of grasping on the part of Dean Suchar to justify a course of action which outside of the tenure guidelines.

L-

[Bryan Sacks]

15. He doesn't have to be lying, though he almost certainly is

1. Giving an assurance that he remained independent of influence is not impressive. No one in his position would admit to it, or lose their job.

Two questions that come to mind are:

--was Dershowitz given undue access to decision-makers in this case?

--if not, were his indusputable attempts to influence the process met with the appropriate response from the administration (a complaint filed with his own University and department, e.g)?


2. The university president criticized Finkelstein for, essentially, inappropriate lobbying for tenure. He did not supply evidence that Finkelstein did this (maybe he did). That seems like an important point. His enemies, like Dershowitz, would stop at little to see him defeated. If they knew lobbying on his BEHALF (surreptitiously, of course) would cast him in a poor light, they might well do it. So the fact that there was lobbying for Finkelstein is not itself a mark against Finkelstein. It would have to be shown that he in fact was behind it.

I have no idea one way or the other.

I read the president's letter stating the reasons for denying Finkelstein. The most serious was the charge that Finkelstein comes too close to advocacy. He also is given to ad hominem attacks of his opponents.

Now, surely his department, which favored him for tenure, 9-3, knows this. His college, which favored him, 5-0, knows this. That's pretty much case closed. The president's decision smacks of political influence and stinks for that reason. His own judgment, independent of influence or not, need not and should not have been exercised in what appears a clear-cut case of deserving tenure.

edit: strengthening one of the questions in point one

[wellst0nev0ter]

6. And Once Again, Dersh Proves He Is Not Even Scum

He's the slime that feeds the scum.

Period.

End of sentence.

[Douglas Carpenter]

12. I posted this about one month ago, but I think its very relevant

The world's leading holocaust scholar and the father of holcaust studies and a world leading Israeli historian defend Norman Finkelstein and praise his scholarship:

link to full interviews/listen or watch online or download or read transcript:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/09/1514221

audio: - left click to listen by online streaming or right click then click on "save target as" to download:

http://www.archive.org/download/dn2007-0509/dn2007-0509-1_64kb.mp3

"The battle over political science professor Norman Finkelstein to receive tenure at DePaul University is heating up. Finkelstein has taught at DePaul for the past six years. Finkelstein’s two main topics of focus over his career have been the Holocaust and Israeli policy. We speak to two world-renowned scholars in these fields: Raul Hilberg, considered the founder of Holocaust studies, and Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at Oxford University and an expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Shlaim calls Finkelstein a “very impressive, learned and careful scholar”, while Hilberg praises Finkelstein’s “acuity of vision and analytical power.” Hilberg says: "It takes an enormous amount of courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him"

"A final decision is expected to be made in the coming weeks. Finkelstein has accused Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz of being responsible for leading the effort to deny him tenure. In an interview with the Harvard Crimson, Dershowitz admitted that he had sent a letter to DePaul faculty members lobbying against Finkelstein’s tenure. Then last week the Wall Street Journal published an article by Dershowitz titled “Finkelstein’s Bigotry.” In it, Dershowitz accuses Finkelstein of being an “anti-Semite” and says that he “does not do ‘scholarship’ in any meaningful sense.”

Finkelstein’s two main topics of focus over his career have been the Holocaust and Israeli policy. Today we are joined by two world-renowned scholars in these fields:

Raul Hilberg. One of the best-known and most distinguished of Holocaust historians. He is author of the seminal three-volume work “The Destruction of the European Jews” and is considered the founder of Holocaust studies. He joins us on the line from his home in Vermont.

Avi Shlaim. Professor of international relations at Oxford University. He is the author of numerous books, most notably “The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.” He is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on the Israeli-Arab conflict."
___________

link to full interviews/listen or watch online or download or read transcript:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/09/1514221


audio: -- left click to listen by online streaming or right click then click on "save target as" to download:

http://www.archive.org/download/dn2007-0509/dn2007-0509-1_64kb.mp3
______________

"AVI SHLAIM: Yes. I think very highly of Professor Finkelstein. I regard him as a very able, very erudite and original scholar who has made an important contribution to the study of Zionism, to the study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, in particular, to the study of American attitudes towards Israel and towards the Middle East.

Professor Finkelstein specializes in exposing spurious scholarship on the Arab-Israeli conflict. And he has a very impressive track record in this respect. He was a very promising graduate student in history at Princeton, when a book by Joan Peters appeared, called From Time Immemorial, and he wrote the most savage exposition in critique of this book. It was a systematic demolition of this book. The book argued, incidentally, that Palestine was a land without a people for people without a land. And Professor Finkelstein exposed it as a hoax, and he showed how dishonest the scholarship or spurious scholarship was in the entire book. And he paid the price for his courage, and he has been a marked man, in a sense, in America ever since. His most recent book is Beyond Chutzpah, follows in the same vein of criticizing and exposing biases and distortions and falsifications in what Americans write about Israel and about the Middle East. So I consider him to be a very impressive and a very learned and careful scholar."

"RAUL HILBERG: Well, let me say at the outset, I would not, unasked, offer advice to the university in which he now serves. Having been in a university for thirty-five years myself and engaged in its politics, I know that outside interferences are most unwelcome. I will say, however, that I am impressed by the analytical abilities of Finkelstein. He is, when all is said and done, a highly trained political scientist who was given a PhD degree by a highly prestigious university. This should not be overlooked. Granted, this, by itself, may not establish him as a scholar.

However, leaving aside the question of style -- and here, I agree that it’s not my style either -- the substance of the matter is most important here, particularly because Finkelstein, when he published this book, was alone. It takes an enormous amount of academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him. And so, I think that given this acuity of vision and analytical power, demonstrating that the Swiss banks did not owe the money, that even though survivors were beneficiaries of the funds that were distributed, they came, when all is said and done, from places that were not obligated to pay that money. That takes a great amount of courage in and of itself. So I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost. "

link to full interviews/listen or watch online or download or read transcript:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/09/1514221


audio: -- left click to listen by online streaming or right click then click on "save target as" to download:

http://www.archive.org/download/dn2007-0509/dn2007-0509-1_64kb.mp3

_____________



http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=129

Dershowitz actually claimed that Professor Finkelstein's mother had been a Kapo

(a Nazi collaborator)without the slightest shred of evidence

From Professor Finkelstein:

"On a brief biographical note, my mother grew up in Warsaw, Poland and was a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, Maidanek concentration camp and two slave-labor camps. Every member of her family in Poland was exterminated. After the war she was a key witness at a Nazi deportation hearing in the U.S. and at the trial of Maidanek concentration camp guards in Germany. My late father survived the Warsaw ghetto, Auschwitz concentration camp and the Auschwitz death march. His entire family in Poland was also exterminated."


_____________
.

Norman Finkelstein's Multimedia resources

a lot of excellent material of both video and audio can be found here:

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/content.php?pg=19

.

[Douglas Carpenter]

14. one particularly interesting interview Dr. Finkelstein gave on Chicago Public Radio

just this past week was on his interpretation of the June 1967 Arab-Israel War:

left click to listen online or right click and click on "Save Target As" to download to your file:

Windows Media/Mp3

http://audio.wbez.org/wv/2007/06/wv_20070606a.mp3

---------

Toward the end of the interview Professor Finkelstein discusses the tenure issue. This was prior to being notified of the decision:

listen online or download or read transcript:

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1067

concerning tenure:

"JM: Have you come away from it with any respect for people at DePaul? Your university seems to have supported you up to a pretty high level.

NF: Ah, you know, you have to make distinctions. I've been overwhelmed with support, by people. I must get about a half dozen beautifully crafted letters each day CC'd to me, having been sent originally to the president. These aren't form letters and they aren't e-mails, in the sense of "hi, how are you." We're talking about letters which consist of a good 6 or 8 hefty paragraphs, where people have thought through a lot. And, you know, I'm sure in the future I'll have a chance to look back and see the bigger picture. There was a huge amount of support literally, not hyperbolically, literally from all over the world, people poured in letters and support of all sorts. And also some faculty at DePaul, certainly the students at DePaul, I had to finally tell them to stop because each action on my side evoked such a viscious counter reaction that at some point I told them, no more action, because I can't deal with the counter reaction. And I cannot tell you how vicious and ugly it got. It got very vicious and very ugly. And it was not just Professor Dershowitz.

So I don't want to lose sight of the kind of support I got. But unfortunately, the vicious reaction totally shocked me. It really did. I mean, I'm no new boy on the block. JM: Yeah NF: I'm 53. I've been thrown out of many universities but it's almost always done very quietly. Behind the scenes, phone calls, letters, pressures. I did not expect that this... It turns out that Professor Dershowitz was in correspondence with the ex-chairman of my department for 3 years. He was pushing. He had correspondence with the president, it turns out. I wasn't aware of any of this, though, I felt it in my department. I felt it but I had no idea. And that's how I thought it would work, it was going to be behind the scenes and then if I make any kind of protests it would be Finkelstein's paranoia, you know, he's imagining it. But this time there was nothing left to the imagination. It was all very forthright and it turned into a national hysteria. I didn't expect that. And I didn't expect the level of ugliness that it would reach.

JM: What does it mean for your scholarship in the future? I mean, does it, you know, dampen any enthusiasm for your work?

NF: I lost a lot of time this year. I lost a lot of time, it was squandered. There were many battles that had to be fought with the pen to prove my innocence of very ugly charges. And it meant squandering huge amounts of time and many weeks which were filled with consecutive sleepless nights trying to answer the barrage of ad hominum, filthy and sordid ad hominum attacks that were being leveled against me.

Professor Dershowitz inundated the Law School, the DePaul University Law School. Sent each member of the Law School a 60 page dossier on me, filled with the most filthy scurrilous allegations.

And many people in the Law School believed it. They were very adamant that I was a Holocaust denier and worse. I had to fight senior members of the Law School administration who were saying scurrilous things because "how could Alan Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, be lying?"

So I lost a huge amount of time this year. As to what will happen, I'll survive.

JM: Well, thanks a lot for joining us and talking about the 1967 war and your tenure battle.

NF: Thank you. "

----------
full interview from Chicago Public Radio:

listen online or download or read transcript:

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1067

or

left click to listen online or right click and click on "Save Target As" to download to your file:

http://audio.wbez.org/wv/2007/06/wv_20070606a.mp3

.............................

And of course Professor Finkelstein's famous debate with former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami:

Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami debates Norman Finkelstein-

-listen/watch/or read transcript:

http://www.democracynow.org/finkelstein-benami.shtml

or

on Windows Media/mp3

left click link below to listen online or right click and press "save target as" to download:

http://www.archive.org/download/dn-finkelstein-benami/dn-finkelstein-benami_64kb.mp3


.

[richards1052]

18. Right-wing pro-Israel folks also accuse me of being a kapo

"Dershowitz actually claimed that Professor Finkelstein's mother had been a Kapo..."

Steven Plaut, who is one of http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2007/05/31/dersh-and-plaut-lie-down-with-dogs-get-up-with-fleas/">Dershowitz's bully-collaborators, also accuses me of being a kapo. I won't give the link because I don't want to promote Plaut's lunatic rantings. But I do feel I'm in excellent company w. Finkelstein's blessed mother.

Luckily I'm not up for tenure anywhere. They can't yet deny tenure to blogs. But yr enemies can threaten you w. defamation lawsuits to chill yr right to free speech. That's also happened to me twice lately thanks to folks of the Plaut variety. It's a wonderful world we live in.

[Douglas Carpenter]

17. From the Chronicle of Higher Education: DePaul U. Turns Norman Finkelstein Down for Tenure

By JENNIFER HOWARD

link: http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=dmgwxw8sgZr23hpKtcr9nshVrV5qZKd4

snip:"Mr. Finkelstein, meanwhile, has not yet determined what his next step will be. "It's been an exceedingly ugly experience," he said. "There are two options, basically: Try to achieve a settlement and leave, or come back next year for what's called my terminal year and fight it out."

He would not rule out the possibility of a lawsuit, although he said he was "not inclined" to take that option, "basically because I think that's what the university wants. Let's say I win $10-million. That's a drop in the bucket to get rid of me."

He continued, "I've consulted lawyers who say that these things drag on for five years. By then I'm 58 and the party is over. It's not saying that I'm ruling it out."

Mr. Finkelstein noted that "DePaul is in a growth mode" and that, in his view, the university found itself forced to choose between "a long-term catastrophe and a short-term catastrophe" -- the short-term catastrophe being the publicity about his case, the long-term catastrophe "having me on this faculty for another 20 years, and every time I open my mouth or say something about Israeli policy, the hysteria starting up again, and they see their money disappear."

Such sentiments, he said, may have doomed his future prospects in academe. "No administration would have me on its faculty because of the hysteria that would evoke," he said. "These people have pretty much stopped me dead in my tracks."

to full article -- link: http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=dmgwxw8sgZr23hpKtcr9nshVrV5qZKd4

.

[Shaktimaan]

19. He says it all, right here.

the long-term catastrophe "having me on this faculty for another 20 years, and every time I open my mouth or say something about Israeli policy, the hysteria starting up again, and they see their money disappear."

This is an interesting thread... what are the obligations the school has towards protecting non-tenured professors' free apeech? I don't know. I mean, here, Finklestein's speech had negative repercussions for the school, they lost money over him, and that's probably what this is all really about.

But beyond that, should a university be allowed to have any say in what kind of content their professors teach? On one hand, why not? It's a business, isn't it? Finklestein still has free speech, he isn't guaranteed that someone else pay for the soapbox and for his healthcare while he stands on it. If IBM can fire you for having a bad haircut, (they can), then why doesn't a university be allowed to have some creative control over the ideologies taught within it? Is tenure even a fair concept at all? There are certainly places that would welcome Feinstein's views. If Professor Everyman teaches ideology that has fallen so far out of favor that there are very few universities interested in having him teach, then this an example of market forces at work.

You could say that this would create university policy that catered to the lowest common denominator. Eventually, any idea that seems radical would be filtered out early on, despite the fact that yesterday's radical idea is today's Christianity, or Capitalism, or Human Rights. All good ideas were at one time revolutionary, and revolutions are not always easy to trot through the door and introduce. Without some protection, we could have lost some breakthrough work. Germany lost Einstein over his repulsive "Jewish Physics", don't forget.

And IBM doesn't play such a critical role that its interest in fostering new ideas needs to be protected. We need our universities to give the widest variety of viewpoints on any given subject to give students a frame of reference and a way to process ideas that they'll encounter outside of the university walls.

But in the end, I hate protectionism. Even protectionism designed to help us develop ideas. I think that any decent university would cultivate the best environment they could and professors would be challenged to bring something new to the table as a matter of course. Competition sharpens everyone's teeth. I don't like the idea of someone, anyone, teacher or other, being assigned to any job for life no matter what he teaches, says, thinks or does. I don't think fringe concepts should be guaranteed equal billing with accepted proofs.

I fully support the need for academic diversity in school. But not at the expense of other rights and needs, such as the right schools should have of deciding when to cut someone who is having a bad hair day.

For the record, both of my parents are NYC public school teachers.

[msmcghee]

25. I sure enjoy posts like this that discuss ideas.

They raise the whole level of the forum above the Jerry Springer flying chair fights we frequently have here. Yours seem consistently to rise above the fray.

Adding to your comments above, I would say from reading the documentation, that he was cut not for his ideas a much as the way he engaged them. I suspect they felt it was especially damaging in a field (political science) where the actions of screaming true-believers and the emotions that drive them make up the (usually horrible) news every day.

I can understand a university being wary of having a tenured professor on staff that so willingly and so publicly jumps into the fight at that level, and that's pretty much what they said.

Actually, I can imagine that having someone outside the mainstream on any important topic could be a source of pride for a university - if he was a meticulous scholar who understood that he would be called names and baited by others - and steadfastly refused to lower himself to that level - someone who answered his detractors only with good scholarship.

I haven't had my coffee yet so I'm struggling to explain my point. I guess I mean that his position on Israel is not so important. Depending on how Finklestein put forth his ideas and defended them - having someone outside the mainstream on any topic can either be a bright feather in the university's cap - or a source of ridicule. I think Finklestein willingly allowed himself to become the latter - and has now paid the price.

[anotherdrew]

28. he wasn't denied tenure because of anything HE did, he was denied by outside threats

the university felt they had no choice but to comply with

[msmcghee]

29. And you have evidence of these threats, of course? n/t

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[msmcghee]

31. Oh, now I understand.

It's known because it's "standard practice" and because "It's been talked about many times." Got it.

Ooops, forgot the video - :tinfoilhat::rofl:

[anotherdrew]

32. well...

if you want to play dumb, go right ahead...

laugh it up

[Shaktimaan]

33. So, uhhhh...

what do you think the Israel Lobby threatened them with?

I mean, you saw what the Mossad did on 9/11, right? Can you even imagine what they could do to that poor university if they gave Finklestein tenure?

[LeftishBrit]

20. A complicated situation

Here, two principles that are important to me - academic freedom (and freedom of opinion more generally), and anti-racism, come into conflict.

I find it difficult to express an opinion on the tenure issue itself, partly because I am not fully familiar with the American tenure system: i.e. how automatically can people normally expect tenure, once they come up for it? Is this more akin to someone being rejected in a job application, or being fired from an existing job? The two are very different: no one has the *right* to be appointed to a job for which they apply, even if one feels that they are the best candidate and that a decision to reject them was wrong; while people should have the right not to be arbitrarily dismissed from an existing job.

I am not happy about outside political lobbying being able to influence tenure decisions (if indeed it did); or about universities having too much freedom to fire people for their views. I have had sufficient opportunity to observe first-hand the ruthless hostility and vindictiveness that a minority of academics can display towards those who have offended them or disagree with them even on minor, non-political issues, to recognize the need for protection of academic free speech.

And yet... one also has to consider the issue of whether an intimidating and negative atmosphere is being created for certain students, and also whether an academic may be using the 'respectability' of a university connection as a platform for spreading racist views. I am NOT referring here to Finkelstein's work on the Israel/ Palestine conflict. Though I admit to not having read his work on the Israel/Palestine conflict, I think that in principle, people should not be fired or rejected just for their views on an international conflict, and feel that both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine views should be freely expressible within academia. What would concern me is his writings on 'the Holocaust industry'. There is certainly room for concern about someone stating, for example, that 'It is primarily the ruthless and reckless tactics of the Holocaust industry that foment anti-Semitism.' This is a worrying remark in itself (basically "Jews are to blame for anti-semitism by making too many demands on others"); and could create understandable concerns both about its effect on the university's public image, if stated from an official university platform, and about the atmosphere that this could create for Jewish students.

What would be people's views about a professor who stated publicly, in his academic capacity, that "It is primarily the ruthless and reckless tactics of the affirmative action industry that foment racism"? Could this be taken into account in decisions as to whether to grant him tenure? Would opinions on this change if the professor in question was himself an African-American? To be honest - I don't know what the answers to these questions should be (except to the last question: I think that the professor's own race should *not* influence the decision in the case). It's just HUGELY complicated, and I don't think the question can be answered in a simple way, either by describing his opponents as 'lower than pond scum', or by welcoming his dismissal without considering the risk that without due care for academic freedom, the next person might be dismissed for being an atheist or anti-Bush or pro-evolution, or just for disagreeing with a colleague's pet theory.

To conclude, here are a couple of other examples of academics coming under fire over accusations of using their position as a platform for racial bigotry and other nasty views. The first concerns a psychology lecturer at Edinburgh, who was dismissed a few years ago for promoting theories of genetic inferiority of black people and women, and for seemingly defending pedophilia.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Brand

The second concerns a very recent controversy about an Oxford anthropologist who had done some work for a controversial anti-immigration group. The commentary is by the MP Evan Harris, who strongly disapproves of the anti-immigration group, but still wishes to defend the professor's academic freedom.

http://www.evanharris.org.uk/news/000101.html

I don't know what people's views are (my own view is that the first case was extreme and justified dismissal; and that the second case is worrying but does not justify dismissal). But I'm bringing them up to point out that Finkelstein's case is far from unique; that tensions between supporting academic freedom and opposing racism do come up from time to time; and that such issues are rarely simple.

[Douglas Carpenter]

21. There is nothing fringe about what Professor Finkelstein has written

And there is certainly nothing even remotely racist or anti-Semitic about any of his writings. Unless one considers criticism of the Israeli state and criticism of American Zionist organizations to be racist and anti-Semitic.

He has just tended to say some things before others realized he was right:

Raul Hilberg, considered the father of holocaust studies and perhaps the world's leading historian on the holocaust, Retired from the University of Vermont:

" It takes an enormous amount of academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him. And so, I think that given this acuity of vision and analytical power, demonstrating that the Swiss banks did not owe the money, that even though survivors were beneficiaries of the funds that were distributed, they came, when all is said and done, from places that were not obligated to pay that money. That takes a great amount of courage in and of itself. So I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost. "

------


Avi Shlaim of Oxford, one of the world's leading scholars on the history of the Israel/Arab conflict:

Yes. I think very highly of Professor Finkelstein. I regard him as a very able, very erudite and original scholar who has made an important contribution to the study of Zionism, to the study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, in particular, to the study of American attitudes towards Israel and towards the Middle East.

Professor Finkelstein specializes in exposing spurious scholarship on the Arab-Israeli conflict. And he has a very impressive track record in this respect. He was a very promising graduate student in history at Princeton, when a book by Joan Peters appeared, called From Time Immemorial, and he wrote the most savage exposition in critique of this book. It was a systematic demolition of this book. The book argued, incidentally, that Palestine was a land without a people for people without a land. And Professor Finkelstein exposed it as a hoax, and he showed how dishonest the scholarship or spurious scholarship was in the entire book. And he paid the price for his courage, and he has been a marked man, in a sense, in America ever since. His most recent book is Beyond Chutzpah, follows in the same vein of criticizing and exposing biases and distortions and falsifications in what Americans write about Israel and about the Middle East. So I consider him to be a very impressive and a very learned and careful scholar."


http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/09/1514221&mode=thread&tid=25

Raul Hilberg:

"I have a sinking feeling about the damage this will do to academic freedom..."

.
_______________

Professor Finkelstein's website contains a large number of articles written by Dr. Finkelstein:

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/

and his audio/video library:

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/content.php?pg=19

.

[LeftishBrit]

22. As I said, I am not referring to his work on the Israel/Palestine conflict

Firstly, I haven't read any of it; and secondly, I would not normally consider that someone's views on such issues should affect their tenure/employment rights.

However, do you not think that such comments as the following, from an interview that Finkelstein gave in 2001, are 'fringey' to say the least?

'These organisations frankly, bring to mind an insight of my late mother, that it is no accident that Jews invented the word "chutzpah". They steal, and I do use the word with intent, 95% of the monies earmarked for victims of Nazi persecution, and then throw you a few crumbs while telling you to be grateful. It is very hard to sink much lower than to turn the colossal suffering of the Jewish people during World War Two into an extortion racket. I really think that not even Julius Streicher (leading anti Semitic publisher in 1930's Germany) were he editing Der Stuermer today, could have conjured up the image of Jews huckstering their dead, but that's exactly what this gang of wretched crooks have done....

....Well that is what you would expect from the Simon Wiesenthal Center. This is really a gang of heartless and immoral crooks, whose hallmark is that they will do anything for a dollar.

.... But, if you go to Germany and try to say the things that I did, the so called 'Left' become absolutely hysterical as they have this huge vested interest in being professional anti anti-Semites and semophiles. It's this huge identity that they have carved out for themselves, and when I go out there and say that of course be anti Nazis but a lot of what is being done in the name of anti anti-Semitism, is in fact a gross falsification of history .and unless exposed will do huge damage to the Jewish people, these people go berserk.

....that is the standard view of these organisations. Nothing compares to the Jews. Everything that the Jews endure, everything that the Jews achieve, is special, because we're the 'chosen people', so don't compare us with garbage like the Tasmanian savages (the entire indigenous population of Tasmania were exterminated under British colonial rule), or don't compare us with the Gypsies. I mean God forbid those uncivilised savages be compared with us. You have to understand that the great tragedy of the Second World War, was not that Jews per se were killed, but such a cultured people were killed--if you kill uncultured people, who cares?

...Even nowadays people are not Zionist by conviction, they are Zionist because it is useful for their political and more recently financial self-interest. The guiding light is what serves their self-interest, not ideological commitment.



Strong stuff, and not just anti-Israel (or, in these quotes, related to Israel at all), but I would have to say, anti-Jewish. It sounds like right-wing attacks on 'the welfare industry' and 'welfare queens'.

Does he have the right to say it? Yes. Does he have the right to an official academic platform to say it? Harder to answer, and here's where the two great principles of academic freedom and anti-racism can come into conflict.


I must emphasize that I got *all* my quotes, in this and my previous post, directly from Finkelstein's own official website: not from Dershowitz or any other opponent who might have a bias against Finkelstein.


(ETA: To avoid misunderstanding, I DO think that the genocide against the Tasmanians and other native people of Australia, and the long persecution of Gypsies, including many of them being Holocaust victims, ARE horrendously serious issues which are too often neglected and ignored on all sides!!!! However, sneering at the Jews thinking themselves 'the chosen people' - a common anti-semitic slur through the centuries - will not help.)

[Douglas Carpenter]

23. he is attacking certain American Jewish/Zionist organizations

And as Raul Hilberg who many would consider the world's leading scholar on the holocaust and the founder of holocaust studies pointed out, Dr. Finkelstein is not saying in content what he (Dr. Hilberg) has also said.

" was also struck by the fact that Finkelstein was being attacked over and over. And granted, his style is a little different from mine, but I was saying the same thing, and I had published my results in that three-volume work, published in 2003 by Yale University Press, and I did not hear from anybody a critical word about what I said, even though it was the same substantive conclusion that Finkelstein had offered. So that’s the gist of the matter right then and there. "

"We’ll begin in Vermont with Professor Hilberg. Can you talk about Professor Finkelstein's contribution to Holocaust studies with his book, The Holocaust Industry?

RAUL HILBERG: Yes. I read this book, which was published about seven years ago, even as I, myself, was researching actions brought against Swiss companies, notably banks, but also other enterprises in insurance and in manufacturing. And the gist of all of these claims, all of these actions, was that somehow the Swiss banks, in particular, and other enterprises, as well, owed money to Jews or the survivors or the living descendants of people who were victims. The actions were brought by claims lawyers, by the World Jewish Congress, which joined them, and a blitz was launched in the newspapers. Congressmen and senators were mobilized, officials of regulatory agencies in New York and elsewhere. Threats were issued in the nature of withdrawal of pension funds, of boycotts, of bad publicity.

And I was struck by the fact, even as I, myself, was researching the same territory that Professor Finkelstein was covering, that the Swiss did not owe that money, that the $1,250,000,000 that were agreed as a settlement to be paid to the claimants was something that in very plain language was extorted from the Swiss. I had, in fact, relied upon the same sources that Professor Finkelstein used, perhaps in addition some Swiss items. I was in Switzerland at the height of the crisis, and I heard from so-called forensic accountants about how totally surprised the Swiss were by this outburst. There is no other word for it.

Now, Finkelstein was the first to publish what was happening in his book The Holocaust Industry. And when I was asked to endorse the book, I did so with specific reference to these claims. I felt that within the Jewish community over the centuries, nothing like it had ever happened. And even though these days a couple of billion dollars are sometimes referred to as an accounting error and not worthy of discussion, there is a psychological dimension here which not must be underestimated."

link: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/09/1514221&mode=thread&tid=25



(and it should be remembered that the leading campaign against Dr. Finkelstein came from Allan Dershowitz who was specifically attacking him regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict.)

[LeftishBrit]

24. OK, but...

let's go back to my first quote: 'It is primarily the ruthless and reckless tactics of the Holocaust industry that foment anti-Semitism.'

PRIMARILY? So there would be much less anti-semitism if not for 'the Holocaust industry'? How did we get all that anti-semitism leading up to the Holocaust then? It sounds like a classic tactic: find cases of cheating or excessive demands by one group (whether Jews or Moslems or black people or women, etc.), and then blame this for prejudice against the group.

Not saying that the university's decision was necessarily the right one; just that it's not a simple issue.

[Douglas Carpenter]

26. well Dr. Finkelstein is a bit cantankerous to say the least, I agree

as a matter of fact, I was listening to a discussion he had with Palestinian-American intellectual, Ali Abunimah. Now they are pretty close to being soul mates on the Israel/Palestine issue. But when they got into a part of the discussion regarding a two-state versus single-binational-democratic-state solution, with Mr. Abunimah advocating the binational solution and Dr. Finkelstein advocating the two-state solution, Dr. Finkelstein started to get all heated to the point of being down right rude, almost obnoxious even though Professor Finkelstein does not disagree in principle and those two guys are suppose to be personal friends as well as political allies.

I don't think cranky irritable intellectuals who occasionally engage in a bit of overstatement to the point of hyperbole, much like artist of a similar disposition is a rarity though. It kind of goes with the territory.

[msmcghee]

27. Well said. n/t