Letter to Finkelstein’s Supporters
Dear All,
We want to thank you for your efforts to support Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein in his tenure battle at DePaul University. As you may know from the recent news reports and from our recent postings, Dr. Finkelstein has stepped down from his position. You may read his statement which we have posted on our Campaign Updates page.
For those of you who wish to continue to follow events related to Finkelstein and Dr. Mehrene Larudee’s tenure battles as well as the overall battle for academic freedom in the U.S., please go to the DePaul Academic Freedom Committee’s website for updates.
Thank you all for your support.
In solidarity,
Marcy Newman & Matthew Abraham
April 8, 2007 at 3:16 pm |
Norman Finkelstein is an internationally recognized scholar on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Shame on DePaul for capitulating to outside political pressure– talk about inconsistent with Vincentian values!
April 8, 2007 at 3:43 pm |
His scholarship is superb. He has shown Alan Dershowitz to be a fraud. That is not grounds for denying tenure.
April 8, 2007 at 3:55 pm |
DePaul University
Associate Professor
Political Science
DePaul University
April 8, 2007 at 7:03 pm |
Vincentian values have taken a nose dive with the Dean’s decision to deny Norman Finkelstein tenure. He is a scholar with a national and international reputation, whose work has been published by some of the best presses in the world. His scholarship is honest, rigorous, and courageous, exactly what it should be for a first rate scholar and public intellectual. The Dershowitz’s of the world are merely petty ideological clerks, gatekeepers for the dangerous notion that the suppression of dissent and dialogue is necessary to promote an idea, policy, and world view. What is happening to Professor Finkelstein is not new and should be placed in the context of a shameful history of academic dishonesty and suppression that we have seen during the red scare, the McCarthy Period, and with the likes of COINTELPRO.
April 8, 2007 at 9:19 pm |
It is important that academic freedom be maintained. It is essential that controversial scholars not be subject to coercion. It is in the public interest that due process and fairness be afforded Professor Finkelstein. Also an informed public usually acts in an ethical manner. That is what my blog in the website space has attempted to do.
I am hopeful that DePaul, a fine university, will ultimately render an appropriate affirmative judgment in the tenure and promotion application of Dr Finkelstein.
April 8, 2007 at 9:26 pm |
I applaud you for crafting and circulating this letter. Scholars of the Palestine-Israel conflict are perhaps more seriosly at risk in the current witch-hunting climate and we must support Professor Finkelstein. An injury to one is an injury to all.
Dana Cloud
April 8, 2007 at 10:58 pm |
I fully support the notion that academic excellence should be judged based on the merit of the scholarly work as judged by the faculty of each instituiton. The controversy created by Dr. Finkelstein’s work challenges our committment to academic freedom which should be defended by all of us, independent of our political point of view.
Asghar Rastegar, MD.
Professor of Medicine
Yale School of Medicine
April 8, 2007 at 11:02 pm |
It is predictable in this climate of silence that a scholar who has repeatedly been targeted with character assassination would be denied tenure for being guilty of the same. Such is the morality of the censors. More to the point, the accusation is untrue. Can anyone who has read any of Finkelstein’s many books — reviewed, read, and debated all over the world — seriously argue that he is a scholar unworthy of tenure? His accomplishments as an intellectual dwarf that of most full professors, and he remains — like him or not — an intellectual of international distinction. If he is denied tenure, particularly on these spurious grounds, it is a blot on DePaul and on American academia in general.
April 8, 2007 at 11:31 pm |
I support strongly maintaining the integrity of tenure and promotion at U.S. universities. That integrity depends on administrators not denying tenure on the basis of the “temperament” of the scholarship under review. When administrators do so, it is censorious and chilling of academic freedom not only at their own institutions but throughout the U.S. academy. Faculty expect administrators to uphold academic freedom, not to enter into the untenable business of promoting scholars and teachers on the basis of subjective criteria like “civility,” which can only land institutions into the courts and end up creating three ring circuses for all who have to work in them.
April 8, 2007 at 11:38 pm |
We can not sit back and let this happen without resisting. Dr Finkelstein scholarship exceeds DePaul’s expectations for tenure as they are applied to ‘non-controversial’ academics and his teaching evaluations are superb. His politics are the only reason for Dean Suchar’s recommendation to deny tenure.
Assistant Professor of Sociology
DePaul University
April 8, 2007 at 11:48 pm |
One must wonder at such cases as Norm Finkelstein’s when professors such as Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz receives not even a slap on the hand for actively seeking to censor Finkelstein’s recent book, “Beyond Chutzpah”; for accusing Finkelstein’s mother – a survivor of a Nazi deathcamp – of being a “kapo” in order to stay alive; for appealing to the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to step in to prohibit UCLA from publishing Finkelstein’s book, among other egregious actions. Or perhaps one should recall comments of people such as Leon Wieseltier who described Norman Finkelstein as “something one finds under a rock.” Why have these people not been censured, or even reproached, for such despicable actions and comments? These are but a few brief examples (among many, many more) of the undignified muckraking and defamation that is allowed to pass without notice when one is a part of the “club”. It would seem the real issue at hand is that Norm Finkelstein refuses to accede to the euphemistic and propagandistic party line on Israel-Palestine and is being punished for this refusal. Bravo to him, and shame on DePaul for allowing the witch-hunters to influence its university policies.
April 9, 2007 at 2:02 am |
If a polemical tone were enough to deny tenure, then there would be very few tenured faculty in the social sciences and humanities. DePaul University should not allow its reputation to be soiled by succumbing to the intimidation of fanatics like Dershowitz (talk about polemical ranting!) and their organized attempts to suppress any voice that dares to speak truth to power. Aside from setting a dangerous precedent concerning academic freedom, this would be a slap in the face for the DePaul faculty who have carefully weighed the evidence for tenure and made a positive assessment at two levels.
April 9, 2007 at 6:40 am |
I was driven out of academia with similar charges of “lack of collegiality,” despite a record of excellent scholarship. The real target was my outspoken antiracism and feminism. I am currently living in what I consider to be political exile in Germany. In my case, the majority of my colleagues were either too intimidated (some were outright threatened) by the University of Arizona administration to stand up for me or my work, or too easily brainwashed by the lies and rumors that were deliberately being spread against me.
In light of this, I must say that collegial SUPPORT for Finkelstein will remain the most important factor in his retention, and I applaud your efforts on his behalf. I say from experience that if you allow yourself to be influenced by the arguments of the administration or publlic pressure, everyone — not simply Finkelstein — will lose.
In a climate of eroding academic freedom, in which pencil pushing bureaucrats responsible only to politicians, mega-capitalists, and government funding agencies exert far too much control over faculty, in which tenure has eroded to the point where it offers almost no protection, and in which part-timers (whose economic positions are often desperate and unstable) largely outnumber tenure-track faculty, it is crucially important for faculty (all faculty — full and part-time) to work in concert to protect and re-establish faculty rights.
The attack on Finkelstein at DePaul is part of a far larger right wing program to destroy academia. The attack was begun in the 1990s with the “Culture Wars” and the Finkelstein case (like the Ward Churchill and Al-Arian cases) is only the beginning — if the right achieves success in ousting these scholars, you can rest assured that the purge will continue. You are fighting for your livelihoods here, and for your ideals and principles as scholars, teachers, and writers. I wish you luck. Thank you for standing up at DePaul.
April 9, 2007 at 7:55 am |
Director of Middle East Studies
Professor of History
American University in Cairo
April 9, 2007 at 9:43 am |
Not ‘personable,’ Dr. Finkelstein? Ask his students. Ask his audiences. Ask even those of us who write to him for information or reliable sources.
Dr. Finkelstein is one of the most careful, best documented researchers and most articulate communicators in my 75-year lifetime of experience. It is to the credit of a fine Catholic university to have him on its staff.
April 9, 2007 at 10:50 am |
Dear Rev./Dr. Holtschneider and Dr. Epp,
Norm Finkelstein’s work has been greatly appreciated here in Lebanon, across confessional and ideological lines. I highly respect him as a scholar and dedicated academic activist. I encourage you to support his application for tenure.
Eugène Richard Sensenig-Dabbous, MA, PhD
Assistant Professor for Political Science & Cultural Studies
Emphasis European and American Area Studies
Notre Dame University, Zouk Mosbeh campus
PO Box 72 Zouk Mikael, Lebanon
sdabbous@ndu.edu.lb or sensenig@cyberia.net.lb
office: +961-9-218950-ext: 2322 – summer: 05-550596
http://www.ndu.edu.lb or http://www.libanlink.org
April 9, 2007 at 11:32 am |
Without even examing closely the professional merits of the Norman Finkelstein tenure case, which seem to weigh heavily in the candidate’s favor, I believe that that U.S. universities need to be havens of free debate where critical research can take place without intimidation. Norman Finkelstein’s positions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict — and on the political conduct of certain leaders of world Jewry — are very courageous and he has presented them with originality. I would hate to think that his university’s authorities would deny him tenure for expressing his deeply felt convictions and attempting to break through the one-dimensionality of the U.S. political discussion on the role of Israel and the U.S. in today’s world order. — James Cohen, Dept. of Political Science, University of Paris VIII
April 9, 2007 at 11:45 am |
Denying Norman Finkelstein tenure would be a blow to free speech and to the very idea of a university. Finkelstein is the author of a raft of articles, the co-author of one book, and the author of four, at least three of which have an international reputation, with multiple translations. One of the latter, The Holocaust Industry, combines extraordinary passion, rigorous scholarship, and an act of filial piety—a critique of those who would exploit the suffering of the survivors, including his own late parents, in order to enrich themselves and their institutions. Yet the brawling charlatans who have organized a campaign against Finkelstein have obscenely tried to characterize him as a Holocaust denier or revisionist—and all this despite the fact that Raul Hilberg, the unquestioned dean of Holocaust historians, who is not given to the sort of promiscuous, log-rolling puffery characteristic of the academic book trade, has publicly praised Finkelstein’s book.
But this case is about more than Norman Finkelstein. If a scholar with his credentials is denied tenure on the grounds of a lack of “collegiality”—i.e., because he strongly criticizes other writers in his field (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/03/finkelstein)—who will be safe in the future? Will the general run of scholarship become even more anodyne than it is already? What graduate student envisioning a career of research and teaching will dare to take a critical perspective on the Nakba and the Israeli occupation of Palestine? What assistant professor will presume to bring her- or himself forward for promotion and tenure on the strength of “only” one risk-taking book in the field? This case, if it ends badly, will have a chilling effect on the whole academy, and DePaul will acquire an ineradicable bad odor.
And everyone in the university should be wary of the creeping emergence of “collegiality” as a fourth term in tenure review, alongside research, teaching, and service, precisely because it is so utterly subjective a criterion, and can be used to mask an utterly uncollegial attack: “Because I can’t discredit your scholarship, but still hate and/or fear you, or because others do, you are uncollegial, and so should therefore be denied tenure.” On this, see Mary Ann Connell and Frederick G. Savage, “Does Collegiality Count?” (http://www.aaup.org/publications/Academe/2001/01nd/01ndcon.htm). This is McCarthyism in a new, touchy-feely guise, and it should be spurned.
Jim Holstun
Department of English
SUNY Buffalo
April 9, 2007 at 11:50 am |
Cynthia Nearman
Writing Director/Asst. Prof of English
Guilford College
Greensboro, NC 27403
April 9, 2007 at 12:03 pm |
Associate Professor
Gender & Women’s Studies and Sociology
Oberlin College
April 9, 2007 at 12:21 pm |
Norman Finkelstein’s main “crime” is that, for many years, he has meticulously, thoroughly and compellingly exposed myths and falsehoods in the mainstream western knowledge of Israel’s colonial and apartheid nature and policies. And he has done so with passion and a sense of moral mission — both rare commodities in today’s western academy.
As a human and as a Palestinian, I highly admire Norm’s work and commitment.
April 9, 2007 at 12:30 pm |
Professor Norman Finkelstein is a hero and a tireless advocate of justice for all sides. The idea of firing him is an unconscionable affront not just to academic freedom but also to the concept of justice in it’s very essence.
April 9, 2007 at 12:41 pm |
Without a doubt, this is a politically motivated decision designed to intimidate scholars who are critical of the status quo and of US foreign policy. Under no circumstances can we allow DePaul to get away with this as it sets a chilling precedent.
April 9, 2007 at 1:18 pm |
A superb teacher, a scholar with an international reputation, a speaker much sought after on campuses across the country: Reads to me like not only a strong case for tenure but for promotion to full professor. The U.S. needs more scholars like Dr. Finkelstein–producing work that is relevant, compassionate, vigorously attentive to the actual facts, and always well worth arguing about.
Nancy Welch
Professor
Department of English
University of Vermont
April 9, 2007 at 1:41 pm |
Professor Finkelstein is one of the foremost scholars on Israeli-Palestinian history and current affairs. An excellent teacher, with clear, interesting, and important presentations. Although he challenges “conventional wisdom” on the subjects he covers, I have found — as he has — that “conventional wisdom” is frequently just wrong. We need more scholars like Findelstein who can see through the biasis and incorrect information to find the underlying reality.
Fred Magdoff
Professor
Department of Plant & Soil Science
University of Vermont
April 9, 2007 at 1:48 pm |
The continued witchhunt against Norman Finkelstein is shameful as well as breathtakingly cynical. As a veritable calvary is imposed on the Palestinian people, one of the most brilliant and effective critics of its oppressor is subjected to political harassment and blackmail to destroy his career. Finkelstein should have been tenurered professor a long time ago.
April 9, 2007 at 2:21 pm |
Professor Finkelstein is an essential contributor to the scholarly discourse about Israel-Palestine as well as to the political dialogue among activists, Jews and non-Jews alike. His presentations are forceful, clear, and meticulously documented, and his books are invaluable additions to the field. For DePaul University to deny him tenure will be seens as a grotesque restraint of academic freedom and a politically motivated muzzling of a crucial scholarly and moral voice. Alan Dershowitz does not speak for all Jews, and should not be in control of tenure decisions at DePaul University.
April 9, 2007 at 2:44 pm |
Husam A. Mohamad, Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Central Oklahoma
Edmond, OK 73034
April 9, 2007 at 3:03 pm |
Professor Finkelstein’s reputation as a scholar is worldwide. For an American university to deny him tenure would be tantamount to admitting
that American education has no interest in scholarship. As it appears, Professor Finkelstein’s only crime is to have stuck steadfastly to the truth that the historical record reveals. And if truth is not the business of education I don’t know what is!
April 9, 2007 at 3:19 pm |
Based on Finkelstein’s scholarship and activism, the only reason to deny him tenure is the political drive to suppress speech critical of Israel. Those who hound Finkelstein do so precisely because people are listening to him. This is not only because Finkelstein has something important to say, but also because there is a growing suspicion among the public that Israel has wronged the Palestinians, and decent people want to know why.
Andrew Austin
Associate Professor
Law and Justice Studies
Social Change and Development
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
April 9, 2007 at 3:39 pm |
I am not a scholar, but a thinking person, who has read enough of this case to see that it is a concerted effort to deny tenure to a great scholar and right thinking individual, for spurious reasons. We need more of his kind, not less. I stand with all those who say put a stop to this “denying of tenure” to an outstanding scholar and individual.
Margaret L. Albert
April 9, 2007 at 3:54 pm |
I stand shoulder to shoulder with Norm Finkelstein. DePaul University should hang its head in shame if it denies tenure to Finkelstein, under pressure from such disreputable people as Alan Dershowitz. Shame!
April 9, 2007 at 4:27 pm |
Charles Cunningham
Dept. of English
Eastern Michigan University
April 9, 2007 at 4:55 pm |
Aaron J. Levitt, Director of Research
CUCS
April 9, 2007 at 5:16 pm |
Dr. Norman Finkelstein is an important contributor to political and cultural research, and should get tenure. Maybe Jim Petras is correct about the influence of the Zionist lobby! And maybe academe’s participation in the headlong rush to friendly fascism is not so friendly. Dr. Finkelstein’s colleagues should help him continue his work, not conform to the Washington Consensus.
April 9, 2007 at 5:46 pm |
Aaron Lercher
Mathematics Librarian
Louisiana State University
Norman Finkelstein is an important voice in the debate over US Middle East policy. As such he is bound to make people uncomfortable sometimes. But DePaul University should want to have prominent intellectuals like Finkelstein among its faculty.
April 9, 2007 at 6:14 pm |
Dept. of English
Al-Aqsa University
Gaza-Palestine
April 9, 2007 at 6:16 pm |
Dept. of English
Al-Azhar University; Gaza
Palestine
April 9, 2007 at 6:18 pm |
Free Lance producer
Gaza, Palestine
April 9, 2007 at 6:19 pm |
Shop keeper
Gaza, Palestine
April 9, 2007 at 6:27 pm |
I appeal to the President and Provost of DePaul University to reverse the opinion of the Dean in what is otherwise an overwhelmingly positive review, and to grant Professor Finkelstein tenure. Professor Finkelstein’s academic credentials are widely-acknowledged to be superb, and it would be tragic for DePaul as well as him if he were denied tenure on the basis of a narrow-minded and vindictive political agenda. DePaul’s reputation has only been enhanced by having Prof. Finkelstein on the faculty, but that reputation will be damaged irreparably if he is denied tenure. Finkelstein’s scholarship is profoundly moral in addressing social and political injustice, and makes him the kind of scholar DePaul University should cherish because he fulfills an essential part of its mission.
April 9, 2007 at 6:31 pm |
How is it possible that someone like Alan Dershowitz, who plagarizes [e.g. from Joan Peters (see Amy Goodman of Democracy Now (video /Youtube) with Finkelstein and Dershowitz], and twists the truth (lie) more skillfully than the Farabutto swindlers in Andersen’s fairy tale (see Finkelstein Beyond Chutzpah) has tenure and is not questioned on his ’scholarly’ output – while an excellent scholar who tells the Emperor he really has no clothes – and produces outstanding and internationally recognized scholarship becomes the culprit and a target for relentless and unjustified attacks?? The answer is obvious, it is because Finkelstein unveils Israel’s brutal policies of occupation and its many violations of international law.
If DePaul does not give Dr. Finkelstein tenure, it is not Finkelstein that is shamed, but DePaul (especially its Dean).
April 9, 2007 at 6:31 pm |
Tony Bradley
Frederick Corse Professor of English
University of Vermont
April 9, 2007 at 6:44 pm |
Dr. Finkelstein, with whom I have had the pleasure and honor of exchanging some thoughts on higher studies in the United States is, without question, a scholar deserving of tenure.
As for his outspoken views and polemical tone – the notion that scholarship is an antiseptic inquiry conducted by angels of God in unisex leotards and wings is one so far from the truth as to evoke nothing but ribald laughter from at least this refugee from academia.
That does not mean that passionate inquiry is dishonest. But it means that there is always a point of view involved. It is not the business of the tenure committee to derail a candidate for expressing an out of favor viewpoint, if the scholarship it has produced is worthy.
Research worth the name usually comes from the heart (assuming he/she has one) of the scholar. There can be no doubt that Professor Finkelstein has one. And a brain. And that both are generous and honest.
The same cannot be said of one of his cardinal detractors – Alan Dershowitz. Yet – Prof. D, last I heard, was a tenured professor at no less than Harvard. The contrast between the fawning adulation that Alan Dershowitz receives and the spite with which Norman Finkelstein has been treated throughout his career, tells you a great deal about where the university system is headed.
If Norman Finkelstein is not tenured for political reasons, it will be the worst kind of disgrace for the notion of academic freedom.
April 9, 2007 at 7:13 pm |
Academics, research institutions as well as governmental producers of information abuse their own purposes when they
make charges about “polemical” scholarship and “lack of collegiality.”
Tenure should not rest on the holding of supposedly “acceptable” political views and be denied with resort to such excuses.
April 9, 2007 at 7:18 pm |
If Saint Vincent de Paul, the namesake of this university, were to find himself in Gaza or the West Bank today, he would be moved to pity and horror by the grinding poverty of the population. He might establish homes for orphans or the disabled, as he did in Paris, or found a new charitable order, but he would also demand to know, as Norman Finkelstein has done, why such sub-human conditions are forced upon the Palestinians, whose primary offense is that they exist. The firing of Professor Finkelstein is an act of abject cowardice and callous disregard for justice and human dignity. “Vincentian values” indeed.
Buffalo NY
April 9, 2007 at 8:02 pm |
Professor Finkelstein should not be denied tenure / tenure track status at DePaul University because of attacks by Alan Dershowitz and by inference AIPAC. DePaul is a university with Vincentian ideals and freedom of speech is one of them.
April 9, 2007 at 8:43 pm |
I am honored to have the opportunity (but saddened to feel the need) to add my name to this petition. We are in tragic times when a faculty member with impeccable academic credentials needs public support for tenure at a major university because a powerful person or vociferous group does not favor the political position of that faculty member. Norman Finkelstein has always upheld the highest standards of academic excellence and has had courage to stand for those ideals. Without a diversity of well-founded positions vigorously articulated, how are we to eventuate in truth? It seems strange to me that a person familiar with the law would argue that a judge should hear only one side of an issue – that the opposition should be silenced. Sadly, it seems that Jimmy Carter was right.
April 9, 2007 at 8:50 pm |
Support tenure
April 9, 2007 at 9:16 pm |
Professor Finklestein is a staunch defender of academic freedom, a meticulous researcher with dignity and integrity.
April 9, 2007 at 9:56 pm |
Help stop the witch-hunt before it is too late!!
Terri Ginsberg
Purchase College – SUNY
April 9, 2007 at 11:58 pm |
Professor Finkelstein deserves tenure.
April 10, 2007 at 12:11 am |
Finkelstein’s work is thoroughly researched, meticulously documented, and forcefully presented. Scholars in all fields would do well to look to his writing as a model of clarity and conviction.
Paul M. Heideman
Department of Afro-American Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison
April 10, 2007 at 12:49 am |
I have read 2 of Dr Finkelstein’s books and attended a lecture he gave in London. He is a scholar of immense integrity, with great courage, which is very much more than can be said of many of his detractors. On the Holocaust and its aftermath he has said many true things that needed to be said, and on Israeli policy he has said nothing that you cannot hear said by many peace-loving Israelis themselves. Of course he deserves tenure and the campaign against him is a disgrace. (I’m a retired psychiatrist in Britain.)
April 10, 2007 at 1:52 am |
Please add me. And thanks for doing this.
Benjamin Whitmer
Lecturer, Ethnic Studies
University of Colorado at Boulder
April 10, 2007 at 1:54 am |
I strongly support Prof. Finkelstein in his battle with DePaul.
April 10, 2007 at 3:15 am |
The campaign against Professor Finkelstein’s tenure is a vicious attack not only on this courageous scholar, but on academic freedom as well. It is a tragic irony that at this critical juncture in our nation’s relationship with the Middle East, there is a movement to silence one of the finest minds in the field. It is now more vital than ever that Professor Finkelstein be encouraged to continue his valuable work on the Israel-Palestine conflict – a conflict that is at the very heart of the grave problems and misunderstandings that exist between the United States and the countries of the Middle East.
Granting Professor Finkelstein his well-deserved tenure will provide an enormous benefit for DePaul and a boon to the freedom of inquiry everywhere.
Sincerely,
John Barry, Esq.
National Lawyers Guild
April 10, 2007 at 3:37 am |
As a scholar Norman Finkelstein is so vastly more credible than Alan Dershowitz.
Dershowitz should stick to defending clients like the Brentwood Butcher and desist from harrassing honest people like Jimmy Carter and Norman Finkelstein.
April 10, 2007 at 3:48 am |
Finkelstein’s scholarship is careful and important. He provokes serious and crucial thinking about controversial matters. There are long standing efforts to intimidate people who tell truths about Israel and its occupation that mainstream Jewish leaders try to suppress. They mean well in what they believe are efforts to protect Israel, but silencing that which needs to be exposed and discussed does Israel a tragic disservice. All nationalist projects need to be scrutinized closely and critically. When Israel finally ends the occupation, it will be seen that critics like Finkelstein played a key role in bringing that step about and the real possibilities for peace that will follow that step.
April 10, 2007 at 4:02 am |
I am upset by this witchhunt against Professor Finkelstein. I am old enough to have seen it all before during the McCarthy period. He should not be silenced because his research
is very carefully documented. These are terrible times that we are living in and all voices should be heard.
April 10, 2007 at 4:23 am |
This is one more example of scholars losing the right of free speech. There should be no hesitation in giving tenure to Professor Finklestein. He has demonstrated a solid record of scholarship in his large published record.
April 10, 2007 at 4:32 am |
Add me to the list of petitioners in support of Dr. Finkelstein in his battle for tenure.
James Benjamin, Ph. D.
Associate Professor
Behavioral and Social Sciences
Oklahoma Panhandle State University
April 10, 2007 at 6:22 am |
I strongly support Professor Norman Finkelstein tenure for the sake intellectual and academic freedom.
Khadim Hussain
Assistant Professor
Bahria University Islamabad
April 10, 2007 at 7:23 am |
he once said “I’m only the messenger”.
Abed Othman
Journalist, Germany.
April 10, 2007 at 7:35 am |
Those responsible for taking this decision, and those able to affect it, have to ask themselves what sort of America they want, and what sort of American academy they want.
If they want a country and an itellectual community that accords with the claimed values of their nation and the enlightenment – freedom of thought and expression, concern for the fate of humanity and an insistence on the truth – then they will go the extra mile to defend Prof Finkelstein.
If they want a country whose intellectual community exists simply to propagandise in the service of power (note the historical precedents) and which punishes who dedicate themselves at some personal cost to unveiling the truth about such behaviour, then they will find in favour of Alan Dershowitz, and hang Finkelstein out to dry.
We’ve seen a little too much of the second kind of America these past few years. Let’s see something of the first.
David Wearing
MSc Student
University College London
http://www.democratsdiary.co.uk
April 10, 2007 at 9:42 am |
Owen Green
Dept. of Music
City University, London
April 10, 2007 at 12:55 pm |
I have Norman’s book Beyond Chutzpah out the library at the moment and it is an amazing piece of research. I am not surprised that he is being targeted in this way – the very nature of his work means that this type of treatment will be inevitable. Truth-tellers past and present have always been smeared and punished for their big ‘crime’ – the crime of having integrity and principles.
Orwell said that ‘In times of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act’ and I would dedicate that quote to Finkelstein.
Now let’s see who will be listened to – the powers-that-be or the people?
There will be one heck of a lot of people watching this very closely.
April 10, 2007 at 1:10 pm |
It is outrageous that outside influence is being brought to bear on a candidate’s tenure process. It is especially distressing when the tenure of the candidate in question, Norman Finkelstein, is being jeopardized by the pugnacious Alan Dershowitz, an academic bully whose political objections to Professor Finkelstein’s critique of Israeli government policies has blinded him to the fact that several of Finkelstein’s books have been highly praised by notable scholars. I am referring particularly to Raul Hilberg’s praise for “The Holocaust Industry” and Arno Mayer and Eric Hobsbawm’s for “A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth.”
Please do the right thing and give Finkelstein what any academic deserves: a fair tenure process free from the political pressures of outside agitators like Dershowitz.
April 10, 2007 at 1:37 pm |
Norman Finkelstein is an outstanding scholar and activist for human rights.
His books have been of great value for me. Denial of his tenure would be a grave injustice.
Boycott and Divest from Israel until the individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people are realized!
David Schwartzman
Professor
Howard University
Activist in DC Statehood Green Party, member of International Committee, Green Party of the United States
April 10, 2007 at 2:44 pm |
Please add my name in support of Norman Finkelstein:
Ian Birchall,
Formerly Senior Lecturer in Humanities (now retired),
Middlesex University,
London UK
April 10, 2007 at 3:00 pm |
Support tenure
April 10, 2007 at 3:23 pm |
Please use this letter, which I’ve already sent, in whatever way you wish.
good luck
Tony Greenstein
>>The Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., Ed.D.
President De Paul University
55 East Jackson Boulevard,
Phone: 312/362-8000
Fax: 312/362-6822
4 Crestway Parade,
Brighton BN1 7BL
England, UK
01273 540717
Dear Sir:
I write as a post-graduate of the University of Sussex as well as someone who is Jewish. Last academic year, Norman Finkelstein spoke to a packed audience at the university. Indeed so packed that people had to be turned away at the doors.
It is not necessary to agree with everything Norman Finkelstein writes to be dismayed by what appears to be a naked abandonment of any principle by Charles S. Suchar, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. There has been an open bid by Alan Dershowitz, of Harvard Law School, to have tenure to Dr Finkelstein refused. This is an open attack upon the whole concept of a liberal university, freedom of speech and the cut and thrust of academic debate. Alan Dershowitz is known here as the Professor of Torture, given his open support for the use of torture by US forces in Iraq. Is De Paul College really going to bow to the propaganda campaign of this man?
There is little doubt that Norman Finkelstein has aroused antagonism with his contributions to the debate over the Holocaust. There is also no denying that the substance of his book The Holocaust Industry has proved correct in respect of Reparations and the Jewish Claims Conference. Only a week ago its Chief Executive, Rabbi Israel Singer was forced to resign over financial improprieties. The fact that holocaust survivors have received nothing of the billions of dollars collected is a scandal which Dr Finkelstein has helped expose. The job of his university is to support him not to threaten his livelihood.
I can only hope that when the decision is made, that you have more courage than your Dea and remember that the function of a university is not to echo received opinion in society.
Yours sincerely,
Tony Greenstein
April 10, 2007 at 3:27 pm |
I have read several of Prof. Finkelstein’s books, and listened to his commentary on current events in the Mideast on several occasions, and I have never seen or heard an “uncivil” comment. On the contrary, what I’ve seen and heard are sober, intelligent, and extremely well-informed analysis of both historical and current events. The idea that such an important scholar should be denied tenure is unthinkable. The fact that this is even a question sadly indicates the power of those forces in both academia and the media who just cannot tolerate any criticism of Israeli policy or an honest look at the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Joseph Levine
Professor of Philosophy
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
April 10, 2007 at 3:33 pm |
Please support Norman Finkelstein’s bid for tenure. Alan Dershowitz should have no role in determining the tenure bid of a professor at another institution. Dershowitz’s campaign against Norman Finkelstein is unconscionable.
Rachel A. Jennings, Ph.D.
Instructor
San Antonio College
San Antonio, Texas
April 10, 2007 at 3:38 pm |
I very much value Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s scholarship, activism and example. Please add my name to his list of supporters.
April 10, 2007 at 3:43 pm |
I have been studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for over 30 years, and have frequently lectured and written about this important topic. During the past 15 years, I have found Mr. Finkelstein’s research to be immensely useful in shedding valuable light on relationships between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and on the American role in shaping and perpetuating this conflict. Given the consistently high calibre of his research, it is beyond belief that the scholarly credentials of Mr. Finkelstein should be in doubt. Those who oppose Mr. Finkelstein’s ideas are anxious to silence him. it would be shameful if DePaul University acquiesces in this assault upon freedom of speech.
Tomis Kapitan
Professor of Philosophy
Northern Illinois University
April 10, 2007 at 4:09 pm |
Norman Finkelstein and I have not always seen eye to eye and he has been very critical of me in print. And yes, he isn’t always polite or ‘respectful’. But that is a scholar’s privilege and has been for a thousand years. Precisely because of the controversial and highly politicised field in which he works, it is vital that Finkelstein’s tenure process be fair, free of all outside pressure and concerned exclusively with his qualities as scholar and teacher. Anything else will bring your university in serious public disrepute.
April 10, 2007 at 4:24 pm |
I encourage and support anyone who can provide objective and truthful research into the history of politics within the Israeli Palestinian arena – since this is surely the most valuable means to provide objective and effective critical analysis that can help us to understand the means to peace and reconciliation and therefore I am sure it would be of value to members of both side of the Israeli Palestinian debate who are interested in real truth – rather than the subjective and manipulated prejudiced views of those who aim to gain success over another through oppression and conflict rather than through civil and just means.
Therefore I wish Norman Finkelstein all the necessary support and solidarity in his work, and that it will have bear fruit in the cause of finding a true and just resolution to the conflict in this highly sensitive and important part of the world – that represents freedom for all people of all religions and not for a selected minority group at the expense of others.
April 10, 2007 at 5:07 pm |
I’m very surprised that the certain key evaluations of Dr. Finkelstein’s merit say nothing of his rigoruous and inspirational teaching. (Odd, from a self-proclaimed teaching university)
April 10, 2007 at 5:16 pm |
We should not be satisfied with defending an honest and hard-working man, who is among the most important in his field, and who is being attacked without a single good reason. We should remember that after Professor Finkelstein noticed that Professor Dershowitz made exactly the same “mistakes” as Peters, some secret saint sent Finkelstein a copy of Dershowitz’s instructions to his research assistants, which gave the page numbers in From Time Immemorial. Dershowitz has done plenty already (recall his trying to stop the publication of Beyond Chutzpah, then saying he hadn’t; recall that this is the schmuck who made Arnold Schwatzenegger look like a civil libertarian) and this unforgivable crime should kill his reputation.
(And if we’re going to purge professors for politics, let’s get rid of some of these econ profs naive enough to still schill for deregulation after Enron. Honestly.)
April 10, 2007 at 7:33 pm |
As a “non-American Jew,” I am certainly very cautions anything Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz from Harvard Law School might say.
There is a famous quote from one of the most esteemed Jewish scholars that roughly states, “If not now, when?” Therefore, although I am not a scholar, I would support Professor Finkelstein in his scholarship, and I strongly object that another professor (who is not in the same field of scholarship as Professor Finkelstein) has the audacity to intervene in a tenure process (and the publication of a book). In addition, what is better than, “a Jew taking on controversial issues about and for Jews”!
It would appear to me that even if one supports Israel, or whatever Israel stands for, surely, one would not censor others, in the hope that others would not censor us! I would equally call for a rejection of any censor from a Muslim scholar about a non-Muslim scholar writing about Muslim affairs.
I was under the impression that in the US, academic freedom is prized above all else. Clearly, I am wrong!
April 10, 2007 at 7:43 pm |
Dr. Finkelstein’s research is widely read and acclaimed for its thoroughness and documentation by specialists in Middle Eastern Studies. It is my understanding that his scholarship is not, in fact, at issue but rather that some nebulous personality traits–existing truly only in the eye of the beholder!–have been cited as grounds for denial of tenure. Dr. Finkelstein’s departmental colleagues support the decision to grant him tenure, and it is extremely rare–and very alarming–that their opinion should be overturned, particularly on such frivolous grounds. What, indeed, are the personality traits that guarantee tenure if scholarship is not to be considered?
April 10, 2007 at 7:49 pm |
As an educator who has been denied any of the benefits of full-time employment (let alone tenure), how dare DePaul try to muzzle Dr. Finkelstein’s work by this roundabout route of forcing him to choose between truth and toil!
Tenure for Dr. Finkelstein!
Part-Time Teacher of English as a Second Language
Algonquin College
April 10, 2007 at 8:03 pm |
I am pleased to add my name to the list of individuals in support of Dr. Finkelstein. His meticulous scholarship and personal courage to de-bunk cherished myths about the history of Israel/Palestine are an inspiration. It would be a travesty to deny tenure to a bone fide Middle East scholar of his quality, productivity, and unique insight.
Dennis Solt
Associate Professor
Northwestern University
Fienberg School of Medicine
April 10, 2007 at 8:22 pm |
As a Jew, an American, and a believer in freedom of intellectual inquiry, I am glad to endorse Prof. Norman Finkelstein’s candidacy for tenure. At Stanford, where my husband taught for nearly 40 years, both scholarship and teaching were the criteria for promotion. Prof. Finkelstein’s rebuttal of Joan Peters’ book From Time Immemorial first brought him to my attention, and his subsequent books further convinced me that he was an indispensable source of knowledge about Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It would be a great disservice to students and to everyone interested in balanced and reliable information if Prof. Finkelstein were penalized for his views. Rachelle Marshall´
April 10, 2007 at 8:31 pm |
Finkelstein’s scholarship is meticulous and impressive. That is the only criterion on which his application for tenure should be decided. (It is sad that this ponit needs to be articulated explicitly in a petition addressed to a University.)
April 10, 2007 at 8:49 pm |
The trouble De Paul gives to Prof Norman Finklestein should have been buried with the witchhuntw in the 50’s. It is a shame on the leaders of US universities that such things still rear its ugly head. It reminds me of the search for the WMD in Iraq. unless Finklesteing is awared his well deserved tenure, the reputation of De Paul wil go down to history with infamy.
Adrian Chan, Visiting Fellow, History Progrm, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
April 10, 2007 at 9:04 pm |
The tenure process is in danger of being used as institutional censorship, fair and open debate would be better served by giving Dr. Finkelstein tenure.
April 10, 2007 at 9:17 pm |
Professor Finkelstein offers the rare combination of superb scholarship and great courage in the cause of bringing truth and justice to bear on the matter of Israel/Palestine. This is the basic reason why he has drawn the attacks of powerful figures in the Zionist movement–and the essential reason why his tenure application should be approved in spite of this. Granting Finkelstein tenure will encourage people of good will everywhere; refusing it will be a disgrace that will stain the reputation of DePaul University. The whole world is watching.
Joel Kovel
Distinguished Professor of Social Studies
Bard College
April 10, 2007 at 9:42 pm |
As others here have noted, Finkelstein has earned tenure. Hopefully, DePaul University will not buckle under the pressure and deny it to him. Dershowitz’s behaviour is contemptible, as it was when he tried to prevent the University of California Press from publishing Finkelstein’s most recent book.
April 10, 2007 at 10:39 pm |
How should one deal with people who deserve strong criticism in a scholarly work? By being clear and above board and supplying a lot of good evidence for the charges made. I would have thought that this answer was self-evident and that Norman Finkelstein has provided us all with a model of how that should be done. To claim, as his Dean has, that Finkelstein’s well documented criticisms of a few people who have shown they deserve such treatment, crosses some imaginary line of academic civility is both unbelievable and unheard of. So what is the real reason? Need I say? And can that be allowed to determine questions of tenure at any American university? There is still time to shout “bloody murder”, and we must… loud and often.
April 11, 2007 at 1:14 am |
Adjunct Faculty North Park University Chicago;
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
This is why we have tenure.
Tell it, Norm.
April 11, 2007 at 1:53 am |
I am writng in support of Norman Finkelstein Phd. I have heard him several times on the radio and do not find him lacking intellectual integrity or honesty. When he speaks and writes he quotes human rights organizations, historical documents, and U. N. resolutions. I remember him speaking about how he got his Phd. by finding faulty demographic data in a well respected and popular book that was approved by many academics including Alan Dershowitz. I think he is courageous and fearless when it comes to speaking his mind and sticking to historical facts.
April 11, 2007 at 3:58 am |
The comments above have set it well…. give this incredible academic the tenure he rightly deserves!
April 11, 2007 at 4:00 am |
Leslie Bary
Assistant Professor (tenured – promotion pending)
Modern Languages
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
It is Dershowitz’ behavior which is uncollegial.
April 11, 2007 at 4:43 am |
Norman Finkelstein has clearly earned tenure. How does one explain better than those above – and elsewhere – who have already written in support of Finkelstein?
The ‘debate’ is an intentional distraction – caused and/or backed by the usual nefarious suspects – their willing appointed attack dog being the perpetually annoying Alan D..
The above is certainly to be considered an abrasive observation by those who honor ‘civility’ and ‘harmony’ far more than truth. I prefer truth; the more brutally honest the better.
As an old combat soldier and instructor, I can tell you with absolute certainty that Truth and Honor keeps people much safer; particularly our sons – and now daughters – who are called upon to go to perpetual, senseless wars. Norman Finkelstein knows both Truth and Honor, and has demonstrated his courageous dedication to both.
Our children deserve his continued presence.
April 11, 2007 at 11:13 am |
Please add my name in support of the continued tenure of the valued scholar, Dr Norman Finkelstein.
Peter Smith
Formerly Principal Lecturer in Political Studies, University of Teesside
April 11, 2007 at 11:41 am |
Professor, Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, Lisbon, Portugal
The institution of tenure exists precisely to protect enquiring and engaged critical scholars from intimidation by opposing lobbies. Finkelstein’s colleagues have judged his academic merits and passed him; Depaul’s Dean should have risen to the occassion and made clear that his decision was free of political considerations and outside influence. He did not. DePaul’s Dean has clearly damaged the tenure principle and process as well as the expectation of free intellectual development within the university by introducing such a clearly non-academic evaluation into the decision process, provoking an international protest, leaving a stain upon his university’s reputation. As a result DePaul will be remembered as a vestige of a sort of “McCarthyism” within the US academy. As far as Harvard’s Dershowitz is concerned, he will go down in history as a Zionist equivalent to McCarthy in academia.
As a personal testimonial, I have shared and followed Norman’s intellectual development for 36 years. It has been a rough path against tremendous obstacles. The amazing thing is that Norman has continued his intellectual and political battle for critical knowledge against repeated experiences of academic discrimination while some many others have cowed to the pressures of personal success and security. I have learned and continue to learn with Norman and am overwhelmed by the expression of support and appreciation that he has received.
April 11, 2007 at 12:06 pm |
I’ve been an admirer and support of Norman Finkelstein’s work since I saw him talk at my undergraduate Alma Mater in the 1980s. There he faced the usual barrage of unfair criticism by campus groups and some professors, but he rose above it all with a clear-headed and rigorous analysis. And he won over the majority with his convincing well-reasoned arguments. His scholarship is a model to be followed and ranks heads and shoulders over much of what is produced in the academy, something clearly demonstrated in the shoddy research and arguments of somebody like Alan Dershowitz. The backlash over his much-deserved tenure is a politically-motivated witch-hunt, pure and simple. He deserves all the support of those who value academic freedom and critical scholarship.
Sincerely, Sean Purdy
Professor Doutor (tenured)
Departamento de História
Universidade de São Paulo
São Paulo, Brazil
April 11, 2007 at 12:33 pm |
To whom it may concern,
I quote a colleague with which I totally agree:
“Norman Finkelstein is an internationally recognized scholar on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Shame on DePaul for capitulating to outside political pressure– talk about inconsistent with Vincentian values!”
André Freire
April 11, 2007 at 1:33 pm |
While I was an undergraduate student at Hunter College, Norman Finkelstein was one of my favorite professors. He is a good teacher and scholar.
Janis Cakars
Doctoral Candidate in Mass Communications
Indiana University
April 11, 2007 at 1:57 pm |
It is precisely in those areas where excellent research is nevertheless inevitably controversial that the protection of academic freedom through an uncorrupted tenure process is most vital.
Centre for Comparative Labour Studies,
Department of Sociology,
University of Warwick,
UK
April 11, 2007 at 2:13 pm |
Please add my name.
Professor Douglas Allen
Professor of Philosophy
University of Maine
Orono, Maine 04469
April 11, 2007 at 2:20 pm |
Please add my name in support of the tenureship of our much appreciated colleague, Norman Finkelstein.
Herman De Ley,
Prof.Em. Ghent Univ. (Belgium)
April 11, 2007 at 4:07 pm |
Please add my name in support of the tenureship of Norman Finkelstein.
Adjunct faculty in English
Ivy Tech Community College, Lafayette, IN
April 11, 2007 at 5:05 pm |
Please add my name in support of the tenureship of Norman Finkelstein.
Martin Shaw
Professor of International Relations and Politics
University of Sussex
April 11, 2007 at 5:18 pm |
The University must remain a place where free expression, considered subversive by some, should exist. A place for ideas raised over data and autonomous development over the status quo and blind conformity. History shows, as in Berlin and Europe, where government intervention prevented views considered dissident to their current administrations. The University must be the place where intellectual discussion can be maintained without partisan restrictions. And while Professor Alan Dershowitz is entitled to his views, absolutism does not belong in raised conscious decision making. Here Professor Dershowitz resembles David Horowitz, another constituent who is actively pursuing fundamentalism in an end to open discussion, free thinking and democracy. The University is probally the only institution where democratic values should exist where we grow as individuals and intellectuals and where contradicting paradigms can be communicated, propagated and investigated.
April 11, 2007 at 7:18 pm |
Please add my name. The letter is absolutely correct.
Kenneth Saltman
Associate Professor
School of Education
DePaul University
April 11, 2007 at 8:34 pm |
If DePaul is going to play the character card, one would hope it could do so with a lot more candor.
Here is a man who lived with Palestinians. (How many of us would be willing to do so?) Here is a man who has demonstrated the ability to venture a look beyond his own ethnocentrism.
How shameful when anyone appeals more to politics and the iron hand of politically correct compulsion and less to integrity.
If in this matter, what one reaps according to what he sows is manifested in this lifetime, Depaul University will be on one side of an aisle and Norman Finkelstein on the other.
I only hope, by God’s grace, to be standing with Mr Finkelstein.
Tony Barbieri
April 11, 2007 at 8:34 pm |
Norman Finkelstein is a foremost scholar on the Israel-Palestine issue, and has the highest integrity. That his tenureship is even up for debate is very sad. DePaul will do a disservice to its reputation if Dr. Finkelstein is denied tenure. This society is in bad shape.
April 11, 2007 at 8:34 pm |
Laura Laffrado
Professor
Department of English
Western Washington University
April 11, 2007 at 8:39 pm |
Some Institutions can’t HANDLE the Truth. What is the lesson to your young scholars? That they should scrape and genuflect, rather than think?
April 11, 2007 at 8:40 pm |
The truth is always uncomfortable for those who are molded by the constant cacophony of propagandist rhetoric.
Somehow in the minds of many, the State of Israel is somehow above and immune from reality and decent human conduct.
Mr. Finkelstein has shown with great intellect and common sense that the Neocon squawking boxes are the trumpets of the Jabonitsky doctrine of Jewish racial purity. He has honestly exposed Israels plundering of Palestinian land and society within its Zionist outlined ‘right’. He has offered very sound argument for the necessary changes Israel must make if it is to be the responsible caretaker of the land it occupies.
When someone such as Mr. Dershowitz who obviously cannot refute the facts has influence on an astute professors tenure, then the whole higher education community should be very outraged.
The issue should remain within the schools administration with absolutely no outside interference.
The case of Prof. Steven Jones ‘release’ from BYU should have been a wake up call. The bells are ringing it is time to keep folks like Mr. Finkelstein where they belong, teaching the humanity of tomorrow, the truth of today.
Please add my name to the list
April 11, 2007 at 8:45 pm |
I have been following Norman Finkelstein’s writings for several years. His work seems to be of very high quality, and well researched. He seems to be someone totally worthy of tenure at DePaul University. Please do not let outside pressure keep him from a deserving tenure!
Naiyer Usmani
Senior Software Developer
April 11, 2007 at 8:51 pm |
As a former academician abroad and in the U.S. the one value above all else that I admired, respected, and pursued was our Unviersities academic freedom, especially the freedom of speech, expression, and research without consideration to any real, potential, or “manufactured” controversy. If for political, social, or financial threats or reasons our academic institutions lose that freedom than the entire purusit and purpose of an education is forever compromised. The entire world admires our educational system but if tenure for an extraordinary academician like Professor Norman Finkelstein is sacrificed for “comfort’s” sake than let’s shut our minds, hearts, souls, and doors toward enlightenment of our youth and society. I ask you to consider your decision very carefully in light of DePaul’s passionate commitment to Social Justice. Sacrificing academic freedom due to ill conceived pressures will harm DePaul in the long run.
God bless and may you be guided to Veritas.
April 11, 2007 at 8:58 pm |
Professor Finkelstein shown great courage and intelect, while Dershowitz is a provocateur using fascist hutzba for poisoning the community and the country. Keep all universities open to Finkelstein and rebuke rhetorical lies of Dershkovitz.
April 11, 2007 at 8:58 pm |
Norman Finkelstein is in some ways a heroic figure in America. A fearless seeker and purveyor of the truth. His nemesis Mr. Dershowitz is reputed to be an alleged murderer of his first wife and public defender of the likes of OJ Simpson.
Full whole-hearted and devout support for Norman Finkelstein for much deserved tenure.
April 11, 2007 at 9:04 pm |
It’s all about censorship. After all, censorship is becoming America’s favorite past-time. The US gov’t (and their corporate friends), already detain protesters, ban books like “America Deceived” from Amazon and Wikipedia, and fire 21-year tenured, BYU physics professor Steven Jones because he proved explosives, thermite in particular, took down the WTC buildings. Free Speech forever (even for Finkelstein).
Last link (before Google Books caves to pressure and drops the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0
April 11, 2007 at 9:05 pm |
I don’t know or care who this Dean Suchar might be, but he has been compromised by Zionist influences external to DePaul University to such a degree that he cannot be trusted anymore in the matter of Prof. Finkelstein tenure and probably in others. If he has some integrity left after this, I’d suggest a prompt resignation from his duties.
I agree with a previous opinion in that the mere fact that Prof. Finkelstein does not have a tenure while the torture apologist Dr. Dershowitz does, is unbelievable.
April 11, 2007 at 9:06 pm |
Dr. Finkelstein has the audacity to advocate the truth. What a novel approach. This country has adopted the motto of “let no good deed go unpunished.”
April 11, 2007 at 9:06 pm |
Norman Finkelstein is a truth teller. Your school woud be lucky to have him as a tenured faculty member. I have read his books and think they bring much needed balance to the questions of the holocaust and the Palestine-Israeli conflict.
Further, I had the pleasure of hearing him speak on a BBC Radio program that covered a wide range of political and cultural issues. He brought a refreshing candor and original perspective to every topic.
I urge you to grant Norman Finkelstein tenure.
April 11, 2007 at 9:10 pm |
Shame on DePaul for denying tenure to a teacher and scholar of such importance as Prof. Finkelstein . How small and petty must be the ones responsible.
April 11, 2007 at 9:24 pm |
In the face of some of the worst slander, bigotry, and hate, Dr. Finkelstein has remained calm and civil, and continued to do first-rate scholarly work. That Dean Suchar has either caved in to such lies, or is part of this smear campaign, is a blot on the reputation of DePau, and a serious blow to academic freedom in America. The DePaul Administration needs to do the right thing, stand up for what the University is supposed to stand for, and approve Dr. Finkelstein’s tenure.
April 11, 2007 at 9:28 pm |
Dr. Finkelstein is a voice for factual truth, rational thought and analysis, and unprejudiced views of justice and human rights. It is clear why some like Dershowitz find Dr. Finkelstein a threat. And it is exactly for these reasons that academic freedom was instituted and continues to be essential.
For DePaul University this is a critical decision on its quality of instruction and its seriousness of purpose. I would doubt many high quality faculty would be attracted to a university that abandons a professor for political purposes wrapped in transparent, disingenuous rhetoric to cover ethical rot. Dr. Sushar disgraces his university and violates his fiduciary responsibilities to professors, student, and alumni by pushing the agenda that Israeli neo-conservative politics and APAIC cannot be scrutinized much less criticized with threats to livelihood or worse. Even in Israel, there is greater freedom of public expression that Dr. Sushar will allow at an American university. One can infer that the interest of DePaul are secondary for Dr. Suschar.
Joe Chiara
April 11, 2007 at 9:28 pm |
I failed to note in my letter the irony that Alan Dershowitz, whose conduct toward those he disagrees with is undoubtedly the most disgusting in all of academe,has tenure at Harvard.
April 11, 2007 at 9:35 pm |
Being familiar with Dr Finkelstein’s writings and having heard him speak on several occasions, I find it hard to believe that the merits of his scholarship are being questioned in this manner. His is an intellectually powerful and honest voice in the area of discourse that has been less that open and honest while it is policed by characters like Alan Derschwitz. Dean Suchar position is absolutely disgraceful, and this whole affair is threatening to stain DePaul’s reputation for decades.
April 11, 2007 at 9:36 pm |
This is a clear violation of the fundamentals of academic free speech. To deny a Professor tenure based not on the facts of his statements or service, but rather on the reactionary and inflammatory statements of a select group of people (Mr. Dershowitz being the most public in his virulence), is a travesty of higher learning, education in general, and specifically, the United States Constitution.
The audacity of accusing Professor Finklestein of the very actions which are being brought to bear against him is the height of blind arrogance and a lack of respect for the individual as well humanity in general.
Shame on DePaul University.
April 11, 2007 at 9:43 pm |
Denial of tenure to Dr. Finkelstein will be a slap in the face of academic honesty. Dr. Finkelstein is one of the few people who have the courage to call spade a spade and disagreement with his point view should not be a basis for the denial of tenure. His scholarship is impeccable, and that should be only consideration before making the decision about his career.
April 11, 2007 at 9:53 pm |
I find Dershowitz’s committment to interefere with sound rational discussion and in this case Norman finkelsteins’ career absolutely unnerving and astonishing to say the least. His vendettas and consistent groundless tantrums we can all do with out. He has zero credibility and any respect he does have is contrived from his paymasters.
April 11, 2007 at 9:56 pm |
My total support for Dr. Finkelstein.
Also my total support for Prof. Steven Jones and Rosie O´Donnel and all americans that fight for the true abouth 911 and against the Bush and the neocon´s criminal gang.
Regards from Portugal
April 11, 2007 at 10:05 pm |
I am alarmed by Dean Suchar’s letter and the precedent it sets. Professor Finkelstein’s scholarship is rigorous and thought-provoking. It may make some people uncomfortable, but a university professor’s job is not to make people comfortable. Please add my name to the list:
Adrienne Carey Hurley
Assistant Professor of Modern Japanese Literature and Culture
The University of Iowa
April 11, 2007 at 10:10 pm |
National Institute of Health
National Cancer Institute-Frederick
Macromolecular Crystallography Laboratory
Frederick, Maryland
April 11, 2007 at 10:23 pm |
Dept. of Ethnic Studies
University of Hawaii at Manoa
April 11, 2007 at 10:28 pm |
Perhaps what Dr. Finkelstein espoused is not in agreement with the position of the University. But what is the purpose of higher education, if it’s not to be provocative? Nothing that you describe challenges the integrity of his academics. You seem more concerned with the anxious position that it puts you in.
Please add my name in support of Norman Finkelstein.
April 11, 2007 at 10:56 pm |
Norman Finkelstein is a terrific scholar, does tremendous work, and because his conclusions challenge the moral authority of Israel, he is attacked and slandered by people who cannot counter-argue his points validly. His detractors are plagiarists, defamers, Israeli-apologists, and Islamophobes. He is misquoted and attacked because he is correct. It is not necessary to discredit lunatics, as they can do that themselves.
Dershowitz clearly plagiarized, and he still occupies the Felix Frankfurter chair at Harvard. Finkelstein based “Beyond Chutzpah” on the human rights record of Israel as compiled from the mainstream institutions like Amnesty, B’tSelem, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and his conclusions are delineated from this collective data, and he can’t get tenure?
What a sham! The inversion of reality continues, the perp is the victim, and the real victims have no voice…
April 11, 2007 at 11:01 pm |
Software Engineer
Pittsburgh, PA
April 11, 2007 at 11:08 pm |
Norman Finkelstein’s scholarship is beyond question, his books are painstakingly researched and are thoroughly engrossing and informative. The only obstacle to him becoming tenured appears to be his treatment of the inconvenient truths of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
In light of the visciousness of the attacks by his critics I think Dr. Finkelstein’s defense has been quite civil and factual in contrast to the emotion charged accusations of said critics.
More great minds like Professor Finkelstein’s are needed to speak the truth in these deceitful times. DePaul should be honored to grant tenure to a Professor of Norman Finkelstein’s stature.
April 11, 2007 at 11:59 pm |
Just because he is a pain in the ass Jew does not, in an of its self, justify denying the dude tenure.
April 12, 2007 at 12:02 am |
Well this whole thing kind of makes me think maybe the DePaul University Administration has been bought and paid for by the Zionist lobby. Perhaps they had best re-think this. Perhaps you should decide once and for all who’s side you are on. NO MORE ZIONIST OPPRESSION IN PALESTINE!!! In the aftermath of the Bush Regime, in 2009. a Democrat will be in charge in Washington and we will then have complete access to all the dirty little things the Bush regime does not want us to know — including who helped cover up the truth about 9/11. WE THE PEOPLE WILL BE PROSECUTING ALL WHO ARE ACCESSORIES BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER THE FACT OF THE CRIME OF 9/11 FOR TREASON. Treason carries the death penalty and you folks in the DePaul University Administration had best note that the executions of anyone involved in 9/11 and its subsequent cover up will be swift and final. Looks like you have a decision to make.
April 12, 2007 at 12:15 am |
Finkelstein is one of the few academics whose work has influenced the mainstream over the last decade. He is an up and coming ‘public intellectual’ of the sort most universities would be delighted to have on board. And he virtually the only advertisement there is for the idea that academics enjoy freedom from the orthodoxies that confine mainstream thinking. Obvously, the view in American academia is that all this actually makes him a threat. I’m appalled.
April 12, 2007 at 12:18 am |
Freedom of speech? Freedom of press? What about the Freedom for intelligent dissent? How about Freedom from the Pro-Israeli, Pro-Zionist mainstream media? How about some Freedom from the redundant Pro-Israeli, Pro-Zionist so-called ‘intellectuals’? Dr Finkelstein came to speak at Rutgers University and I had the pleasure of attending his lecture. His works should be reviewed by all sides. If we start removing great intellectuals such as this fine scholar, then America will truly make the plunge into a country of the ignorant run by the evil, scheming tyrants with no regard for civil liberties… just like the middle east…
April 12, 2007 at 12:58 am |
I know what intellectual poison looks like. And I know what the heart of a sincere truthseeker looks like.
Dershowitz is almost unwatchable and certainly unreadable. he appears so full of venom it makes me compassionate for him. He must be suffering terribly to carry such poison around in his soul.
Finklestein is a credit to his race, ethnicity and religion as he holds up the mirror to those aspects of the subject matters he researches with true intellectual dispassion and a keen eye for the facts.
What Dershowitz fails to understand is how bad he makes himself look, and by extension all those who blindly support him and attempt (and fail) to demonise Finklestein.
I don’t feel “sorry” for Finklestein as he labors up the mountain by a path less travelled, but I do for Dershowitz as he tries to tear down the man’s achievements by any intellectually dishonest means he can.
April 12, 2007 at 1:05 am |
It is shameful that the DePaul administration has denied Finkelstein tenure. It is a disgrace to the Harvard Law School that one of wildest members of its faculty is the main reason this has happened.
April 12, 2007 at 1:15 am |
Norman Finkelstein is one of the very few in America that will challenge the Israel first pro zionist lobby with facts and intelligent debate.
I guess that’s the problem you have with him isn’t it….Mr Holtschneider?
It’s the US of Israel now as every politician in America cowtows to AIPAC.
April 12, 2007 at 1:26 am |
Finkelstein handed Dershowitz his ass because Finkelstein’s scholarly work is indeed worthy of tenure. Another part of Finkelstein’s work that is important to me is that it demonstrates a vigilance for truth. Sometimes the truth he finds is neither convenient nor respectful. This doesn’t mean, however, that we should abandon the discipline in acheiving an objective world view.
April 12, 2007 at 1:39 am |
Jesse Richard
Editor, TvNewsLIES.org
There is no greater enemy of freedom than those who wish to silence others. Those who wish to silence others should be treaded like a cancer on society.
Controversy calls for more discussion not less. Discussion will result in either the correction of misnomers or it may result in the validation of uncomfortable truths. We should be suspicious of everyone and anyone who wishes to prevent dialog not of those who wish to share or seek information by engaging in discussion.
April 12, 2007 at 1:46 am |
When will the maddness end? Will Mr. Finkelstein become one of the intellectually ‘disappeared’? Why is it that Alan Dershowitz has the power of career life and death over any critic of Zioniost Israel? What is the source of these amazing powers? I am but a simple man and beseech those with the power and tools that enable them to right these wrongs speak up. That the ruling powers in Israel and USA are supported by less than 30% of their respective populations should set off alarm bells in the head of any rational thinking human being. Please speak up and speak out now.
April 12, 2007 at 1:55 am |
It is clear, from the Dean’s comments, that his decision to override two faculty committees and deny tenure is based on the fact that Norman Finkelstein presents his ideas powerfully, provocatively, honestly, and thus invites attack and controversy. These are exactly the qualities whichshould be welcomed in a teacher, because they excite and stimulate students to think and argue. To deny Norman Finkelstein tenure would bring disrepute to the university and justifiably.
April 12, 2007 at 1:58 am |
Christopher Turner, PhD.
University of Iowa
I support Dr. Finkelstein’s academic right to present his research on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dershowitz’s criticisms are obviously based upon his own biases (and predjudices) in favor of Israel. If outside pressure is used to decide this tenure case, it will be a very bad sign that academic freedom in this country is in real danger.
April 12, 2007 at 2:04 am |
I believe that Norman Finkelstein ought to be promoted, despite his sometimes strident rhetoric. I think tht Prof. Dershowitz’s vendetta ought to be repudiated by DePaul University.
April 12, 2007 at 2:11 am |
Whom must we petition to have the tenure of ‘Professor’ Alan Dershowitz annulled on the grounds that he is a Zionist bigot void of integrity and other human qualities?
April 12, 2007 at 2:31 am |
We need more Finkelstein’s that speak truth to power. One does not have to agree with all of the conclusions of Finkelstein’s works to appreciate his research into sensitive subjects that need discussion for a resolution to the problems we face today. It is people who don’t question that are the problem.
Please do the right thing for Norman….If we don’t stand for something, we stand for nothing….and that would be a shame for the university.
April 12, 2007 at 2:42 am |
The iron heel of zionism is stamping out the lamps of freedom all accross the world.
April 12, 2007 at 3:25 am |
Elementary School Teacher
California
Please add my name to the list.
April 12, 2007 at 3:29 am |
Please add my name to the list of supporters of Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s right to academic freedom.
Marie-Claire Picher, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Modern Foreign Languages
College of Mount Saint Vincent, Riverdale, NY
April 12, 2007 at 3:31 am |
I have read many of Dr. Finkelstein’s books and find them valuable, informative, and well-researched. I have also heard him interviewed many times on the television and radio. Dr. Finkelstein is a valuable scholarly resource whose opinions should be given the best of considerations.
April 12, 2007 at 3:39 am |
Mr. Finkelstein is a threat to the almost universal mainstream media pro Zionist view of Israel, the nuclear power State allied at the hip with the US, as the pitiful victim, somehow, of the stateless, impoverished, destitute Palestinian people. Because his scholarship is backed up by his impeccable sources, usually Israeli and human rights organiztions, he cannot be honestly refuted. Therefore the likes of a Dershowitz has tried to silence Mr. Finklelstein and , now, try to deny him the tenure at Depaul University he, so obviously, is entitled . I proudly stand with Mr . Finkelstein.
April 12, 2007 at 3:42 am |
People like Norman Finkelstein should be protected by us the public.
He has been bullied far too long.
We know by whom.
April 12, 2007 at 4:55 am |
DePaul University is fortunate to have even the prospect of conferring tenure upon a scholar of Dr. Finkelstein’s courage and stature.
A poster before me has stated it more succinctly than I: This is WHY we have tenure.
If DePaul allows its academic integrity to be gutted like this, it might just as well become another Junior College.
Is this a funding issue? Will endowments be withheld or canceled if Dr. Finkelstien is granted tenure? Is this once again about special interests?
You BET it is.
SHAME
April 12, 2007 at 5:25 am |
I support norman Finkelstein. He is a man of character, courage and integrity. To deny him tenure would be a loathsome cowardly act.
April 12, 2007 at 6:02 am |
Having read two of Prof. Finkelstein’s books, I can say that he is a man of scholarship balanced with a desire for justice and fairplay, regardless of religious or ethnic background.
April 12, 2007 at 6:14 am |
In a democratic society, one must present both sides of an argument within moral constrains, whilst respecting that persons opinion. However, to penalise a person for valid criticism of Israel policies, backed up with overwhelming facts and evidence is hypocrisy.
Dr Finkelstein has pretty much single handidly blown the lid off the mainstream narrative of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
I have the uttmost respect for the proffessor, and I support him 100%. Those who wish to deny his tenure do not like the truth.
April 12, 2007 at 6:51 am |
For the sake of academic freedom and freedom of speech, I hope that DePaul University will consider Professor Finklestein’s tenure case solely on its merits. I have found his work to be scholarly and exceedingly useful. He doesn’t have the whole truth, perhaps–who does, after all?–but his published scholarly work represents a necessary stage on the way to that truth, and a needed resource for our country, as well as for the DePaul community and his academic colleagues throughout the world.
April 12, 2007 at 8:11 am |
Dear Norman,
Keep up the good work. It is clear is working.
In solidarity, Agustin.
April 12, 2007 at 10:20 am |
Norman Finklestein has been one of the few voices of reason for years. How does his standing up for a powerless people become misconstrued as “hate speech”? What a strange and hypocritical world we live in. It’s amazing.
April 12, 2007 at 10:27 am |
Please add my name to the campaign to support Norman G Finkelstein:
Athena Murphy
Hampstead
London
United Kingdom
NW3 2LL
Dr Finkelstein’s work has been of immense value to people seeking peace, truth and justice worldwide. It is for this reason that he is a threat to those who would rather that lies, brutality and racism prevailed.
I would have thought that any university lucky enough to have Dr Finkelstein would treat him as the highly respected inspirational figure that he is – unfortunately it seems that only those willing to remain subservient to the deceitful agenda of the powerful are rewarded in this hideously unequal, unjust world.
Shame on those attempting to smear Dr Finkelstein; their fictitious version of history is dying out rapidly and they are lashing out in desperation at all those who dare challenge them and expose their politically motivated lies.
But you cannot silence the truth or kill the spirit of those fighting for justice.
Dr Finkelstein, keep up your invaluable work on behalf of the voiceless – you have much solidarity worldwide.
April 12, 2007 at 11:10 am |
As a Journalist, it saddens me to see the Tenure Process kicked around as such a Political Football.
Dr. Finkelstein is a brilliant Researcher and Author, His Tenure should be assured at De Paul. Don’t cave-in to Politcal Correctness.
April 12, 2007 at 11:29 am |
I support Dr. Finkelstein
April 12, 2007 at 12:56 pm |
Prof. Finklestein has been a rare blast of clarity in the muddled world of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Not only has his fearless scholarship helped counterbalance the absurdly biased views Americans get of the pivotal conflict, but he has vigorously debunked the widepsread notion that Jewish scholars are imprisoned by their tribal loyalites. Denying him tenure, at Dershowitz’s (the tribalist par excellence) behest no less, would be a delicious though tragic irony.
April 12, 2007 at 1:32 pm |
I have respected Norman Finkelstein’s work for some time. He deserves to be tenured and not be hassled by the likes of the interfering Alan Dershowitz.
April 12, 2007 at 1:37 pm |
Isn’t it true what they say, bad money drives out good?
April 12, 2007 at 1:43 pm |
I support Dr. Finkelstein’s bid for tenure at DePaul University.
April 12, 2007 at 1:46 pm |
Please add my name in support of Dr Finkelstein
April 12, 2007 at 1:52 pm |
Mr. Finklestein represents only a mild criticism of the holocaust abuse. All he is trying to do is stop the abuse of the holocaust allegations. What if he came out and denouced the whole holocaust as a gigantic bluff and really a complete (holo)hoax? Would we hear about him again? Maybe from a prison cell? What if he want about to prove that the gas chambers never existed? And that there were no extermination nor death camps, but only labour camps? But I guess the powers that be are happy to have a critic like Norman so they can avoid taking up battle with the real serious critics of zionism. He represents kind of a buffer so that the real issues will never be touched …… Sad, but true.
April 12, 2007 at 1:58 pm |
I urge DePaul University to demonstrate that it supports professors who derive their conclusions from their research, rather than the other way around, and that it has the courage to uphold that essential academic principle.
April 12, 2007 at 2:19 pm |
I support Dr Finkelstein’s courage, clarity, and academic rigor. No pressure group should be permitted to intrude upon or influence the tenure and promotion process and your University’s administration and regents have a responsibility to safeguard academic freedom.
April 12, 2007 at 2:27 pm |
As a graduate of a Jesuit High School, Loyola University, New Orleans, and Catholic University law School in D.C., I am very disappointed that a Catholic University such as Depaul could deny tenure to a distinguished and courageous scholar such as Norman Finkelstein. Alan Dershowitz has shown his true colors in his support for torture. He is not a serious scholar, but best characterized as a self promoting apologist for a group of American and Israeli extremists whose actions are detrimental to both U.S. and Israeli long-term security interests. He is a vicious attack dog who dares to presume he can attack the motives and scholarship of other esteeemed academics like Walt and Mearsheimer. I wish Jimmy Carter would have debated Dershowitz. Even at age 82, I believe Carter would have provided a valuable service to the World in exposing the lack of credibility and substance to Dershowitz’s attacks.
Steve Heath
Dallas, Texas
April 12, 2007 at 3:26 pm |
I have read the details of the case of Prof Norman Finkelstein’s bid for tenure at DePaul University, Chicago and write to you in support of him. I am not a Middle East specialist, though I have interests in that field, and I consider Prof Finkelstein’s to be provocative in the best possible sense – that is, based on serious scholarship and challenging to received wisdoms. Clearly, it is in the nature of the work he is pursuing that he will make enemies. However, Prof Dershowitz’s intervention is a disgrace, as is DePaul’s apparent willingness to consider such an outrageous and unsolicited intervention in its internal promotions procedures. If Dershowitz has legitimate grievances against Finkelstein’s work, there are surely other avenues left for him to explore for redress. If he prefers rather to use his own professional influence to sabotage Finkelstein’s career, that must surely reflect on him and the validity of his claims. DePaul University should be proud to have such a courageous scholar working for it.
April 12, 2007 at 3:48 pm |
As someone who has spent the last twenty years studying the history and contemporary dynamics of Israel/Palestine and the Middle East more broadly, I was shocked to hear that Prof. Finkelstein’s tenure was denied by the Dean of his school. This is a horrible stain on DePaul University, and more important, on American academia more broadly. I could not in good conscience ever recommend a student to continue their studies at DePaul if this is the way first rate scholars are treated just because their scholarship takes on establishment figures. Such a level of censorship would generate outrage in a university in Damascus or Tehran, never mind a great American institution. It is clear to all that this is being done for purely political and financial reasons, which is completely unacceptable. If DePaul doesn’t want to see its reputation sink even further, with consequent loss of high level professors and students to universities that still honor their commitment to freedom of speech and support of critical scholarship, I would urge this ludicrous and utterly shameful overturning of tenure to be reversed immediately.
Mark LeVine
Dept. of History
UC Irvine
April 12, 2007 at 4:16 pm |
The world needs many more Mr. Finklestein.
Please add my name in support of Mr. Finkelstein
April 12, 2007 at 4:30 pm |
We will have gained several steps in sanity if, fifty years from now, we are able to look back and recognize the twisted nature of this charade. A near total dislocation from reality is required for a person even to take the claims made against Professor Finkelstein seriously, but an acceptance of bald illusion has now become a precondition for any discussion of the Israeli occupation of Palestine in this country, so we should not be surprised at this absurdity. If Finkelstein is chased away, it will be a sign that our political and intellectual culture has truly drifted beyond the pale of rationality.
April 12, 2007 at 4:40 pm |
English and Comparative Literature. Univ of Warwick, Coventry, U.K.
April 12, 2007 at 5:19 pm |
Professor Finkelstein is an effective public intellectual with outstanding scholarly credentials. This is evident in the attempts to derail his tenure. In the classroom he is a first-rate teacher who has touched the lives of many students throughout the years. If one is to judge him on scholarship(publications), service (public intellectual), and teaching (the best) then he should be granted tenure. Questions about ‘tone’ and ‘Vincentian values’ are merely attempts to divert focus away from academic principles. If we are going to use the accepted academic standards there should be no ‘controversy.’
DePaul will become a laughing-stock if it denies tenure to its top scholar and teacher.
April 12, 2007 at 5:34 pm |
Although I am fairly new to reading Dr. Finkelstein’s work, I have seen no examples where he has not meticulously researched the material he presents. Nor have I seen inappropriate comments directed towards Alan Dershowitz. The sense I get is that Dr. Dershowitz and the ADL do not appreciate having truth expressed so eloquently and so well-researched. There has never been a valid reason for suppressing information nor for suppressing those who speak truth to power. And that appears to be what Dr. Dershowitz is attempting to do. Shame on him and shame on those who allow him to succeed.
Dr. Richard Welser
Forensic Neuropsychologist
Morganton, NC
April 12, 2007 at 5:41 pm |
As a young academic about to enter the teaching profession, I am very concerned about the many violations of academic freedom that those critical of the dominant culture have been suffering. We need to stand in solidarity with all those being attacked now or the space that they occupy in the academy will be taken away from future generations of students and teachers. We can not let this happen.
April 12, 2007 at 5:48 pm |
I had the privilege of attending a talk by Dr Finkelstein at Imperial College when visiting London, and support his courage and integrity.
I have bought most of his books because he is a brilliant Researcher and Author.
The treatment being meted out by his Zionist persecutors by denying him tenure is disgusting. If they succeed in this objective they will once again prove what a danger they are in the World.
It won’t be long before they suggest burning his books in the city square.
April 12, 2007 at 6:38 pm |
Please include me as a strong supporter of tenure for Professor Finkelstein. I encourage DePaul’s president to override the position of the dean in this case. Finkelstein’s contribution to the discipline of political science, and specifically to the discourse in regional and international politics, is outstanding. To deny tenure to Finkelstein, even in part, because of his opposition to the zealotry represented by the likes of Alan Dershowitz, is an affront to academic freedom.
Glenn Morris
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Colorado at Denver
April 12, 2007 at 6:53 pm |
Please add my name to the list of supporters of Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s right to academic freedom.
M. A. Lahoz, Esq.
April 12, 2007 at 7:33 pm |
I support Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s right to academic freedom. University of Manchester
April 12, 2007 at 8:24 pm |
Evan Blewett
First year Political Science Major – DePaul University
Chicago, IL
April 12, 2007 at 9:19 pm |
I have listened to Prof. Finkelstein at our Law School and elsewhere, and have followed the controversy he has aroused by his critiques of the Zionist establishment and Israel’s behavior towards the Palestinians. I have also heard him debate Dershowitz. I have concluded that he is a beacon of enlightenment, and his scholarship is solid. DePaul will only be lessened in stature if he is denied tenure as a result of attacks, priimarily by his antagonist Dershowitz. It will rise in stature if he is retained. I can only hope for the latter.
Professor emeritus of physics, UIUC (Urbana, IL)
April 12, 2007 at 9:28 pm |
I fully support Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s right to academic freedom.
Dr. Finkelstein is a courageous scholar, one of few whose integrity does not allow him to stop his honest and thorough research and writing. He should be commended for his fine work, not denied his rights.
DePaul University should be proud that Dr. Finkelstein chooses to associate with their university. History will show that learning institutions that do not buckle to political pressures will be regarded as the fine places they are, while the many that buckle will lose their credibility.
Suzanne Arady, Esq.
Buffalo, NY
April 12, 2007 at 10:16 pm |
I support Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s right to academic freedom
Tony O’Brien
Director of the Documentary Programs
College of Santa Fe
April 12, 2007 at 10:50 pm |
I have found Norman Finkelstein’s work to be scholarly and his sources consistently verifiable. This attack on Dr. Finkelstein demeans American academia and appears to be part of a much wider problem of academic censorship sweeping through American universities.
April 12, 2007 at 11:05 pm |
Norman,
Over the years your contribution to scholarship on the conditions of Palestinian life in the Occupied Territories, on Israel’s ongoing military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and on Israel’s countless violation of UN accords, has been courageous. Your first book, questioning the veracity of Joan Peter’s From Time Immemorial, was a meticulously researched, impeccable analysis of Peter’s incredulous invention that Palestinians as a people do not exist. Your essays and articles in The Journal of Palestine Studies have challenged historians, like Benny Morris, in a dimension that few scholars could. In your latest book, you have shown how well-known figures, like Alan Dershowitz, are driven by hasty, careless and instrumental motives to assert a history that has denied the very ontology of the Palestinian subject. You not only have my support, but you also have my admiration as well.
Professor Andrew N. Rubin
Georgetown University
April 12, 2007 at 11:16 pm |
Having proudly been involved in the successful effort to protect the academic freedom of Professor Douglas Giles at Roosevelt University in Chicago, I am happy to fully support Professor Finkelstein’s right to the same.
Ron Weiner
Adjunct Professor, Television Department
Columbia College, Chicago, IL
April 12, 2007 at 11:57 pm |
Dr. Norman Finkelstein is one of the few scholars in the United States who has the courage to address directly and objectively the exploitation of the Holocaust, the inhumane behavior of the Israeli government towards the Palestinians, the controlling influence of the Israeli/American lobby in the United States and its government, and the intentional misuse of the term “anti-semitic” to quiet critics of Israel and dissenters. His views and scholarship are widely respected in the United States as well as Israel. It would appear that a fine university such as DePaul would be proud to claim a tenured professor of his caliber and courage. Don’t cave into the lobby.
April 12, 2007 at 11:59 pm |
It would appear that a fine university such as DePaul would be proud to claim a tenured professor of his caliber and courage.
April 13, 2007 at 2:58 am |
Shayn Smulyan
Brown University
April 13, 2007 at 3:25 am |
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM
April 13, 2007 at 3:31 am |
Please include me as a strong supporter of tenure for Professor Finkelstein and his tenure application.
I have followed the discourse between Dershowitz and Finkelstein and have to agree wholeheartedly with Finkelstein’s well-researched and well-documented stance on the issues raised and discussed.
While not being able to debate and address the issues discussed, Dr. Dershowitz seems to have embarked on the “sore loser mission” hoping that his anti-semitic threats will result in his first ever victory against clearly a better man.
To deny tenure to Finkelstein due to the pressure from Dershowitz would be a travesty of justice, and an insult to anyone that followed the academic feud between the two.
The activities of Dershowitz are akin to acts of personal terrorism against Finkelstein, whereaby he is trying to preemptively instill fear into the minds of the decision makers, and thus intimidate them to reach the outcome Dershowitz himself would desire.
Dershowitz is effectively linking those that might support the Finkelstein’s tenure with the promise of the similar personal smear campaign and name calling that he has produced and engaged in against Finkelstein’s interests thus far.
Those well documented outbursts are on record, serving as a sort of “shock and awe” warning, and an example that can be easily extended to such would be Finkelstein supporters already judged by him to be guilty by association.
Knowing what Dershowitz is made of (matter of public record by now), I would not be surprised if he extends the vile attacks against those that decided to go on record in their support of Norm Finkelstein. Those that have expressed reservations to Finkelstein’s tenure application are likely trying to avoid Dershowitz’ wrath attacks – in my opinion.
To intelligent people, Dershowitz’ attacks should be the very reason to grant tenure to Finkelstein in the spirit of academic freedom, because in absence of those, Dr Finkelstein record speaks for itself.
Finally, I would like to thank those that went on record to support Dr. Finkelstein, even though they are now likely to be labeled with the same hate-monikers Mr. Dershowitz seems to be automatically dishing out to his opponents, whatever the disagreement might be.
Regards,
Adam Kozlowski
April 13, 2007 at 3:32 am |
Research Staff, University of Pennsylvania
April 13, 2007 at 4:21 am |
I have learned a great deal from Norman Finkelstein’s careful research and eloquent arguments. His work on the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio should be read and pondered by any serious scholar and activist. Hearing him speak and field questions here at Yale, I was impressed by his obvious humanity, and his commitment to a fair and morally equitable solution to an apparently intractable conflict. That his application for tenure at DePaul should be contested, after so many years of standout teaching and substantial publication, is highly disturbing. That Alan Dershowitz, guilty of so many instances of pseudo-scholarship and borderline plagiarism, should be leading the charge against Prof. Finkelstein’s credibility and credentials is frankly preposterous.
Adam Jones, Ph.D.
Associate Research Fellow
Genocide Studies Program
Yale University
New Haven, CT
April 13, 2007 at 6:15 am |
I also support Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s right to academic freedom, so much needed in a world where our freedoms are not respected or are constantly being monitored by political systems only willing to promote their own agenda.
Rev. David Ungerleider, S.J.
Assistant to the President
Iberomamericana University
Tijuana, BC, Mexico
April 13, 2007 at 6:49 am |
As a writer and producer I strongly support the tenure of Norman Finklestein. Against the grain of mainstream opinion he has fearlessly challenged assumptions and historiography. Surely this is the role of an intellectual and academic – to expand our knowledge and critical faculties as individuals and as a society. Silencing him by denying him tenure will be a condemnation of the university and it’s supposed principles of free inquiry for the betterment of humanity.
Shawn Whitney
BA (Hon.), MA
April 13, 2007 at 7:24 am |
This whole process surrounding the conflict of denial of Prof Finkelstein is one of the lower and unfortunate products in the decline of modern academia. It is very obvious and simple to see that there is an outside influence (Dershowitz et al.) that has disseminated inaccurate statements and bullying and coercion techniques to intimidate the faculty and the Dean at Depaul. It is also very painful to see the Dean regard comments made by Dershowitz and not by feedback by students, graduates, colleagues, readers, and email letters, his history of great teaching, scholarly research and publication,
According to the NY times, Depaul’s comment that “all faculty members are held to the same standards in the tenure process, and that this process will not be influenced by outsiders.” is actually misleading and incorrect because no faculty member will be in the same position to have the same outside pressure, pursued with the same aggressiveness and coercion.
April 13, 2007 at 7:44 am |
This whole process surrounding the conflict of Prof Finkelstein’ denial for tenure is one of the more unfortunate products in the decline of modern academia. It is very obvious and simple to see that there is an outside influence (Dershowitz et al.) that has disseminated inaccurate statements and used bullying and coercion techniques to intimidate the faculty and the Dean at Depaul. It is also very painful to see the Dean regard comments made by Dershowitz with higher loyalty than by feedback from students, graduates, colleagues, readers, and not to mention his history of great teaching, scholarly research and peer reviewed publication.
According to the NY times, Depaul’s comment that “all faculty members are held to the same standards in the tenure process, and that this process will not be influenced by outsiders.” is actually misleading and incorrect because no faculty member will be in the same position and have the same outside pressure, pursued with the same aggressiveness by Dershowitz, than Prof Finkelstein has.
Let us not forget that discussion, debate, and controversy, are all part of the free exchange of thought and expression and is what we all hold so dear in academia, and I only hope Depaul doesn’t forget that and side with external influences, which is antagonistic to the democratic freedom in education.
April 13, 2007 at 12:41 pm |
If Dr. Finkelstein is denied tenure, all academics with any sense will have to begin organizing big protests through their associations, whether MLA, AHA, etc. This is no ordinary tenure case. Who knows whether De Paul will be discredited in the eyes of ordinary people in the event of a tenure denial? Let’s hope so, but much depends on what we do and our ability to counteract either the silence of the media or its cherrypicked lies, distortions and omissions. If we don’t respond properly (I mean academics primarily here), Finkelstein’s tenure case could prove a watershed moment for the American university–well under siege as it is, with its academic labor policies, the shrinking of tenure, the budget crises faced by so many public universities in a time of endless war and endless fraud.
Academic freedom to question injustice has always been under threat, much moreso with the decline of tenure. If Finkelstein goes, the words “academic” and “freedom” will begin to look as meaningful as other words which have undergone near infinite abuse: like “democracy.”
We can’t let this stand (itself a grotesque phrase colored by the elder bush’s “this will not stand” as he began the destruction of Iraq).
On a pragmatic note,among other things, if Finkelstein is turned down for tenure, we have to struggle with our own universities and colleges in the U.S. and out to shower Norman with job offers–tenured.
April 13, 2007 at 1:42 pm |
Professor Finklestein has the courage to say what many Ameircans are unable to say for fear and intimiation. He has the courage to speak truth to power. Thank you Professor for your work. You have not turned your face away from oppression nor overlooked injustice because of any personal gains nor personal biases. You are an excellent role-model to your students.
Thank you.
April 13, 2007 at 2:00 pm |
I’ve read Dr. Finkelstein’s books, and while I don’t agree with all of his arguments, I find his scholarship solid and careful and very worthwhile.
Allowing outside interference in the tenure process, in the form of a campaign by someone who dislikes and disagrees with Dr. Finkelstein, is astonishing and a violation of scholarly integrity and fair process.
Making popularity, “collegiality,” and personal demeanor qualifications for tenure has been shown over and over again to undermine the tenure process and intellectual freedom.DePaul University’s reputation will be severely damaged if this decision is allowed to stand.
April 13, 2007 at 2:13 pm |
This isn’t just Finkelstein vs. Dershowitz, there are larger issues at stake, namely academic, intellectual freedom & integrity. The fact that a professor from a completely different university is interfering and clearly trying to sabotage the tenure process for Finkelstein, is ugly, wrong & in the instance DePaul caves in, will set a very ugly and alarming precedent for Western academia in general. In short, it will allow private interests to dictate the terms of intellectual inquiry & undermine the raison d’etre for the academy completely. Finkelstein needs to be judged critically the factual integrity of his scholarship, how his work is pushing the boundaries & opening up dialogue on some important and pressing issues in the world today, and his ability to teach & engage his students to be thinkers in their own right. The fact that someone, who has not even correctly read Finkelstein’s corpus in its entirety, is trying to discredit him on the basis of a personal vendetta is a complete travesty.
April 13, 2007 at 2:52 pm |
Don’t let an egregious episode of political muscle disrupt the integrity of academia in general, and De Paul University in particular. The administrators of the university have a duty to perform in showing that acdemic freedom will not be extinguished.
April 13, 2007 at 6:04 pm |
I quite simply respect anyone who tells an all-powerful emperor with a nasty temper and a crushing blow that he has no clothes.
For heaven’s sake do not shoot this messenger of important news.
April 13, 2007 at 6:38 pm |
Friday, April 13, 2007
Dear Tenure Review Hearing Committee:
It frightens me to see a loved scholar by the DePaul community at risk for not getting his deserved tenure promotion. Never before have I met such an enthusiastic professor willing to detail historical information with a fresh perspective. Not only is Dr. Finkelstein the son of Nazi camp survivors, but his interpretation (history is merely a matter of interpretation) has offered students at DePaul a worldly view of Middle Eastern politics at a time in history where stereotyping those of Middle Eastern descent is prominent.
Furthermore, speaking as an undergraduate student at DePaul University (Pre-law, Political Science double major), I am deeply saddened by the decision made by DePaul University’s College Dean, Charles S. Suchar. I believe this is the one of very few accounts that a Dean has voted against popular decision of strong recommendations by both the Political Science department as well as the College!
As a student who prides oneself on my level of awareness of student complaints, activities, protests and opinion, I am confident when I say that professor Finkelstein has changed the lives of MANY DePaul University students. Throughout my years at DePaul, I have heard students with more or less the same comment when evaluating Norman Finkelstein: ‘I may not have received an A or similar outstanding mark in his class, but I actually learned [and retained] something!’ What surprises me is not the comment, but rather the people these comments were coming from. Most of these students were the ’sit in the back of the class, non-participating” type.
It really angers me to know that such an inspiring professor does not have the support of the College Dean. Students who are finally engaging in discussion after years of sitting in the shadows of the classroom are not only retaining the knowledge and critically analyzing the information presented by Finkelstein, but are now engaging in campaigns to help Finkelstein get tenure! I am asking the Tenure Review Hearing Committee to take careful consideration when evaluating Norman Finkelstein and not be swayed by any pressures outside of the department.
Thank you for your time and careful consideration of my letter.
Sincerely,
Inanna Younan
April 13, 2007 at 7:07 pm |
It is a pity that Dr. Finkelstein’s tenure was denied because of pressure from that Harvard bully, Dershowitz!
April 13, 2007 at 8:15 pm |
I support Dr. Finkelstein’s right to free speech and right to be tenured at DePaul. What is occurring in this country with regard to “free speech” is atrocious, evil and despicable. It feels more and more totalitarian and fascist everyday. Fear and witch hunts have permeated every corner of our country and our educational institutions.
Thank you Dr. Finkelstein, we need more people like you who have the courage of their convictions.
April 13, 2007 at 9:50 pm |
Accordinf to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dean Charles Suchar is purported to have said
“I find the personal attacks in many of Dr. Finkelstein’s published books to border on character assassination and, in my opinion, they embody a strategy clearly aimed at destroying the reputation of many who oppose his views.”
Although it is unclear from the above statement, I assume that one of the people whose reputation Dr. Finkelstein ‘wishes to destroy’ is Prof. Dershowitz, since these remarks mirror the ones that Prof Dershowitz has been tirelessly recycling for a while.
Since Prof Dershowitz has done a fairly competent job of destroying his own reputation, I would be reluctant to give credit to Prof. Finkelstein in this regard. Furthermore, the remark is quite ironical since it is Prof. Dershowitz who has the chutzpah (and I use the term advisedly) to call Prof. Finkelstein’s late mother,
a holocaust survivor, a kapo. It is Prof. Dershowitz who has called Prof. Finkelstein a holocaust denier, a patently absurd statement, since both of Finkelstein’s parents were holocaust survivors. It is Prof. Dershowitz who has called Finkelstein’s scholarship ‘worthless’, although all his books have blazed new trails and have gotten rave reviews from genuine scholars (not charlatans like Dershowitz) such as Prof. Raul Hilberg, Prof. Noam Chomsky, Prof. Sara Roy, Prof. Christopher Browning etc.
On a personal note, I must say that Prof. Finkelstein is man of integrity, a rare virtue these days, and his description of Prof. Chomsky as someone who is �absolutely faithful� applies with equal force to Prof. Finkelstein.
Given his sterling scholarship and his excellent teaching record, I would strongly urge De Paul to defer to the overwhelming departmental vote in his favor. Succumbing to the incredible crusade that Prof Dershowitz is mounting against Prof Finkelstein would be inexcusable and unbecoming of your august institution.
Regards,
Sanjeev Mahajan
San Francisco
April 13, 2007 at 11:30 pm |
What an ugly sight to see: the arrogant Zionist and imperialist cancer engulfing the U.S. in all its institutions has reached its academia which was considered as the freest in the world. Dr. Finkelstein’s contribution to world justice far outweighs a Dean whose name will only be remembered for being this cancer’s mouthpiece.
Mulham Assir,
Lebanese writer based in Beirut and Madrid
April 14, 2007 at 1:43 am |
According to it’s Mission Statement, De Paul University “endorses critical moral thinking and scholarship founded on moral principles which embody religious values and the highest ideals of our society.” Condemnation of torture, rejection of collective punishment and opposition to building apartheid walls would seem to fall within that domain.
The threat to deny tenure to Professor Finklestein is a transparent attempt to intimidate critics of US and Israeli governmental policies. Be advised – we will aggressively defend academic freedom and we will not be silenced.
Mike Alewitz
Art Department
Central CT State University
April 14, 2007 at 6:19 am |
Dershowitz’s ideas, many increasingly rejected, get a fair hearing in the marketplace of public opinion. His hysterical vendetta against Professor Finkelstein’s views and research is deplorable and represent exactly the antithesis of what Universities are about. He should be ashamed of himself and apologize to Harvard and American academia.
April 14, 2007 at 3:55 pm |
Brandeis inviting Carter, a former President and Nobel Prize winner, to debate Alan Dershowitz as a condition for speaking at the university.
DePaul’s Dean Suchar yielding under pressure of Alan Dershowitz to deny tenure to a professor who has clearly gone through all the academic hurdles of the tenure process, save one – Dean Suchar.
I ask Dean Suchar, is not academic freedom a serious and noble pursuit for him to support by standing up to Dershowitz’s meddling in defining the discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
April 14, 2007 at 6:18 pm |
Whose school is this? Dershowitz’s or DePaul students, who rave about Prof. Finkelstein? Why should we be denied the chance to experience what Finkelstein’s own dean has called the “transformative experience” of being attending his class?
It is patently absurd to expect us to show any interest in continuing study here, when the discourse is being limited. I did not enroll at DePaul so I could have someone from another school tell me what was acceptable to discuss in my studies.
Jason Farbman
DePaul University
April 14, 2007 at 6:43 pm |
04-14-2007
Saturday
I knew Norman Finkelstein casually years ago in the 1960s when he and I were political activists in a socialist political organization, the Independent Socialist Clubs of America a/k/a International Socialists. I subsequently went over to the Spartacists and came politically to have political disagreements with the International Socialists.
Despite that, I knew Norman Finkelstein as a principled, honest man. He is no “Holocaust denier.” That is a lie, a libel of the man, and a slander. His own parents were Holocaust survivors. Norm Finkelstein is, in this sense, in the rather noble and honorable tradition of secular, Jewish, humanist defenders of the equality and human rights of all human beings irrespective of ethnicity, nationality, background, and that is why he defends the human and equal and civil and democratic rights of the Palestinian people. Like myself, he is a socialist and egalitarian democrat who supports across all lines of ethnicity, nationality, national origin, the indivisbility of democratic rights of all oppressed and victimized peoples.
Norm Finkelstein is an anti-Nazi and anti-fascist. I knew him as that in the 1960s and 1970s, because I, too, am an anti-Nazi and anti-fascist. For con artists like Alan Dershowitz to imply that being opposed to the nationalistic ideology of Zionism somehow equate to being Nazi or fascist is fraudulent and a lie. It is well known, for instance, that the late Simon Wiesenthal, heroic and courageous hunter of Nazi war criminals and Nazi mass murderers, encountered “problems” and “issues” with the Zionist establishment precisely because Wiesenthal — who spent his entire life after surviving Hitler’s death camps tracking down Nazi killers till his death in 2005 — refused to say the “only” victims of Hitlerite Nazi killers were the Jews. This view of Wiesenthal’s did not endear him to the nationalistic ideologues of Zionism.
In the same way, the late and noble and courageous Israeli citizen and lifelong defender of Palestinian civil rights, and himself Holocaust survivor, Israel Shahak, founder of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, encountered “problems” with both the Israeli government, and with Zionist apologists, because of his, Shahak’s, decent and noble defense of Palestinian and civil and democratic and human rights, and his, Shahak’s, differentiation between the nationalistic theocratic ideology of Zionism on the one hand and, on the other hand, his Jewish religious heritage, a different thing.
I suspect Norm Finkelstein, like me, defends the Jeffersonian precept of separation of religion and government, embodied in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. He therefore does not support the concept of theocratic religion-based governments — be they Islamic religion-based governments, Christian religion-based governments, or Jewish religion-based governments. Mr. Dershowitz seems not to comprehend that by trying to destroy the academic and scholarly career of Norm Finkelstein, Mr. Dershowitz is aiding and abetting the worst enemies of the Hebrew people living here inside the U.S.A., the Christian Protestant fundamentalist WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) religious ruling capitalist class of the U.S.A. who keep the majority of Americans wage slaves producing the profits of that WASP ruling class. Doesn’t Dershowitz “get” that Bush Two is, for instance, an adherent of the Christian Dominionist fundamentalist fantasy that a nuclear war in Israel in Armaggeddon would be good, because it would cause Bush’s fairytale Christ to return to earth in glory, and, in the process, all the Jews would end up killed? Is this the kind of pro-Zionist ideology and outlook that Dershowitz would have everyone march in lockstep to? These Christian Dominionists always talk of how they “love” the Jewish people (with tongue planted firmly in cheek, of course). Is Dershowitz so blinded by his theocratic, Jewish nationalist fanaticism that he does not see the fact he is aiding and abetting the worst enemies of both the Hebrew people and the Arabic people by his actions? Wake up, Professor Dershowitz, and smell the metaphorical coffee!!
It may be true that Nazis and Klansmen demagogically call Zionism Judaism or call Zionism equal to the Hebrew people, but Mr. Dershowitz has evidently bought into this line out of his fanatical adherence to the Zionist nationalist line. But no nationalism is as ideology defensible. All nationalisms ultimately lead to the internecine fratricide and internecine genocide of divergent peoples.
GIVE NORM FINKELSTEIN HIS TENURE, AND KEEP HIM EMPLOYED! STOP THE PERSECUTION OF LEFT-WING AND ANTI-NATIONALIST POLITICAL DISSIDENTS! LONG LIVE SOCIALIST INTERNATIONALISM! LONG LIVE THE EQUALITY OF ALL PEOPLES OF THE ENTIRE EARTH, HEBREW AND PALESTINIAN ALIKE! FOR A SOCIALIST EGALITARIAN FEDERATION OF THE NEAR EAST IN THE CONTEXT OF WHICH BOTH THE HEBREW AND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE CAN LIVE COOPERATIVELY AND DEMOCRATICALLY!
–Allan Greene a/k/a Al Greene
Former Member, Independent Socialist Clubs,
International Socialists, Spartacist League,
Currently Non-organizationally Affiliated,
Who Once Casually Knew Norm Finkelstein
and Herewith Testifies as to His Honorable
Character and Honorable Nature
April 14, 2007 at 10:16 pm |
Teacher
Bronx High School of Science
As a union activist, I think that it is vital to safegaurd the security of the tenure process from right-wing political interference. This harks back to the horrible period of McCarthyism in this country when teachers and professors were blacklisted and fired for their political views.
April 14, 2007 at 10:36 pm |
The concept of freedom that made U.S. famous in the world was perverted long time ago into manipulation,fear and lies,all for monetary reasons…This is the failure of the spiritual development of a human society…
April 14, 2007 at 11:19 pm |
As an independent journalsit, and one whom has interviwed Prof. Finkelstein, I have been impressed with his scholarship, astute knowledge and attention to maticulous detail, especially with regards to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. True he can, at times, be abbrasive and his feud with Prof. Dershowitz is well-known. However, this should not be considered a criteria for tenure as it seems to be with regards to his supposed lack of “collegiality”.
Universities like DePaul should welcome the Prof. Finkelsteins of this world. Academic freedom should be embraced, not tossed aside. Both Dean Charles Schuar and Prof. Dersowitz have missed the opportunity to uphold academic freedom and diversity rather than trample it.
April 14, 2007 at 11:21 pm |
Professor Finkelstein surely deserves to be granted tenure. The Dean’s disingenuous and small-minded position is itself compelling evidence for why Professor Finkelstein should be tenured: to ensure that such an important and critical voice can continue to be heard within and beyond acadamia, despite the likes of Dean Suchar, Dershowitz, and their ilk.
Michael Cassidy
Colchester, Vermont
Attorney
Will Miller Social Justice Lecture Series
April 15, 2007 at 6:27 am |
Norman Finkelstein’s scholarship is impeccable and his entire career has been a model of intellectual and political courage all of us in the academy should emulate. He deserves tenure and, more, he deserves the wholehearted backing of his colleagues, his university and the profession as a whole. Now is the time to start fighting back against the anti-leftist jihad that is sweeping through higher education. — Steve Macek, North Central College, Naperville, IL
April 15, 2007 at 6:50 am |
I am an academic in the field of Middle East Studies and have read much of Professor Norman Finkelstein’s oeuvre – including his books ‘The Holocaust Industry’ and ‘Image and Reality in the Israel / Palestine Conflict’ and used his valuable work in class – particularly the excellent chapter on 1967 in the latter volume. I have seen him debate and co-hosted a lecture by him in the UK. In the context of polemics launched against him by the unscrupulous and the ideological alike, I have long been struck by his scholarship, precision, and methodological rigour. I also find much of his work highly persuasive. Finkelstein is a world-class scholar and a courageous one at that. From what one hears from De Paul, he is also a great teacher. If I had any say in the matter, I’d seize the chance to give him tenure.
I have also set Alan Dershowitz’s writing in my classes, namely ‘The Case for Israel’. I found that most students, in contrast to their take on Professor Finkelstein, do not take it particularly seriously. They legitimately complain that Dershowitz is little more than an apologist who selects his facts to suit his agenda. In my judgement Dershowitz has made no serious contribution to the field of Middle East Studies, and his antics, inappropriate and ad hominen style, and his latest round of interference in the internal matters of another university are no credit to him, his institution, or academia in general.
Yours sincerely,
Dr J.T. Chalcraft
Lecturer in the History and Politics of Empire / Imperialism
Department of Government
London School of Economics
April 15, 2007 at 4:19 pm |
Professor and Chairperson Emeritus
Mighican State University
April 15, 2007 at 4:22 pm |
Threats to academic freedom and tenure are becoming more widespead and the Finklestein case is just another, perhaps more flagrant example. These threats must be answered,
April 15, 2007 at 4:23 pm |
Dr. Finkelstein’s intellectual rigor and his humanity have created a scholar of unparalleled value. His scholarly contributions to the Palestinian cause are of historical proportions. Dr. Finkelstein should receieve tenure because his scholarly record qualifies him to do so, otherwise Mcarthytes would’ve won the day…
In the final analysis, however, Norman Finkelstein has already received his tenured position in the pages of “history.” His sophisticated and daring intellectual/political contributions have been invaluble in exposing the oppression and injustice meted out against the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupation and its U.S. benefactor.
April 15, 2007 at 5:40 pm |
Dr. Finkelstein deserves more than tenure for his scholarly work.
April 15, 2007 at 6:11 pm |
I am not in Norman Finkelstein’sacademic area, but I have read some of his scholarly output and gather from experts that he has impeccable credentials, in spite of ” his polemic tone “. I have been a Professor since 1954 and I know that tenure should not be denied becaue of a “polemic tone”. Being a Jewish refugee from Hitler Germany myself, I do not always enjoy Finkelstein’ speeches, but that is all the more reason that he should have tenure.
Edwin E. Salpeter, J.G.White Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Cornell University
April 15, 2007 at 6:32 pm |
I have read Dr. Finklestein’s works and was lucky enough to attend a number of his lectures. It is quite disheartening and frightening to learn that tenure is even in question with a scholar of the calibre of Dr. Finklestein.
Student
Pace University, NYC
April 15, 2007 at 7:20 pm |
If Professor Finkelstein is denied the tenure, it would be important to see what is the pretext. I suggest that in this case he goes to court saying that the decision was made for corrupt (i.e. political) purpose. I believe that officials in such institution as his university have a duty of fairness. Just how many of the tenured professors there can present a volume of research and publication comparable to that of Professor Finkelstein? And, the amount of controversy around it is a sure proof of its importance; very busy people paid the attention. To deny the value of it, it would take a mighty amount of work on the part of the officials. So, if it is going to be just a pretext, it should be fought in court.
I lived in Israel for 4 1/2 years, I know that the Jews have lost the connection with human values. I could have written the same chapters, point to the same pretexts, point to the same games. That Professor Finkelstein did such enormous service not only to the Jews, but to the others as well in his books, is his strength, moral and scholarly strength, not his fault.
April 15, 2007 at 7:28 pm |
Dr. Finkelstein’s tenure in question! UNBELIEVABLE, this is the state of our academic institutions? We stop thought, stop debate, stop consideration of topics objected to by our funders or a right wing colleague at Harvard? Has baseless fear taken over the academy as well? I have visited totalitarian countries, this is precisely how they operate. Is this truly where we want to GO? IS THIS NOT WHERE WE ARE RIGHT NOW?
April 15, 2007 at 7:37 pm |
I am not in Norman Finkelstein’sacademic area, but I have read some of his scholarly output and gather from experts that he has impeccable credentials, in spite of ” his polemic tone “. I have been a Professor since 1954 and I know that tenure should not be denied becaue of a “polemic tone”. Being a Jewish refugee from Hitler Germany myself, I do not always enjoy Finkelstein’ speeches, but that is all the more reason that he should have tenure.
Edwin E. Salpeter, J.G.White Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Cornell University
April 15, 2007 at 11:47 pm |
For Norman Finkelstein not to receive tenure, given the circumstances, would be a great blow to academic freedom, as well as the reputation of DePaul University. I would like to associate myself completely with the above letter.
John Stevenson
Department of Liberal Education
Columbia College Chicago
April 16, 2007 at 10:34 am |
Please add me to the list of those who would like to associate themselves with the above letter.
Gary P. Leupp
Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion
Tufts University
April 16, 2007 at 10:38 am |
The case of Norman Finkelstein looks somewhat different from Israel/Palestine. It demonstrates another way in which the Israel/Palestine conflict has achieved dangerous global significance. Not only does it feed into the imperialistic designs of the world’s neo-cons, not only does it polarize peoples and religions, not only does it contribute measurably to the resort to arms to solve political conflicts, but it also endangers precious human freedoms — and in particular academic freedoms — which are being attacked precisely by “pro-Israel” academics, Dershowtiz and Pipes only two of the many ready to sacrifice human and academic rights to the cause of the Israeli Occupation. We all have a stake in the outcome of Norman Finkelstein’s tenure proceedings.
April 16, 2007 at 1:22 pm |
Syksy Rasanen
Postdoctoral research fellow
CERN
April 16, 2007 at 2:22 pm |
Anyone, including DePaul academics, who reads Norman Finklestein’s books can easily determine his academic rigorousness and integrity. They are both outstanding and undeniable.
The DePaul authorities who seek to withhold tenure are trodding on dangerous grounds. For unworthy ends, led by Alan Dershowitz, they amazingly continue to confront thousands of authoritative Finklestein supporters as against one or two biased detractors. Should this parody succeed, it will irreparably jeoparidize academic integrity at Depaul, throughout the nation, and perhaps in the world.
April 16, 2007 at 2:49 pm |
department of classics
university of winnipeg
April 16, 2007 at 3:02 pm |
Tenure was created to protect outspoken teachers who tackle controversial subjects. Based on his scholarly production and teaching ability, he deserves tenure.
April 16, 2007 at 3:04 pm |
Based on his scholarly production, Finklestein deserves tenure.
April 16, 2007 at 3:56 pm |
Norman Finkelstein’s research has proven a brilliant inspiration for all those in search of truth. His thought provoking analyses are extremely helpful in the quest for freedom and justice.
April 16, 2007 at 5:39 pm |
I know Norman Finkelstein’s research very well. It is never less than rigorous, stimulating and original. I think it would be a very grave injustice for DePaul to compromise his academic freedom and I therefore support the above letter unreservedly.
April 16, 2007 at 5:46 pm |
institutional affiliation:
department of history
university of california, riverside
April 16, 2007 at 7:46 pm |
Imperial College London, UK
April 16, 2007 at 9:21 pm |
I had the opportunity of attending several of Professor Finkelsein’s lectures with my studetns. His scholarly integrity and his commitment to justice through exemplary research should be cherished by any academic institution.
April 16, 2007 at 10:23 pm |
Academic tenure is designed to protect professors from the politics of personal destruction and institutional intimidation. So, in the course of American history, racists once sought to exclude African-Americans from attending or teaching at universities. Sexists once sought to keep women uneducated, just as they sought to exclude married women from becoming faculty. Creationists would rid the university of the very idea of evolution. Accredited American universities have fought to protect students and professors from such evil forces. Now, Alan Dershowitz would pile hatred and disgrace on those who dare to defend Palestineans. Let us stand united against his ilk. And let the case for tenure be decided on the merits Finkelstein’s work has so amply demonstrated.
April 16, 2007 at 10:37 pm |
Editor, University of California Press
April 16, 2007 at 11:56 pm |
Department of HIstory
University of California, Los Angeles
April 17, 2007 at 12:06 am |
Please add my name to the list of Prf. Finkelstein’s supporters.
Dr. Robin Harwood
School of Philosophy
Australian Catholic University. (McAuley Campus)
April 17, 2007 at 12:06 am |
We are at a crossroads. It is 1933 in Germany translated into 2007 in the U.S. This attack on Professor Finkelstein, a highly respected teacher and internationally distinguished author, is clearly a political witchhunt meant to silence dissent and critical thinking, and is a direct expression of the right-wing wing agenda emanating from the White House. Silence is acquiescence. We need to speak out loudly: Tenure for Professor Finkelstein, Defend academic freedom, defeat this right wing agenda.
Larry Felson,
English and Jounalism teacher
Oakland High School
Oakland, California
April 17, 2007 at 5:57 pm |
Washington University in St Louis
Brown School of Social Work
PhD student, Chancellor’s Fellow
April 17, 2007 at 7:46 pm |
Please add my name in support of the decision of Dr. Finkelstein’s peers in the Department of Political Science to award him tenure and promotion.
David Leaf
Department of Biology
Western Washington University
April 18, 2007 at 2:03 am |
University of Louisville
April 18, 2007 at 9:42 am |
Please add my name in support of Dr Norman G Finkelstein. This treatment of such a renowned and brilliant academic is unbelievable.
Shame on those who are attempting to sabotage Dr Finkelstein’s career – but you cannot and will not ever silence or bury the truth.
Justice for Dr Finkelstein – Justice for Palestine.
John Baker
London, UK
April 18, 2007 at 10:47 am |
Read Mr. Finkelstein’s comprehensive and carefully researched analyses of the Israel-Palestinian conflict in his book “Image vs Reality” then demand that De Paul give him tenure. Norman is
a gifted scholar that should not be silenced for being politically incorrect by a hack like Dershowitz and his AIPAC cronies.
April 18, 2007 at 2:03 pm |
Scott Laderman
Department of History
University of Minnesota, Duluth
April 18, 2007 at 4:48 pm |
When the truth becomes the enemy at an institution of higher learning it’s time to move Orwell from the science-fiction section to the non-fiction section
April 18, 2007 at 7:01 pm |
Norman Finkelstein deserve tenure.
April 18, 2007 at 8:24 pm |
Sanja Pudar
Ph.D. Candidate
California Institute of Technology
April 18, 2007 at 8:24 pm |
In his books and in his works, Prof. Finkelstein pursues the ideals of Truth, Justice, Legality and Morality. His only fault, if it be one, is the Passion with which he pursues these ideals. He is a top flight academic and speaker, and he is deserving of tenure.
April 18, 2007 at 10:55 pm |
I am very unhappy about the Dershowitz persecutory assault on the good name of Norman Finkelstein. I am also dismayed that DePaul University would even contemplate not giving Professor Finkelstein tenure .
These times call for honesty, courage, and a committment to stand up against the Dershowitzes of this world who have succumbed to slandering those who are dedicated to honest scholorship, to truth, justice and peace.
Antonio Vittorio Favale
Retired Social Worker
Norcross, Ga.
April 19, 2007 at 2:53 am |
Norman Finkelstein is the reason I attend DePaul. Now, I am ashamed to be a student here. It is appalling and horrendous to find out that there is doubt about his tenure. He is brilliant. His research, scholarship, and service should speak for itself. I am privileged to have had him as a professor. Finkelstein speaks the truth; he encourages his students to do the same. To be able to look at both sides of topic and find out for ourselves what’s true. This is exactly what Alan Dershowitz is trying to suppress. Dershowitz is trying to inhibit others from finding the truth. The truth always suffices. The DePaul students will resist this; we will continue to fight everyday to keep Finkelstein at DePaul. DePaul will hear us.
Dr. Finkelstein we stand by you.
Samar Damra
April 19, 2007 at 4:37 am |
I thank you for your letter in support of Professor Finkelstein. It is appalling that an academic from another institution has intruded in the tenure decision of another university in an effort to destroyed the career and livelihood of an outstanding scholar, especially so since Dershowitz’s actions are driven by malice and vengeance.
Edward J Rickert
Visiting Lecturer
Georgia State University
April 19, 2007 at 5:43 am |
I would like to add my name to support this outrage against an intellectual of world significance, De Paul has shamefully and dangerously capitulated to outside ideological pressures emanating from the Israel lobby, a university should be an autonomous space that defends a wide variety of intellectual genres, modes, performances, in any case Finkelstein’s work although acid in tone has upheld the highest standards of scholarship and analysis in his debunkings of Zionist fabrication and myth making, he is at the forefront of a necessary and growing movement: vigorous Jewish opposition to Zionism and support for Palestinian rights, long may he prosper. Shame on De Paul, reverse this decision at once.
Ned Curthoys
postdoctoral research fellow
Research School of the Humanities
Australian National University
April 19, 2007 at 6:42 am |
De Paul has not only degraded itself in scholarly terms (what price a reference, review, or recommendation from a De Paul academic now that the criteria for appointing them have been shown to be so basely political?). This outrageous decision, adopted at the behest of a discredited ideologue, also revivifies the darkest side of modern Catholic history – the Church’s guilty complicity in Nazism. Having fewer grounds for guilt, a non-Catholic university would have been less likely to succumb to this unconscionable, and certainly extra-scholarly, pressure.
Reverse this shameful decision.
Dr Patrick Wolfe,
ARC Australian Research Fellow,
City-Flinders Campus,
Victoria University,
PO Box 14428,
Melbourne City,
VIC 8001,
Australia.
April 19, 2007 at 7:05 am |
I discovered Dr. Finkelstein’s work in the summer of 2003, and immediately asked if he would come and speak at my undergraduate university that fall. (St. Lawrence University). I have followed his work very closely, and the feud with Dershowitz since it began on Democracy Now! Dr. Finkelstein is a first rate scholar. All of his work is meticulously researched and lauded by those who are taken seriously in his field. His conclusions are actually quite moderate and restrained. It is a great injustice that Dr. Finkelstein is being deprived tenure and yet the real charlatan, Dershowitz, who brazenly plagiarized from a discredited source and didn’t even know what his own book said in parts, is the Chair of Harvard Law. I express unequivocal support for Dr. Finkelstein and hope that he is approved for tenure, and apologized to by the Dean.
Sincerely,
Brian Chorley
Grad Student, Political Science
The Ohio State University
April 19, 2007 at 11:47 am |
Oh, yes, Frankfurter Law Professor Dershowitz at it again. And you’ll have to take my words on their own merit or lack thereof since I’m an undergraduate (University of Canterbury, NZ: BSc in Computer Science, plus abandoned BA in Classics).
When I first read “Image and Reality of the Israel/Palestine Conflict” it was as if a light had gone on inside my brain – not dissimilar to when I read Jolliffe’s and Gunn’s books on East Timor, then read the Palestinians’ own histories of anNaqba. Truth will out. And his comments on that most execrable author Joan Peters’ book “From Time Immemorial” – he can be devastatingly funny while being deadly serious, viz. Joan Peters’ inability to decide how many Palestinians and in what proportion had illegally immigrated to Mandatory Palestine.
In computer science the inability to get that sort of thing right can be deadly, as NASA will no doubt inform you for free, concerning a minor measuring detail ignored on a certain Mars probe …
Prof Finkelstein has a habit of getting it right; Pref Dershowitz doesn’t. Students tend to pick up on that. I think DePaul University would be lucky to survive the decade if they prove themselves subject to Dershowitz’s pressure.
April 19, 2007 at 11:58 am |
As astonishing as I feel the US educational system to be, with a Catholic university on the political left, it seemed allways crystalclear that DePaul needs Professor Finkelstein and that the university administration knows it. Brilliant people are rarely good teachers, but he is a role model for anyone who respects facts. I was even amused by Alan Dershowitz lately because of his overshooting efforts to defend militarism and cannot conceive of the possibility that anyone could fail to recognize his empty warmonger- and neocon propaganda for what it is!
And now, exactly at the time when an anti-war movement is beginning to be heard again, this “left” university, dedicated to the cause of the disadvantaged, bows to Dershowitz´s bullying!
Stop wasting your time with twist-the-law tricks, Father Holtschneider, and grant Professor Finkelstein tenure!
Rune C. Olwen
Pensioner and student of engineering at University Flensburg, Germany
April 19, 2007 at 3:19 pm |
The ad hominem attack against Prof. Finkelstein is the evidence of Dershowitz’s poverty of arguments. And shame on De Paul if not granting Norman’s tenure as a blatant result of Zionists’ political pressure.
April 19, 2007 at 5:43 pm |
Is it correct to say that the “tone and substance” of Norman Finkelstein’s scholarship is “inconsistent” with “Vincentian values” and “personalism”, a claim Dean Suchar makes in his Memorandum? Let’s place those “values” in context . When the Jansenist Quarrel was fiercely dividing the Catholic Church, Vincent De Paul was a “servant to the poor”. Swimming against a religious tide which turned theology into a dialectical exercise, his focus on praxis connected a basic tenant of Christianity with the universal values of equality and justice for all. In other words he was denouncing a social order were the “poor” were the “servants” of the rich. Emmanuel Mounier will define “personalism”, as a “philosophy of existence” based on the “person” as “être-vers”, a-being-towards the other, part and parcel of the self. His attempt to bridge between Socialism and Catholicism can be traced to Vincent De Paul’s insight and work.
From within his own Jewish tradition, Norman Finkelstein has followed a parallel path far from inconsistent with “Vincentian values”. Whether defending the victims of the Holocaust against those who misused their suffering for political or financial reasons, or refusing to acknowledge the “uniqueness” of their suffering, he connected a Jewish experience to the universality of all human suffering. And by linking Jewish and Palestinian suffering, he reaffirms his own Jewish/secular tradition of upholding justice and human rights for all. Needless to say that within our own religious and political context, Norman Finkelstein has been / is swimming against a very powerful tide.
Both Vincent DePaul and Norman Finkelstein understood that the very “substance” of human is “interhuman”. One servant to the “poor” the other servant to the “truth”. Is there a better way to recognize the “dignity” of the other?
I would go one step further and ask if it is a “Vincentian value” to reverse a two- committee vote ( 14-3) in favor of tenure? And what does it say about “the institutional commitment to respect the dignity of the individual” when so much power is given to one “decider”? And unless “Vincentian values” have drastically changed, unless “tone” has become of the “substance”, the recommandation at every level of the procedure has been to give tenure to Norman Finkelstein.
Mirène Ghossein
April 19, 2007 at 6:49 pm |
Dr. Finkelstein is one of the most courageous and honest individuals I have ever come across. He is also an out standing scholar.
Individuals like Dershowitz should not be allowed to succeed in a personal vendetta simply because Dr. Finkelstein pointed out Dershowitz’s own dishonesty.
I wish the best for Dr. Finkelstein.
April 20, 2007 at 2:07 am |
I have been an admirer of Norman Finkelstein’s work ever since I first read his demolition of Joan Peters in Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens’ 1988 collection ‘Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question’. Since then I have eagerly read any work of his I could get hold of. Now he is being hounded out of his university by Dershowitz, who is an enemy of democracy and free speech, an apologist for torture and the ongoing Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, a disgrace to Harvard, and an allround hysteric, bully, censor, persecutor, and clown. Since everything that Israel has done since the initial massive ethnic cleansing of 1948 contravenes international law, how can Harvard continue to celebrate a law professor who defends Israel? What does this say about Harvard? What has been occurring in the USA for many years now in the Zionist-led suppression of dissent and free intellectual life is not only a resurgence of McCarthyism (for an insight into its workings, see the recent volume of Jessica Mitford’s letters, ‘Decca’), but also directly recalls the long years of Stasi emptiness, despair, and desolation in East Germany. My advice to Finkelstein is: get out of the USA. Once it gave refuge to emigre intellectuals like Einstein and Arendt. Now it is a grotesque society of violence and repression. Go into exile, as Ilan Pappe has done in leaving Israel, to other societies such as the UK where dissent , disagreement, and controversy are still not only permitted but enjoyed as a vital part of the democratic intellectual and cultural life of the society. Depressingly, sadly, it is now clear that exile away from the USA is the only position available for intellectuals of honour and integrity like Finkelstein, for persecution of him will clearly never end.
April 20, 2007 at 3:30 pm |
We are very supportive of your work and writings. We really appreciated the work you did at the Presbyterian General Assembly in June of 2006. Thanks for coming to Louisville to speak last fall, too!
April 20, 2007 at 5:06 pm |
Norman’s words in Santa Cruz ring true: “We have the truth.” And that’s a powerful weapon, as he said. I hope freedom of speech and honest academia prevail. I stand by you Norman.
April 20, 2007 at 6:10 pm |
This is indeed a shame on De Paul.
April 21, 2007 at 6:47 pm |
Prof. Finkelstein is an excellent scholar who, unfortunately, had his image shamelessly tarnished by contenders, who apparently couldn’t handle to keep up an argument with him. He deserves applauses for being among the few courageous and selfless dissident voices from the U.S. that dare challenge the status-quo and expose lies, deceit and propaganda as such.
All the best,
Abdellah Malti
Grad. student in molecular electronics
Linköping University, Sweden
April 21, 2007 at 11:35 pm |
Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Denver
April 21, 2007 at 11:59 pm |
For all of the vile behavior of Dershowitz and others who have applied strong pressure on DePaul University to deny tenure to Professor Finkelstein, the most egregious is that of Dean Suchar for his lack of integrity.
It will be a shameful day for DePaul if Professor Finkelstein is denied tenured.
April 23, 2007 at 2:30 pm |
Dear Norman I wish you well in your quest and I hope you have the strength, both moral and physical,to fight and win.
April 23, 2007 at 3:31 pm |
Professor Norman Finkelstein is an outstanding scholar.
His contributions to analysis of different aspects of Israel-Palestine conflict is well known. He has also written seminal papers on Abba Eban’s account of Middle East issues, a critique of Oren’s book, and 1973 Arab-Israel war. Even his less well known papers are valuable contributions to the scholarly literature.
It would a telling comment on contemporary intellectual culture, if DePaul were to deny Professor Finkelstein tenure due to lobbying. DePaul should stand up for scholarly research, such as that of Professor Finkelstein.
April 23, 2007 at 5:03 pm |
Dr. Finkelstein is a luminary in his field and a courageous warrior for positive social change. DePaul is lucky to have him on staff as a teacher. As universities are increasingly attacked by right-wing, Zionist and neo-conservative forces, academic freedom is going down the drain. Dershowitz, who is published in FrontPageMag, which is edited by enemy of the academy David Horowitz, like to portray himself as a reasonable moderate. But in actuality he is a far-right bully and media clown who has a long-standing vendetta to try to discredit Dr. Finkelstein. I urge DePaul to not bow to these intimidations and grant Dr. Finkelstein the tenure he has right earned.
April 24, 2007 at 7:56 pm |
As far as appears on the record, the DePaul administration has before it recommendations in favor of tenure for Norman Finkelstein from his Department and Faculty, based presumably on the usual academic criteria; a negative recommendation from the Dean, which however concedes that by normal criteria Professor Finkelstein is deserving (its negative conclusion being supported only by subjective considerations); and a bushel of contumely from outsiders. No contest! Easy decision! In the absence of any cogent argument against the candidate, OF COURSE you must resist abusive outside attacks, defend the integrity of your University, and retain Norman Finkelstein.
Chandler Davis
Professor of Mathematics
University of Toronto
April 25, 2007 at 6:06 am |
New York University
April 25, 2007 at 6:22 pm |
I strongly support Prof. Finkelstein – he rightly deserves the tenure !
April 25, 2007 at 7:02 pm |
keep on the good work
April 26, 2007 at 5:41 am |
The attempt to deny Professor Finkelstein tenure is the most obscene and outrageous assault on free, open discussion and inquiry to befoul America in several decades.
His detractors and slanderers continue to recycle blatant calumnies that are belied by all his writings (such as that he is a “Holocaust-denier”; or, if the audience knows this to be false, that he is a “Holocaust-minimizer”; or, if this is recognized for the idiocy that it is, that he is a “Holocaust-revisionist”; or, most recently, that he is a “Holocaust-justice-denier”).
Finkelstein has clearly stated many times that he accepts the conclusions of Raul Hilberg, the most knowledgable and authoritative Holocaust-scholar in the world and the antithesis of a Holocaust-denier. He has also many times expressed his outrage over the injustice that his parents and other Holocaust survivors only received a tiny fraction of the Holocaust reparation payments that were collected in their names. Hence, Finkelstein is a passionate champion of justice for Holocaust victims; he wants them to get the money that is collected for them.
Moreover, Finkelstein’s scholarship is superb, a fact attested to by his departmental colleagues and his tenure-review committee, as well as by Raul Hilberg. The transparent fact is, Finkelstein’s opponents cannot refute him and his scholarship, so they apply political pressure to have him silenced—they have no other recourse.
Finkelstein’s opponents call him a hate-monger, when the only things he hates are lies, injustice, oppression, discrimination, and racism.
April 26, 2007 at 4:49 pm |
We strongly need Professor Norman Finkelstein for he is one of the persons who don’t care about the mainstream. HE cares about the TRUTH !
April 27, 2007 at 1:13 am |
What is the point of free speech when you are not allowed to speak? While I support Dr. Dershowitz’s right to disagree with Professor Finkelstein, I do not believe he has the right to slander Professor Finkelstein as a “Holocaust denier”. No where in my reading about this situation has Professor Finkelstein ever denied the Holocaust happened. He has simply expressed his belief that the Palestinians have the right to relief. I implore DePaul University to support Professor Finkelstein’s scholarship and tenure.
April 27, 2007 at 9:01 am |
Norman Finkelstein’s dedication to truth as evidenced by his own research should be an inspiration to all of us.
John Danziger
Trieste Observatory, ITALY
April 27, 2007 at 9:31 am |
For academic freedom and freedom of speech, I hope that DePaul University will consider Professor Finklestein’s tenure case solely on its merits. The attempt to deny Professor Finkelstein tenure is the most obscene and outrageous assault on free, open discussion and inquiry to befoul America in several decades. The ad hominem attack against Prof. Finkelstein is the evidence of Dershowitz’s poverty of arguments. I have found Mr. Finkelstein’s research to be immensely useful in shedding valuable light on relationships between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and on the American role in shaping and perpetuating this conflict.
Michiel Korff (social worker)
Groningen
the Netherlands
April 27, 2007 at 11:17 am |
I am in full support of Professor Finkelstein. His scholarly work is of
invaluable importance.
April 27, 2007 at 4:31 pm |
I am deeply disappointed at the thought that Prof Finkelstein’s tenure is subject to ‘political’ pressure.
I hope DePaul will see to it that his case is decided entirely upon his merits as a scholar.
Professor of Economics
University of Illinois
April 27, 2007 at 8:09 pm |
Norman Finkelstein is a great.
April 29, 2007 at 6:12 am |
May God give you success
April 30, 2007 at 4:56 am |
April 29, 2007.
Dear DePaul U. President and Provost,
I hope you won’t mind if I summarize what this issue is really all about rather straightforwardly. After this summary, I include below the open letter that I had emailed you on April 10, 2007, as well as a letter to the editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education that I had emailed them on April 13, 2007. I was notified by the Chronicle this past Friday, when the letters on this topic were finally published in the Friday issue, that my letter was not among the two that they printed. Hence you can read this letter here.
What this issue is not about is Norm Finkelstein. And all this talk of suitability of scholarly credentials, etc., is entirely a clever red herring. So for instance, had NF written about, say, the native American Indians’ theft of their ancestral home lands of thousands of years of continuous inhabitation at the hands of the foreign settlers to the New World, or the military acquisition of California from Mexico – since these momentous events are now irreversible faits accomplis that we all recognize today as history long past, and which only serve the interest of torturing high school students in getting them to nod their heads in profound wisdom of how cruel some constructions of nations can be – this would not be an issue.
What this issue is in fact about is to continue permitting the full faits accomplis of a new settlement of another peoples’ brutally usurped land that is now very much in progress, even as I write this in April 2007, in the supposed ‘enlightened’ modernity of the 21st century.
As evidence of the unimpeachable veracity of this statement, may I humbly point to the vehement attacks on the distinguished former American President Jimmy Carter by this same antagonist from Harvard Law School and his equally distinguished coterie of fellow intellectuals, 14 of whom presumably resigned in protest from the Carter Center, when the former American President dared to even speak out, as anemically as he did, against this new settlement in progress. A monumental crime against humanity that the world not only spectates silently at the expense of a suffering peoples, but the American public directly aids and abets in its commission by virtue of permitting their super power nation – a ‘populist democracy’ – to financially, politically militarily, and culturally support it by being deliberately kept uninformed about it by their institutional ruling elite.
So if this wasn’t Norm Finkelstein, but say Zahir Ebrahim, the plebeian ordinary me, and my heritage had as much distinctive weight to give my voice of conscience against this monumental crime any credibility, I would have experienced the same fate. As did Jimmy Carter. And so does Norman Finkelstein. Nothing either of them has written is so intellectually profound that one can not know simply by examining the thousands of books and documents that exist in the Israeli Government’s own archives, in the victims’ own archives, and by simply visiting the Holy Land of oppression – not the Tel Aviv side, but the West Bank side. Or simply by reading a narrative in a Palestinian victim’s own voice who is born on that soil, whose father, grandparents, and great… were all born on that soil, such as the notable and heart wrenching “Refugees in our Own Land” by Muna Hamzeh, that one can purchase in any American book store. The best $25 you can spend in easily acquiring first hand knowledge of the incredible veracity and brutal honesty of the scholarship of Norm Finkelstein – his main and courageous virtue – of exposing simple moral truths in a mainstream of deception.
So what is Finkelstein’s crime? It has to be examined in the light of his very first crime – a challenge to Joan Peters who had reproduced the Zionist narrative of ‘A land without a people for a people without a land’ in pseudo scholarship and largely for consumption in this nation for the benefit of its gullible and uninformed peoples. For elsewhere, the people of the world are indeed allowed to hear the passionate narratives of the indigenous natives of the ‘land without a people’ themselves. But in America, such narratives are not permitted to be heard in the voices of the victims themselves – the unfortunate and forgotten children of a ‘lesser god’, the P-A-L-E-S-T-I-N-I-A-N-S – within the mainstream discourse!
So it falls to the lot of men and women of uncommon conscience, and uncommon moral courage, like Norm Finkelstein, to provide them a voice before the peoples of his own nation.
But that voice is very inconvenient while the fait accompli is still incrementally in progress, and the support of American peoples – who know the history of how their own land was settled by the slaughter of 10 million indigenous natives very well – is crucial in achieving that fait accompli. As one of the main thinkers and former National Security Advisor of this august nation had candidly noted in his book: ‘Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization’.
Thus that’s what this hullabaloo is all about.
And as you will surely notice, the accomplishment of this fait accompli to its fullest realization is of such pressing concern to this antagonist from Harvard University Law School, that it does not even prevent him from usurping and mowing down the mandates of the most important contribution to the modernity du jour that this nation has made – her 2000 schools and colleges of higher learning, and their much coveted academic freedom of thought. For what was the battle that Socrates willingly drank the hemlock, and Galileo suffered?
Thus who is traitor and who isn’t, who needs to be tried for treason against his own peoples for keeping them misinformed, and who needs to be awarded not just the simple tenure, but other distinguishing position in the university and other fair compensation for outlandishly being made to suffer this calumny simply for standing up to uphold the honor of his peoples by keeping them informed, I will let your own good conscience be the fair judge.
I don’t know Norm Finkelstein personally. But as the moral voice of conscience, I claim him as my teacher, no differently than I claim Socrates as my teacher.
Thus in humble defense of my uncommonly courageous teacher, I hope you can lend due consideration to the following two letters and this summary analysis which has outright dispelled all the red herrings of this case.
Sincerely
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
PrisonersoftheCave.org
April 30, 2007 at 4:58 am |
To: President of Depaul University,
Subject: On the merit of Dershowitz vs. Finkelstein
Date: April 10, 2007.
Dear Mr. President of Depaul University,
Hello.
It is with much distress that I venture to write this brief letter on the above topic. This should not even have been an issue. Both Mr. Dershowitz and Mr. Finkelstein have very essential roles to play in the American society, the former as one of its premier institutional scholars, and the latter as among its few genuine gadflies. Both need a permanent home so that the business of society can continue moving forward – the former supporting its ruling elite, the latter providing some semblance of moral-activism for its peoples. I humbly expound on this topic at some length in the essay: “Responsibility of Intellectuals – Redux” at: http://www.humanbeingsfirst.org
May I humbly request that in this august position as the distinguished President of an up and coming Catholic university in America, that you show your mettle to your audience and to your students for whom you are a role model, and that you not succumb to special interests or to reasons of “pragmatism” by bowing to pressure or “practicalities” in making your decision on awarding tenure to Norm Finkelstein. Whether or not you agree with his positions, as an intellectual person shouldering the same responsibilities as outlined in the above referenced essay, do the right thing so that all in the world may know to which “Mecca” you pray.
For your kind reference and in order to help you make your decision fairly and without prejudice, as a concerned tax-paying plebeian resident in this nation, may I be permitted to offer the following additional information in the same spirit as Mr. Dershowitz has ventured to offer you in order to apprise you of the general concerns of the plebeian people of this nation whom you purport to serve, so that you can make a decision that is balanced and fair as you proceed to educate us and our children in your august university.
Please do take a look at my “Open Letter to former American President Jimmy Carter”, and my humble essay “The endless trail of red herrings” on the subject of Israel-Palestine, both available on the above website, and you will surely be able to assess impartially where each of these two contestants reside in the intellectual spaces. Since I maintain that they each reside in opposite spaces as defined in “Responsibility of Intellectuals – Redux”, as a fair minded concerned intellectual of this nation, you need to ensure that both spaces remain populated for the proper functioning and sanity of this nation. And as you can see in the past few years in this country with “United We Stand” mantra taking over the commonsense of its peoples feverishly as death and destruction is rained upon innocent civilians in other nations, that there are hardly any prominent voices of moral dissent heard anymore. “Jesus” – the first gadfly in the face of power of the Roman empire – is entirely absent in this country. Had these two prized antagonists resided in the same intellectual space, then only having one of them in it would have been sufficient, and the significance of your decision would have been a no-op. But in this case, your decision is pivotal, and of immense importance to this nation and to its future preeminence as a “moral Christian state” as opposed to a “barbaric Roman state”. To understand this issue and to what’s at stake in your decision, please see my essay “America’s Shame” also available on the above website.
I will leave the adjudication of the matter in your informed and moral hands – anyone leading a Catholic or any ‘divinely inspired’ religious institution must have some element of non “ubermensch” morality in their decision making process that transcends co-optation to every power and each of its many incantations.
With Kind Regards,
Zahir Ebrahim
Founder Project Humanbeingsfirst.
P.S. my brief bio is at the end of each of the above cited articles for your reference.
This letter will also be made available at http://www.humanbeingsfirst.org
April 30, 2007 at 5:15 am |
– this letter was turned down by the Chronicle –
To: Jeanne Ferris
Senior Editor
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Dear Editor,
Thank you for your notification letter. Please find my revised Letter to the Editor in response to the referenced matter. I hope you are able to publish this one. The matter is unfortunately too serious to not receive considered input from the public, or to not be debated among the public themselves who are directly impacted by it, and too complex to be dealt fairly within the very few words that are generally permitted for ‘letters to editor’. I hope that the Chronicle can publish this response despite it being a bit long, and despite Chronicle’s understandably limited space, given the national and international importance of this matter and the sanity of America’s Higher Education system and the society it serves.
Kind Regards
Zahir Ebrahim.
(resubmitted April 13, 2007)
—begin Letter to the Chronicle Editor —
The case of “Harvard Law Professor Seeks to Block Tenure for Adversary at DePaul U.” is of significant public concern even beyond what is disclosed in Chronicle’s article of April 13, 2007. Indeed, the article is significant for what was not addressed by its author Jennifer Howard, namely, the overarching social and political context that underlie this attempt to deny one of the few remaining gadflies in this nation a permanent perch that might enable him to continue freely doing his work of seeding ‘radically independent’ thoughts into the consciousness of a peoples who are dexterously being primed with “United we Stand”, and any opposition to which is offered the binary god-fatherly choice “either you are with us or with the terrorists”. That is indeed the primary context – the trumpeting elephant on the newlyweds’ bed and unfortunately missing in the afore titled report – in the backdrop of which, this public hullabaloo is being raised.
As your reporter quoted Mr. Dershowitz astutely noting ‘ “For me, it’s not personal. It’s institutional.” ‘ This space is too limited to do justice to this topic except to briefly note that the approximately 2000 American Universities in this superpower “populist democracy” serve a manifest constituency, its peoples. They also however serve another crucial constituency, its institutional ruling elite that run this nation. The topic is further expounded in the essay “Responsibility of Intellectuals – Redux” available on http://www.humanbeingsfirst.org. In that context, the empirically observed de facto modus operandi of many prominent academic institutions in this nation has come to exclusively serve the intellectual interests of the latter. Who will serve the interests of the former, if not the gadflies? Hence in recognition of this fact alone, all the red herrings of this case must be stripped aside, including charges and counter charges of “incompetency” and “plagiarism” noted by your reporter, and the real reasons for this opposition to tenure of a gadfly be brought into prominence. Namely, “Its institutional”, whereby, it serves the interests of the ‘institutions of the state’ and its ‘institutional scholars’ – who are often the progenitors of the policies of the state – to not have any opposition voiced to them, especially from moralist academic like Finkelstein who also has a very special and unique heritage that sometimes lends his views even further legitimacy in the eyes of the plebeian peoples thirsting for genuine analysis in a reign of obfuscation and “false pretexts” by ‘institutional scholarship’ as witnessed for the drumbeat for the war on Iraq that has seen at least 3000 sons and daughters of America dead [1]. One such prominent governing political philosophy of this superpower nation was seeded by Professors Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington from the august halls of Ivy of Princeton and Harvard universities respectively, when they planted the “clash of civilizations” that has now become the all permeating mantra du jour and the distorted prism through which all foreign policy calculus, including the “war on terrorism” confronting the peoples of this nation, is informed. It is also the calculus that is being used to craft foreign policy alliances, such as the one with Israel, of which Mr. Dershowitz is among its many ardent and manifest institutional exponents, and Mr. Finkelstein, the most visible among its handful of gadfly critics. [2]
Thus the President of Depaul U must be allowed to freely identify his own intellectual position on which constituency he intends to serve by allowing him to make this tenure decision without prejudice or interference from any quarters. [3] Let the world witness how the “Zion that will light up all the world” [4] is being deftly constructed in the hallways of Higher Education in the United States of America in a disturbing and systematic trend of muzzling even the rare dissenting speech using similar transparent pretexts [5] [6], and who among its courageous peoples stood up to it, to defend the most valuable contribution of America’s Higher Education system to modernity du jour – its academic freedom of thought.
With respect,
Zahir Ebrahim
Founder Project Humanbeingsfirst (http://www.humanbeingsfirst.org)
United States of America
humanbeingsfirst@gmail.com
Notes:
[1] Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern and Ottoman Studies, Princeton Univ., Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, co-author of CPSG Letter to then incumbent President Clinton, February 19, 1998, advocating war on Iraq on the pretext of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ from the hallowed corridors of the Ivy League, originally available on the CPSG website, and now from: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Committee_for_Peace_and_Security_in_the_Gulf
[2] And what does this minor gadfly advocate? The overthrow of United States of America or treachery against its good peoples or invasion of another nation? Should the plebeians be allowed to judge for themselves? Witness his ‘moral crimes’ in the curriculum description of the two Winter 2007 courses that he offered this year at DePaul: PSC 233.201 (http://condor.depaul.edu/~psc/syllabi/200-levl/233Finkel07w.pdf) and PSC 339.201 (http://condor.depaul.edu/~psc/syllabi/300-levl/339Finkel07w.pdf). And what does he advocate in his 5 books, if anything other than the essential simple moral truth that every fair American would be immensely interested to learn in order to avoid inadvertently becoming complicit in the “banality of evil” by only hearing one view point and then supporting it “United We Stand”: ‘Please don’t abuse the unforgettable memory of the Holocaust and the hideous anti-Semitism that even my own parents were a manifest victims of, to construct other new innocent victims of Israel in the name of the Jewish peoples and their genuine suffering throughout the past two millenniums’? (in the words of this scribe)
[3] Project Humanbeingsfirst, “Open Letter to President of Depaul University – On the merit of Dershowitz vs. Finkelstein”, April 10, 2007, http://humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2007/04/open-letter-to-president-of-depaul.html
[4] Interview with Shadia Drury, Canada Research Chair in Social Justice, Director of the Masters Program in Social and Political Thought and Professor in the Departments of Political Science and Philosophy, University of Regina, Canada, “Noble lies and perpetual war: Leo Strauss, the neocons, and Iraq”, October 16, 2003, http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-95-1542.jsp
[5] Joseph Massad, Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History, Columbia University, “Response to the Ad Hoc Grievance Committee Report”, April 04, 2005, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mealac/faculty/massad/
[6] Baruch Kimmerling, Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ‘Can a “Patriotic” Mob Take Over the Universities?’, March 29, 2005, http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar05/Kimmerling0329.htm
—end letter —
May 2, 2007 at 7:27 pm |
Dershowitz has a long tradition of trying to bully opponent into silence, in and out of court. So, I am not surprised at his shameful attempt to lean on DePauw’s tenure decision regarding Dr. Finkelstein. What I find shocking is that Dean Suchar would take such attempts seriously instead of responding to them with the contempt they deserve from any serious scholar. I seriously hope that Dr. Finkelstein will be offered tenure, and that any DePauw administrator who opposed it on the grounds of Dr. Finkelstein’s political positions will have to answer for their actions.
Francesca di Poppa, PhD
Assistant Professor, Philosophy Department
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX
May 3, 2007 at 2:15 pm |
Norman Finkelstein has committed two “offenses”: disagreeing with Alan Dershowitz and those whom Dershowitz represents, and speaking his mind in a vivid, intense, argumentative manner. Neither behavior has any relevance to an appropriate tenure decision.
Is Finkelstein’s published work creative, important, and scrupulously researched? Yes. Is he a skillful and dedicated teacher? Yes. Has he engaged in significant service to his university and profession? Yes. De Paul University has absolutely no valid ground to ignore the recommendation of his department and faculty that he be granted tenure.
Richard E. Rubenstein
University Prof. of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs
George Mason University
May 5, 2007 at 5:19 pm |
Norman Finkelstein is one of our nation’s most articulate, scholarly critics of the reigning Righteous-Israel mythology. Given the taboo against telling the truth about Israel’s theft of the Palestinian homeland, his brilliant polemic writings have long been the target of Alan Dershowitz and other Israel-first mythmakers. Finkelstein is not just a superb and superbly courageous scholar but one of the essential American scholars in an area that sorely needs his brand of incisive courage. As a Jewish writer, poet, professor and scholar myself, I applaud his integrity and incisive criticism of the pervasive Holocaust industry. Since he is reputedly a fine teacher as well, he richly deserves tenure and should be warmly thanked by the faculty and administration of De Paul University for being the exemplary scholar he is. Steve Kowit, Professor of English, Southwestern College
May 5, 2007 at 9:21 pm |
While Dr. Norman Finkelstein has to fight hard for his due tenure at DePaul University as a result of Alan Dershowitz’s lobbying, at the The Doha Debate, held this month on May 1st at Oxford Union, 65.6% of the audience voted for the motion “This House believes the pro-Israeli lobby has successfully stifled Western debate about Israels actions”. Norman was among the speakers. Nonetheless on Jerusalem Post (talkbacks) everyone can see the claque now running against the motion. link
May 7, 2007 at 7:57 pm |
Mr Finkelstein s has written extensively without copying form other peoples books , about the Middle East . he is a walking Encyclopedia . when he talks about Palestinians, he knows what he is talking about , because he sat with them , he talked to them, he felt their pain and their agony , unlike someone like Mr Alan Dershowitz who Heard about the Palestinians , im sure he has never met one , not a real one on the territories . Do not allow someone like Dershowitz spoil Mr Finkelstein reputation please .
May 9, 2007 at 1:02 pm |
So, Norman Finkelstein hasn’t been sufficently ‘collegial’ towards Mr.Dershowitz. I would have held it very much against him if he had.
Who would want to be the ‘colleague’ of that ‘advocatus diaboli’?
May 9, 2007 at 6:46 pm |
You have my support, Dr. Finkelstein.
DePaul University Graduate Student
May 9, 2007 at 6:49 pm |
Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA
May 9, 2007 at 7:49 pm |
Professor Finkelstein’s scholarship should be judged on its merits, not on its “tone” or by partisan external political considerations.
May 9, 2007 at 8:44 pm |
DePaul University should consider itself fortunate to have a teacher-scholar of the caliber of Prof. Finkelstein, one of the few true public intellectuals in the United States. The apparent corruption of the tenure process at DePaul is of grave concern to academics across all disciplines.
Matthias Selke
Assoc. Prof. of Chemistry
California State University, Los Angeles
May 9, 2007 at 8:56 pm |
DePaul University should consider itself very fortunate to have Dr. Finkelstein as a member of its faculty, and should take every step to judge him on the merits of his academic work.
It is the responsibility of the DePaul administration to grant Dr. Finkelstein tenure, as he has earned it in every respect. He is a scholar of the highest quality and the campaign to vilify, defame, and discredit him is an abomination.
Harold Niver
Founder,
Capital Region Darfur Coalition
Troy, NY
May 9, 2007 at 9:03 pm |
It’s preposterous for DePaul University to do anything but grant this great human being tenure immediately. That there is even a mild debate or even minimal controversy pertaining to Dr. Finkelstein’s scholarship, integrity, professionalism, and classroom acumen is flat out outrageous, and would be comical if not for the serious nature of the subject.
What a lesson this will be for other future potential academic critics of Israeli theft and violence towards the Palestinians: speak and write the truth, backing it up with impeccable logic, analysis and resource materials, and witness your name being vilified by hucksters, fraudsters and clever manipulators.
Unpleasant “lessons” of this type fall into the arena of organized criminals and gangsters, they obviously have no place in academia.
Drew Hunkins
Madison, WI
May 9, 2007 at 10:02 pm |
I am apalled at DePaul University’s apparent lack of sense concerning one of academia’s finest members, whom they are quite lucky to have on their staff. I could go further and say that the whole of our country is lucky to have the collected wisdon of Norman Finkelstein. I suppose Mr, Finfelstein’s mortal sin of telling the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is at the core of this travesty.
May 9, 2007 at 10:09 pm |
Dr. Finkelstein is a man ahead of his time. It is only in this current era of ignorance, and trepidation of discussing real issues, that such scholarship is received with such apprehension. Unfortunately, and as exhibited in the undue delay in granting his tenure, the beauty and profound importance of Dr. Finkelstein’s scholarship is lost upon those claiming allegiance to impartial academia. Make no mistake about it; Dr. Finkelstein’s scholarship will be renowned for generations to come. Delay, and even denial, of Dr. Finkelstein’s tenure will no doubt be to the President of DePaul University’s own folly. Inexplicable is how the President of DePaul University can be swayed by a fear mongerer such as Dershowitz, and how the President can succumb to external pressure that has all but disintegrated DePaul’s academic integrity.
Do not be surprised that if Dr. Finkelstein is denied tenure, he will soon be offered a position by a University higher up in the rakings; one whose chief concern is in providing their students the privilege of exposure to all ideas, which undoubltly results rigorous academic debate.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
May 9, 2007 at 10:36 pm |
As Voltaire observed and often practiced, he might disagree with what is said, but he fully defends one’s right to say it. The tradition of free speech and thought should be all the more tolerated, and furthermore, encouraged in universities; it is their raison d’être. Not only was Professor Finkelstein’s scholarship evaluated and approved by his peers and colleagues, it is also evident to those of us who do not know him personally, and have only read his works.
It is shock & awe shameful that Alan Dershowitz went from the dark ages to the neo-con age without a glance at the Enlightenment. Let us fervently hope that his outside lobbying efforts are judged for what they are: a cakewalk on the wild side, and that his parachuted mission does not become accomplished. Let him return to refining his preferred methods of torture, that is his right. It is not, however, his right to silence others. As it was once questioned in an earlier shameful period of American history, has he no decency ?
Dr. Jehanne de Roquefinne
CNRS, Paris
May 9, 2007 at 10:55 pm |
As a student at Depaul I learned to value scholarship and pursuit of the truth.
Dr Finkelstein’s work embodies those values. He fits very well with the DePaul I am proud to be a graduate of.
Class of 1967
May 9, 2007 at 11:00 pm |
DePaul University should be ashamed for allowing itself to be used by Alan Dershowitz to continue his vendetta against Norman Finklestein.
Dr.Finklestein left Dershowitz bruised and bloodied both in person on DemocracyNow! and in print in Beyond Chutzpah.Out of his intellectual depth and like the sore loser he is,Dershowitz responds by attacking his tormenter indirectly,using your university to try and score a ‘victory’ he’s incapable of on his own.
You set a poor example for your faculty and students.
May 9, 2007 at 11:13 pm |
Regardless of whether one agrees with Dr. Finkelstein’s conclusions, his research is sound, his publication output prolific, and his teaching outstanding. As a tenure-track professor, I would certainly be discouraged to see Mr. Finkelstein denied tenure. It would have a demoralizing and intimidating effect on junior faculty across the US. While I sympathize with difficulties DePaul faces in having its tenure process opened to national scrutiny, I sincerely hope that for the sake of their future students and more widely, the community of scholars, that his bid for tenure is upheld.
Dr. Jeffrey Sommers
Co-Director, Silk Roads Project
Stockholm School of Economics in Riga
May 9, 2007 at 11:23 pm |
I had two classes with Professor Finkelstein at Hunter College, and he even graced me with his presence at my 23rd birthday party. I sincerely hope that his tenure is granted at DePaul. His intellect is sorely needed.
May 9, 2007 at 11:30 pm |
we cannot let the voice of dissent be ’silenced’ because it upsets some powerfull interests.
please support Norman, he deserves it and we need him.
May 9, 2007 at 11:37 pm |
I’m not a professor. Nor an expert on Middle East Studies (though I have devoted hundreds of hours studying the matter).
But I do know what the fruit of the Tree of Truth and what the fruit of the Twisted Tree of Untruth taste like respectively.
One tastes sweet and nourishes the soul, the other… bitter and acidic, and leaves an after taste on the palette that no amount of assurances that “It Is Good” will remove.
In fact the only known way to remove the taste of the bitter fruit of Untruth is to take even the smallest mouthful of the fruit from the Tree of Truth.
Besides…. Finklestein took the time to personally reply my short email, whilst Dershowitz totally ignored my equally polite request of clarification on one of these related matters.
When I read anything from Dershowitz I feel the need for a shower, when I read Finkelstein I feel spiritually nourished and intellectually cleansed. The latter does his religion and ethnicity proud. God Bless him.
May 10, 2007 at 12:16 am |
Norman Finkelstein is a mensch.
His courageous, prophetic and righteous scholarship has earned him a place beside humanity’s authentic champions by its peerless devastation of coventional wisdom’s apostacy. His life and work exemplify first class national and global citizenship.
Had I, in obtaining a Villanova University BA in History, been exposed to a person, historian and scholar of Norman Finkelstein’s demonstrated excellence, my life would have taken a decidedly different course. DePaul University is enriched by his association with it.
May 10, 2007 at 2:04 am |
The response to the letter asking for guidance which Mr. Dershowitz which is posted on his website as a response, is some of the best evidence of the enormity of unjustified accusation launched by this person.
It is basically just attack after attack, using such strongly biased language as a lawyer finds available, long on claims but empty of the fulfillment of establishing those claims.
Consider that Dershowitz is theoretically a scholar, but his answer is basically a laundry list of claims which you can take on faith or not, but they cannot be considered as evidence. Is it an intelligent academic response or is it primarily an emotional barrage? Fairly said, it is the second.
Nor is it likely to be meant as evidence, but it is, in my opinion, simply a piece designed cynically by him, to be used as a convenient cover by such persons whose minds may already made up!
The fact is that the issues are of such complication, and difficulty of access, that it would require of anyone much time and effort to become expert enough to be able to judge fairly, and that is if they are even wanting fairness and accuracy in the first place.
Can we consider it possible that decent men and women can honestly disagree on such a volatile political issue? And can we admit that a man’s career should not depend upon the sort of tirades as Alan Dershowitz is willing to launch upon another man; a man who can at most simply represent one voice in the public square. Can one voice be such a great threat, unless he is telling the truth in a atmosphere that prefers that truth suppressed at any cost?
Sincerely,
Rex Culbertson
Oregon, USA
May 10, 2007 at 2:08 am |
DePaul University, not Alan Dershowitz, should decide on Professor Finkelstein’s tenure. This is not a political decision. It is an academic decision. Those with a political axe to grind should stay out of this.
May 10, 2007 at 2:50 am |
As a citizen who has inquired into the issues raised by Professor Finkelstein and found his conclusions to be sound, as a longtime broadcast journalist who in the early 1980s was attacked by the elements now seeking Professor Finkelstein’s ruin, and as one who for six years taught a course on the manipulation of the media at Depaul’s School for New Learning, I declare myself in support of and in solidarity with Norman Finkelstein: consummate scholar, brilliant polemicist, and the very model of what a professor of political science should be. Raul Hilberg supports him; so does Avi Shlaim. Could you ask for better endorsements?
May 10, 2007 at 3:44 am |
Norman Finkelstein has displayed rare courage and integrity in his books and lectures. All those who love truth and value human rights should support him. DePaul University will honor itself by giving tenure to Dr. Finelstein.
Gabriel M. Makhlouf, MD, PhD, FRCP
Emeritus Professor of Medicine
Medical College of Viriginia
Virginia Commonwealth University.
May 10, 2007 at 3:56 am |
i support prof. finkelstein for tenure at de paul university.
May 10, 2007 at 5:04 am |
University of Arizona, Department of Near Eastern Studies
May 10, 2007 at 5:08 am |
As a Frenchman and a Catholic, I am appalled at the treatment being meted out to Dr. Finkelstein within a Catholic institution named after Saint Vincent de Paul. This French priest, who flourished under the reigns of Henri IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV, was noted for his extraordinary devotion to the poor and his deep charity toward convicts. He is one of the greatest missionaries of all time, and the founder of the Congregation of the Mission, which in turn founded De Paul University.
It would seem that in his own way, Dr. Finkelstein has embarked on a mission in favor of the persecuted Arabs of Palestine, a number of whom, incidentally, are Christians. He has suffered a direct personal cost in a country where, apparently, those who minister to the poor and the persecuted do so at greater risk to their careers than a low-born priest in 17th-century France. The son of survivors of the Holocaust, Dr. Finkelstein also seems to have taken upon himself to expose frauds and profiteers who misappropriate the funds that should have gone to the surviving victims of Nazi persecution while exploiting the memory of their plight in order to further their careers and agendas. When I attended high school in France, two of my schoolmates had parents who were death camp survivors. One of my mother’s closest friends had barely survived the Nazis and the Petainistes during the war and she had lost numerous relatives to their persecution.
I therefore consider anyone who, like Mr. Dershowitz, dares to label a woman who survived the Holocaust a collaborator of the Nazis — without the shadow of a proof — a slanderer of the basest order. I need no further evidence of his true character, which transpires from his every documented action in regard to Dr. Finkelstein.
For De Paul University to assist such a man against one of its own, an academic who has dared to venture beyond the warm confines of his ivory tower in order to become a public intellectual, is therefore far more than an academic travesty: it is a clear betrayal of Vincentian principles. By departing so brazenly from normal procedure in a matter of tenure, De Paul University has cast itself as an accessory to the public vendetta of an academic fraud and an advocate of torture. As a direct consequence of this behavior, it places itself at risk of being widely perceived as a hollow institution, both academically and morally — as hollow as those German universities that agreed to cull Jewish academics from their ranks in the 1930s.
May 10, 2007 at 7:01 am |
I too believe De Paul university should be the one to decide
May 10, 2007 at 7:17 am |
If Professor Finkelstein is denied Tenure at De Paul University the authorities will have shown that they are afraid of people who are afraid of facts.
May 10, 2007 at 3:13 pm |
God help us if the truth is not welcome at a university. Thank you for your courageous work Professor Finkelstein.
May 10, 2007 at 3:21 pm |
I fully support Prof. Finkelstein’s tenure.
May 10, 2007 at 5:41 pm |
I am a graduate of Reed College. I have been continually impressed with the scholarship of Professor Finkelstein and am appalled that a pro-Israel zealot like Alan Dershowitz, an outsider to De Paul University, can take it upon himself to destroy the career of such a dedicated and effective academic. This is not the first time Dershowitz and his ilk have threatened the academic freedom of Professor Finkelstein or others who have been critical of Israel.
May 10, 2007 at 8:07 pm |
I full support Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein
May 10, 2007 at 8:32 pm |
im kind of sick of israel and , jewish organisations for manipulating the public opinion,for exploiting the holocaust issue for financila and political purposes,
im so gratefull for every and each person who speaks out against this propaganda machine…all support to your case
marek
May 10, 2007 at 8:42 pm |
Dr. Finkelstein deserves tenure.
May 10, 2007 at 9:30 pm |
Thank you for your efforts. Norman Finkelstein deserves tenure, and tenure deserves protection from political attacks.
John Haberstroh
Clinical Assistant Professor of Law
Northwestern University School of Law
May 11, 2007 at 12:21 am |
The lynching of Dr. Finkelstein is proof in and of itself that his views are correct. Thank you for your honesty, I am a much better informed person because of your work.
May 11, 2007 at 9:10 am |
This lynching of Finkelstein is beneath contempt.
Let me state one thing clearly…this is the United States of America, it is not Israel and it is not a cock fighting pit for Israeli cultist vrs. whoever doesn’t agree with them.
Those who seek to silence or punish any differences in opinion don’t deserve to live or operate in this country.
And when this insanity passes, and it will, and the blowback comes, as it always does, we will remember those people and institutions who didn’t live up to American values….and they will be the “outcast”…and justly so.
May 11, 2007 at 10:56 am |
If Norman Finkelstein is denied tenure he will not be the first or the last victim of the ‘Israel Uber Alles’ mentality that pervades in the United States.
Tom Paine said – “such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks and all it wants is the liberty of appearing”. Brave souls like Finkelstein, speaking the truth are hence to be brutally suppressed – even within the sacred walls of a university allegedly dedicated to enquiry and learning. Shame on those who partake in this intellectual gagging.
May 11, 2007 at 3:25 pm |
I support Professor Finkelstein’s tenure application.
Roger Vail
Emeritus Professor
Sacramento State University
May 11, 2007 at 6:10 pm |
I whole heartly support Professor Finkelstein’s tenure application. The loss of such a man would be immeasurable.
Danielle Lorman
May 11, 2007 at 6:58 pm |
the last place in the world for censorship to take place is any type of academic institution. i am appalled at the university’s actions to deliberately try to silence the freedom of thought.
May 11, 2007 at 7:54 pm |
The attack on Finkelstein is reminiscent of McCarthyite times. Guilt by association, trial by the Wall Street Journal and worse, having your career threatened by a torture supporting plagiarist.
The tables should be turned on Dershowitz and every academic at Harvard should be contacted to ask if they are happy with a plagiarist and witchhunter being a law professor at their once renowned university.
At Sussex University in Brighton, UK Norman spoke to a packed audience last year. So packed that people were trying to force the doors, which I’ve never seen before. He spoke for over an hour without notes.
As a law postgraduate of Sussex University I wish the campaign well.
Tony Greenstein
May 12, 2007 at 3:16 am |
Academic institutions have a responsibility to ensure academic freedom, not infringe upon it. If the president of DePaul University denies tenure to Professor Finkelstein, it will further solidify the fact that universities are becoming institutions of censorship. Hasta La Victoria Siempre!
May 12, 2007 at 8:39 am |
Dr. Norman Finkelstein is a scholar and academic who has the courage to question issues concerning Zionism and Israeli polices. It would be a tragedy if he were to be refused tenure at DePaul University. Those who would seek to prevent his appointment will do great damage not only to their own reputations but also to the instituitions they represent.
May 12, 2007 at 8:58 am |
I would like to add that I support Norman Finkelstein in him being able to cogently express his views. Freedom of speech was defined for cases such as this essentially dissent from the mainstream. You may or may not agree with Norman Finkelstein however if he is articulate in developing an argument then why deny someone tenure just because you disagree? To me thats equivalent to denying someone compentent to fill a role because they prefer vanilla ice cream over chocolate. If Norman can do the job and is the best candidate then political views should not factor into the equation.
May 12, 2007 at 2:59 pm |
Without question Professor Finkelstein deserves tenure. He is a well-known and respected scholar in his field. He is under attack only because he has had the courage to challenge the deceptions and myths of the “Israeli Lobby” in the U.S. Several years ago, I was at a talk he gave here in Kalamazoo. Sure enough, there was a “plant” in the audience to attack what Prof. Finkelstein said in a derogatory and dogmatic fashion.
Philip Micklin
Emeritus Professor
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, Michigan
May 12, 2007 at 4:41 pm |
As a member of AAUP, I applaud the efforts of those in support of Dr. Finkelstein. Tenure should be based on academic standards. This case will be watched very closely by academics across the country.
Catherine Thomasson, MD
Portland State University
May 12, 2007 at 10:45 pm |
I sincerely hope that De Paul does not capitulate to the proto-fascist lobby clearly influencing the political scene in the USA at present. His academic work is top quality and clearly deserving of tenure. As for Dershowitz – isn’t that the right wing AIPAC nut that’s come out for torture?
May 13, 2007 at 6:15 pm |
Currently I now realize there is a battle for the soul of the American Univeristy System and for higher education as a whole in our country whose epicenter is Dr. Norman Finkelstein, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science at DePaul University and his ongoing battle for tenure. Dr. Finkelstein’s record as an academic is to date, and by all accounts, impeccable (Ph.D. Political Science, Princeton), as is his record as an educator. He is practically adored by the overwhelming majority of his students to date and over the past six years–dozens of whom have staged sit-ins, created banners and shown other signs of support for his receiving tenure, after, again, six years of teaching as a college professor with no job security. He has also been approved by the tenure boards at DePaul, which by necessity must take into account the impeccable record, and the international reputation he has developed as a published author on the field of his expertise.
Why, despite all of this, he is still fighting for his professional life at DePaul University, is what makes his battle representative of the fight for actual democracy in our country that may never end, but must begin with all of us.
He is not at liberty to post my letter in moral support of him on his website, http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/, due to obvious legal and prcoess-oriented concerns. However, as it is all too important that the word get out about what is going on, in support of him, and free speech, I am posting it here.
Earl Wellington Hazell, Jr.
May 10, 2007
Dr. Norman Finkelstein
DePaul University
Dr. Norman Finkelstein:
While conversing with Dr. Noam Chomsky of MIT via e-mail after buying a copy of IMAGE AND REALITY OF THE ISRAEL-PALESTINE CONFLICT, I was made aware of the battle for the soul of the American University System currently taking place. A battle masquerading as, albeit ideally represented by, your personal battle for by all accounts well-deserved tenure against a corrupt political onslaught led by nameable, undemocratic forces within our country.
In celebration of the work of Noam Chomsky I once wrote of review of HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL on Amazon.com, in which I said the following:
“The true litmus test for a patriot, or lover of anything–person, place or thing–is their ability to be true to the defining essence of a thing *within* what they love more than the outer shell of the thing itself. Even if it means going against the outer shell of the thing when it has lost its way. When someone can love the compassionate human being within the alcoholic but not the alcoholism–and divorce them compassionately on those grounds; love the frightened child within the raging teenager but not the disrespect that often comes with the rage; love the spiritual beauty within an art form that has been diluted or bastardized by the marketplace–and cuss out the sell-out artist exemplifying both dynamics for not being true to us or his/her own soul; or love the true essence of a nation whose leaders are selling its soul more than the corrupted leaders and their propaganda themselves…this is when a person enters the high spiritual dichotomy of ‘loving the sinner and hating the sin’–above and beyond the stale, modern Christian hypocrite’s use of the phrase–in a way that is truly redemptive for all of humankind.”
I see in the writings of your supporters the realization that your analytical work on the horrors of European Romantic Nationalism and its particularly cancerous effect on Hebrew Civilization is the embodiment of this principle I am describing (”In particular I believe the Bush administration has used the Israeli state to it’s own ends and allowed Israel to believe that it can continue the intransigent behavior that will ultimately be perilous to Israel’s survival [Stephanie Bell]“).
In other words Dr. Finkelstein, it is becoming obvious to a growing number around the world that, far from being an enemy of intellectual rigor in the name of free speech, a demagogue with an axe to grind against your “ideological enemies,” or a self-hater of your own religious and cultural descent, your life’s work is representative of the true love and support of free speech; a peaceful warrior for human freedom and humanity’s continuing evolution; a supporter of the foundations of democracy and democracy itself; and the honor and respect of the richness of Jewish culture and its people on its highest and most profound levels of meaning and relevance. In our Orwellian age, where, as my Grandmother used to say, “They callin’ right wrong and wrong right,” you dare to speak the truth to power—with a rigorous basis in documentary evidence—and as such speak for us all.
I speak up now in realization of the truism brought to light by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “At some point in time, silence equals complicity.”
Please accept this letter as my moral support for you achieving tenure at DePaul University, while their administrative/tenure boards search for their collective spines, moral compass, and unread copies of the Bill of Rights.
In spirit,
Earl Wellington Hazell, Jr.
American Citizen
May 13, 2007 at 6:18 pm |
Please have me be counted amongst the supporters of Dr. Finkelstein.
May 14, 2007 at 6:52 am |
Lets all give our uncompromising support to this great, honest, and strong Professor, Mr. Finkelstein. He has long deserved his tenure and it should not be delayed by exterior forces. You have my support Dr. Finkelstein.
May 14, 2007 at 3:03 pm |
We should get over ouy biases and judge people for what they are.Norman is a great scholar and He should be tenured irrespective of his difference of opinion.
May 16, 2007 at 1:58 am |
Norman Finkelstein has been an inspiration to myself and my friends as i also attend a Catholic University. As a scholar the true test of credentials is not insight or conviction or literary ability, but the courage to follow the implications of the research and to expose that which others dare not touch. Originality.
Writers like Finkelstein are more important to protect, in a society that values freedom, than a thousand writers who all concur on a subject, for it takes real courage to oppose a popular consensus,and that is the true test of freedom-after all, it is easy to defend that which is uncontroverial, and agrees with the majority view and it is easy to allow such views expression, as they support the prevailing thesis. But the true test is when a scholar or writer or reporter reveals something uncomfortable for society and for power structures-only then is commitment to universal freedom put on trial. And it is only then that students have a real chance to learn, for, to deny a scholar freedom to teach, is not just to restrict his freedom to speak, and implicitly, by denying him tenure, declare the Univerities lack of support for him, but it is also to deny the students the right to hear him and to learn-something that ca only truly be accomplished when a scholar with a proven record, who is unpopular, is granted tenure, becuase his voice is more important as it challenges students not to accept orhtodoxy, but to think for themselves and gives them a point of view they may hear nowhere else.
The University may feel it will asist their reputation to deny this brilliant and world-renowned scholar, tenure, and help deflect criticism from the University. But in reality, with Alan Dershowitz having now publicly boasted of his direct attempts at interference in the affairs of another University, the decision to reject a scholar who, would, surely, otherwise, be worthy of tenure, is revealed as a cowardly surrender of the very academic freedoms Uinversities are supposed to cherish and encourage in their students, among whom Mr. Finkelstein is a much-loved and respected academic figure. Mr Dershowitz’s claims have already been reviewed and found to be baseless in a Washington Post article, and numerous other reviews, most recently two of the greatest Jewish scholars today, Avi Schlaim and Raul Hilberg have given an interview praising him as “courageous” and a “brilliant anlaytical mind”and saying his “place in hisory is assured”.
Both scholars say they support his conclusions, particularly his book on the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg says his own book, researched at the same time, reached “exactly the same conclusions”-yet it attracted none of the same controversy as Finkelstein’s. These two scholars, who have read all Finkelstein’s works conclusively disproved the slanderous smears of Alan Dershowitz, whose previous personal attacks on Finkelstein have included attacks on his mental stability and on his mother, and completely false allegations of anti-semitism. When even Fox News launch scurullous attacks against him in an outrageous bid to join Dershowitz’s right-wing agenda and attempt to influence the decision of an independent Univerisity- it becomes obvious basic academic values are under serious threat.
We hope and pray that DePaul’s values truth and does not allow smear campaigns to ruin the tenure bid of one of the finest and most respected writers on the Israel/Palestine conflict today. To give in to the campaign to deny him tenure, would amount to the University accepting the lies Dershowitz has hurled at Finkelstein as true-even though they have been metucloulsy examined and found to be false by leading Jewish Holocaust experts and academics, who are furious at Dershowitz’s campaign. And it would damage Finkelstein’s well-earned reputaion as a great scholar, indicating to all those who look at Finkelstein that the Univeristy concurred with Dershowitz’s view-which not only dicredits the University, since the lies aimed at Fiinkelstein have been proven to be baseless, yet they are buying into them, but also sends out a clear signal to Dershowitz and other professors whose books have suffered under the scholarly microscope, that bullying, lies and slander, are effective. That a University can be held hostage to outside interests who can engineer public pressure or media misrepresentations in order to bring pressure to bear on a University.
It sends out the message to all DePaul’s students that writing a thesis is fine, and criticising foreign policy is acceptable, but if you criticise the wrong people’s books-or the wrong subject-youre freedom and respect and employment and the University’s commitment not to give in to smears,cannot be guranateed. Jesus always asked us not to look at the speck in youre brothers eye, but the plank in youre own. But when a courageous Jewish professor, son of an Aushwitz survivor, dares to break with established doctrine on Israel-this principle no longer seems to apply, and he is subjected to a campaign of outrageous harassment for having even entertained the notion of criticising the actions of his own people’s state.
Avi Schlaimer. told Democracy Now, in an interview last week, that Finklestein had first exposed Joan Peter’s book From Time Immemorial, as a hoax and “has been a marked man ever since”. Let us all hope that his courage has not served to destroy him, as courage is a value that people all over the world need now more than ever. The Palestinians, who include many Christians, have never had a greater friend and supporter, in a time when it is not fashionable to support these oppressed people, than this brave academic, who simply refuses to abandon the couse of the suffering, a noble principle underlying his scholarly efforts, that has brought him little reward-and may be about to bring him immense suffering and the rejection of his bid after disgraceful interference.
Everyone i know is rooting for this man, he is a heroe-he could so easily have devoted his acclaimed analytical talents to some unocntroversial subject which did not involve any suffering or bring him under fire from Felix Frankfurter Professors. He chose instead to take a road few dare take-and to suffer for it. I can only hope agaisnt hope the University rteveals its true principle and allows someone so internationally respected tenure. His students are blessed to have him.
May 16, 2007 at 3:16 pm |
First of all, I want to acknowledge DePaul University as an institution of high standards and international renown. What happens at DePaul is indeed highly visible and significant.
I want to support Professor Norman Finkelstein’s application for tenure at DePaul. It is sad, perhaps, that we live in a period of intense and partisan conflict. I personally admire academicians who do not sit on the sidelines of these intense debates and arguments, but who actively participate in the outcomes of the historical process. I realize this often makes life difficult for them as well as for their associates and affiliated institutions.
I also think it is sad that Dr. Alan Dershowitz has interjected his strong opinions into the tenure process at DePaul. I personally consider Dr. Dershowitz a highly inflammatory and bitter partisan, lacking in both courtesy and objectivity. I hope that DePaul does not succumb to the pressures that Dr. Dershowitz is able to command, both individually and as a leader in AIPAC.
I have admired Dr. Finkelstein’s courage to contest the mainstream positions on both the Holocaust and the history of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. This courage has been supported by many of the faculty and students of DePaul. I hope their endorsements prevail. Sincerely, Keith Barton, M.D.
May 20, 2007 at 2:53 am |
While I have not taken a class with Dr. Finkelstein, I admire his intelligence and his willingness to take on an issue that not many scholars are willing to ‘go to bat for’. I believe that De Paul University needs Dr. Finkelstein not only for his previous work, but for his works of the future.
May 20, 2007 at 1:18 pm |
I support Professor Finkelstein. I am somewhat surprised at the criteria being deployed to deny him tenure; I had expected better of an academic institution of such standing.
May 20, 2007 at 11:48 pm |
Department of English, University of Southern California
May 21, 2007 at 8:48 pm |
Its by time we stand up for those who stand up for the voice less lets fight to organize and give a paltform to people like prof. Finkelstein so they dont have to pay with their lively hood. I love you prof you are humanity at its finest
May 23, 2007 at 6:00 am |
Dr. Finkelstein is no less than a hero. His is true patriotism.
May 24, 2007 at 4:59 pm |
Facts are facts.
“Truth needs no weapon other than itself.” – Pope Benedict XVI
And anyone, any institution, any nation, would ultimately benefit from accepting the truth.
May 25, 2007 at 5:15 pm |
As a Southern African who has spent his entire career bringing down Apartheid I am ashamed at the gross violations of rules, tradition and rights of Professor Norman Finkelstein at an academic institution. In fact scholars and not administrators who ought to regulate the quality and merits of scholarship and this behaviour at DePaul only helps to devalue the merits of academic institutions in this country. Its not too late to save the reputation of this institution
June 1, 2007 at 9:24 am |
As a former lecturer in the DePaul University Dept. of Political Science, I am very concerned about the orchestrated neo-conservative campaign to deny Prof. Finkelstein tenure. The United States and much of the rest of the world have already paid a terrible price for marginalizing critics of this militant ideology. DePaul must not compromise its academic reputation by seeming to give in to them.
Sincerely,
Mujeeb Khan
Dept. of Political Science
The University of California-Berkeley
June 5, 2007 at 2:27 pm |
Norman Finkelstein has shown throughout his work that he is a committed researcher with integrity. His tenure should be based on his academic abilities alone, not subject to the pressures of individuals incapable of dealing with his impeccable sources.
June 5, 2007 at 3:58 pm |
Put in a corner, mostly by his own blatant lobbying against Norman G. Finkelstein’s tenure, as more and more people say that DePaul University would not dare to deny it as a result of his pressure, Prof. Alan Dershowitz’s counterattacks, litterally newspeaking on what is left of his ad hominem enterprise and seeks to put the blame on the scholars who dared to leave him “virtually alone in opposing [Finkelstein's] tenure” (link to this site). We know that the basic idea behind Orwellian Newspeak was to «remove all shades of meaning from language, leaving simple dichotomies.» Well, the news-peak of Dershowitz’s poisonous attack to Finkelstein’s scholarship and more specifically to the freedom of DePaul University to aknowledge it on the issue of tenure, is a surprising cry at the University to duly avoid considering pressure, other than his own, then get back to the merits and make the “right” decision, namely denying the tenure. Everyone can appreciate that – according to Harvard Professor – all shades have been removed and bare facts, are: he, Dersh, is right and Fink is antisemitic evil. That is an axiom and it goes without saying that, as a result, half the world is wrong about Finkelstein’s scholarship, sharpness and work. Including Princeton who gave the man his Ph.D., readers of his books by millions, hundreds of students at DePaul, thousands of supporters. Among them Noam Chomsky, Avi Shlaim, Raul Hilberg and somehow – on the specific matter – Peter Novick.
June 6, 2007 at 6:48 am |
I am a student at Florida State University and I support Professor Norman Finkelstein’s tenure application.
He should not be denied tenure based on the political views of certain other individuals. Those who wish to challenge his application for tenure should produce arguments that prove his scholarship is unworthy. Such arguments have not yet been produced. All attacks on his tenure have been attacks on his politics. No one in opposition to Finkelstein’s tenure has produced an example of poor scholarship on Finkelstein’s part. He is clearly a scholar worthy of tenure at DePaul regardless of his politics.
June 7, 2007 at 7:56 am |
Finkelstein must receive tenure based on his academic scholarship and teaching. If he doesn’t, DePaul has forfeited its reputation and self-respect.
M.A. Ryan
Ph.D. candidate, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Adjunct Faculty, Chicago State University
June 8, 2007 at 3:41 pm |
I support the letter and Dr. Finkelstein’s bid for tenure at DePaul University. Dr. Finkelstein should not be denied tenure by persons who disagree with his scholarship and teaching on ideological grounds, particularly by persons outside DePaul University faculty.
Stuart Chen-Hayes
Associate Professor of Education
Lehman College of the City University of New York
June 10, 2007 at 6:39 am |
It is painful to watch a respected university such as DePaul be made into a laughing stock by its Provost/President. What a shameful failure of the aim and meaning of edification. Norman Finkelstein will triumph so long as the truth does.
June 11, 2007 at 8:43 am |
Shame on you, DePaul University, to have given in to the Jewish Lobby. You have not only done a disservice to your students but have shown that you do not value academic freedom. I remember when I was a high school student looking at potential universities, I was attracted to the University of Chicago because of an essay by its president, Robert Hutchins, Education for Freedom. He stood by his faculty when they were under assault by the House on Unamerican Activities. I think you are not only going lose a scholar but many students as well.
June 12, 2007 at 7:32 am |
We in the Netherlands can hardly grasp on the possibility that this scenario is possible. Denied on political views…Tenure should be based on scholarship and not politics! Regardless of our views on the Israel-Palestine conflict, all academics should stand up in support of Norman Finkelstein.
Wageningen University,
The Netherlands
June 12, 2007 at 11:41 am |
I read that another professor in DePaul, who in the past defended Finkelstein, was denied tenure. In this tragic situation, however, I recall an old Russian joke which follows.
At a factory meeting, the chairman asked people to voice their concerns without fear. Rabinovich stood up and said: “I want to ask where is the butter, eggs and other products?” OK, said chaiman, we will pay attention.
On the next meeting, Abramovich takes a stand and says: “I am not asking where is butter, I am asking where is Rabinovich?”
June 12, 2007 at 1:41 pm |
Surely it is the Dean whose position should be in question? It used to be a sacking offence to bring one’ place of employment into gross public disrepute. This he has clearly achieved by failing to give tenure to a scholar of Norman Finklestein’s calibre on wholly specious and subjective ground of lack of ‘collegiality’.
Of course the real reasons are political- a child can understand that fact. For an American University to succumb to political pressures not to give tenure to a critic of current US imperialism’s uncritical support for its settler-colon garrison state of Israel is nothing short of outrageous. It is no better than the practices in the former Stalinist states where any critic could be sacked for being ‘anti-soviet’. Then there is the reminder of McCathyism…
Dr David Hookes
Honorary Senior Research Fellow
Liverpool University, UK
June 12, 2007 at 3:19 pm |
Who wins and who loses in this unfortunate affair?
The administration of DePaul University THINKS they’ve won because for the short term, they’ll no longer have to worry about losing money from donors who condition their gifts on political correctness. But times change. Someday there will be peace in the Middle East, justice for the oppressed Palestinians, and a viable Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel. When that happens, the world will look back on this and view DePaul in the same way they did all nations and corporations that silently enabled the racist apartheid policy in South Africa. “Finkelgate” will be a stain that DePaul can never wash away.
Alan Dershowitz THINKS he scored a victory in his personal vendetta against Finkelstein, but his credibility and academic reputation had already been severely damaged even before he organized his denial-of-tenure campaign, and the ruthlessness and viciousness of his attacks merely exposed his abject desperation. What does it say about the character of two men when you have one who takes the high road and one who always takes the low?
The Zionists and pseudo-scholars THINK Finkelstein has lost, but truth is like a rising tide. It will not lie low for long. The day will come when their sand castles crash down around them.
The only real losers are DePaul’s students. I know full well because I was a former student of Finkelstein when he taught at CUNY Hunter in New York City. They are losing one of their most gifted teachers and more than that, a man of peerless erudition, conviction, courage and compassion.
I condemn the cowardice of DePaul University and the shameful precedent this sets for academic freedom in this country.
June 12, 2007 at 6:46 pm |
I have read two of Dr. Finkelstein’s books, and I attended a lecture he gave at the University of Vermont. My impression of him, based on this evidence, is that he is quite balanced and sober in his treatment of the issues he investigates. Of course those whose activities he describes object to his scrutiny and to his exposure of their wrongdoing. No matter how objectively he writes, and no matter how well he backs up his conclusions, they will consider him offensive. Indeed, the excellence of his scholarship makes him all the more hated.
How humiliating it is for the university officials who have to carry out this affront to their profession! It is so obvious what is going on, and yet they have to make up excuses for the inexcusable, and pretend to believe what they are saying.
Congratulations to Dr. Finkelstein’s colleagues who did their evaluations honestly and fairly in the face of pressure from above. Their integrity stands in contrast to the actions of their dean and their university’s president.
Peter Lackowski
Jericho, Vermont
June 12, 2007 at 9:25 pm |
I’m not an academic, I’m a (retired) British psychiatrist and I think the letter above is a clear and dignified statement and I support it. I admire Finkelstein’s books and I’ve heard him lecture in person. I can see at once why scholars of the repute of such as Raul Hilberg respect and support his work. I was astonished when De Pauls did not grant him tenure and can only wonder why. Did it have to do with his polemical style, or did it have more to do with the polemical style of a certain law professor?
June 13, 2007 at 12:49 am |
As a member of the Faculty and Board of Governors of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, I am horrified that the de facto censorship of dissenting ideas and voices on Zionism and Israel that has long disgraced the “official” Jewish community has reached into academia, as well.
De Paul University’s officials have an obligation to truth, knowledge and dissent. They have woefully violated that sacred trust.
Hershl Hartman, Secular Jewish vegvayzer/Leader
Education Director, The Sholem Community, L.A.
June 13, 2007 at 1:42 am |
Substantial debate of important issues, such as the Israel/Palestine conflict, has been effectively silenced in U.S. politics.
It has also been largely silenced in U.S. media.
If we allow U.S. academic institutions to silence our most brave and insightful scholars, who will be left to encourage heatlhy debate?
Who will be left to protect the right to disagree?
As students/teachers at DePaul, or indeed as concerned Americans anywhere, we should fight to stop this process, before our own voices are also silenced.
June 13, 2007 at 7:40 am |
I feel deeply sorry for Prof. Finkelstein. This person is a inspiraion for courage, justice and self-esteem. I am a student in Paris in International Relation and I will read Finkelstein’s book. Not only because of the high value of their contents but above all because the author is of such a great personality. Not to be frightened about telling people the TRUTH even though this truth might harm yourself in any way, is more that I could personally expect from a good teacher.
People who are rejecting this kind of attitude should be punished as they have neither a sincere soul nor values for which one should live.
Dr. Finkelstein, I wished I would know you in person in order to let you know how deep your courage touched me.
June 13, 2007 at 2:16 pm |
It is simply outrageous that such a prominent scholar is denied tenure. You have our full support professor Finkelstein.
June 13, 2007 at 2:55 pm |
It’s very suspicious that DePaul administrators have overturned a faculty decision on tenure. In light of Alan Dershowitz’s high-profile attacks on Norman Finkelstein and his work, and of his meddling in Finkelstein’s professional life, this seems like it has nothing to do with academics, and everything to do with politics.
Asim Ali
Doctoral Candidate, American Studies, University of Maryland
June 13, 2007 at 4:02 pm |
Norman Finkelstein’s work is a brilliant and uniquely significant contribution to the critique of Israeli policy and its apologists, as well as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is shocking that his academic career has been disrupted and maligned by this decisionto deny him tenure. It is clear that his work must continue and this decision by DePaul University cannot prevent Dr. Finkelstein from reaching a wide audience. This is another blow to academic freedom in U.S. universities and to public discourse of the conflict. I wish him all the best in securing another position and the reputation of DePaul University will suffer.
Richard Wood, Sociology Dept., DeAnza College
June 13, 2007 at 7:02 pm |
DePaul should have called attention early on to Prof. Dershowitz’s vindictive intervention and publicly rebuked him for it. I hope other institutions learn from this unfortunate episode the importance of protecting the integrity and autonomy of their personnel processes.
Bill Paschke, Department of Mathematics, University of Kansas
June 13, 2007 at 9:41 pm |
Michael Werner
Ph.D. candidate
Department of History
University of Chicago
June 13, 2007 at 9:55 pm |
Ron Baiman
Policy Research Project Development Analyst
Center for Urban Research and Learning
Loyola University Chicago
June 13, 2007 at 11:31 pm |
The president of DePaul University should resign in disgrace. He is the modern day equivalent of Pope Urban VIII, who placed Galileo under house arrest for similarly speaking the truth. Unfortunately some Catholic traditions never die.
Professor Finkelstein is emblematic of the highest ideals of the academy. It is a sad and unambiguous indictment of DePaul University that such an outstanding scholar as Dr. Finkelstein has been expelled from the university.
June 14, 2007 at 1:36 am |
The DePaul administration has thrown its University’s legitimacy into question with this clear violation of the standards of academic procedure. The claims against Norman Finkelstein are transparently political and would not warrant response except for their dire consequences not only for Finkelstein but also for the academic field. Norman Finkelstein’s work has made him a lightening rod for criticism but it is clearly some of the most important in the field- as has been clearly established by his repeated approval for tenure by his tenure review panels. I urge the administration to reconsider its present course and grant Mr. Finkelstein tenure in accordance with its own academic standards.
Sam Durant
Faculty, School of Art
California Institute of the Arts
Valencia, CA
June 14, 2007 at 2:46 am |
Supporting Dr Finkelstein is essential step towards defending accademic freedom and thwarting any attempt of politiczing accademic life.
Norman has been outspoken voice defending freedom and human rights and any attempt to ” punish” him would devastate the reputation of DePaul University
It is no secret any more who stands behind this campaign to demonize Dr Finkelstein.
June 14, 2007 at 4:32 am |
This is another warning for any one who dare to critisize Isreal. Is this really good for Isreal ?
Do politics (rather than Academic evaluation of professors) make DePaul university a respectable Institution ?
Just wondering !
June 14, 2007 at 12:12 pm |
I feel deeply sorry for Prof. Finkelstein. This person is a inspiraion for courage, justice and self-esteem
Dr. Finkelstein, I wished I would know you in person in order to let you know how deep your courage touched me.
June 14, 2007 at 3:17 pm |
I support this campaign against the victimisation of a fine scholar like Prof. Finkelstein. It seems that no one in the US is allowed to criticise Israel. What happened to academic freedom?
Faheem Hussain
Professor of Physics
School of Science and Engineering
Lahore University of Management Sciences
Lahore
Pakistan
June 14, 2007 at 3:38 pm |
I am a political economist from England. I would like to register my full support for Professors Finkelstein and Larudee. The denial of their tenure is an outrage.
The Zionist lobby is currently bleating hysterically about a democratic national conference decision of the British college teachers’ union, the UCU, to merely DISCUSS the merits of a boycott of Israeli universities in its local branches. So much for democracy and freedom of debate!
.
Meanwhile the Zionists simultaneously lobby to deny these two erudite US intellectuals the right to earn their living as college teachers. The reason? Because Finkelstein is exercising his right to be an anti-Zionist Jew while Larudee selflessly acts in his support. That is, the Zionists, and the spineless, high-handed, muddleheaded DePaul President, are denying academic freedom.
Finkelstein ought to be able to freely criticise the brutal, oppressive, racist policies and methodology of the Israeli government and its supporters. But apparently this is not possible in Bush’s America because of the guilt-tripping threats and arm-twisting of the US Zionist lobby.
I am delighted to hear that the students of DePaul are sitting-in to support the two professors and that the faculty are considering a motion of no confidence in the President.
Another Jewish anti-Zionist scholar, Ilan Pappe, an Israeli citizen at the University of Haifa and the author of “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” (absolutely essential reading!) is currently being forced out of Israel because it is too dangerous for him to live there. He is having to move to England.
The Apartheid regime was brought down partly thanks to a vigorous boycott of South African goods and institutions. It is time to boycott Israel.
June 14, 2007 at 3:51 pm |
I write from the UK, hold a Masters degree from the University of Edinburgh, and have been extremely fortunate to attend Prof. Finkelstein’s forensic analyses of Middle East and world affairs on two exhilarating occasions.
As the stench of academic censorship and moral cowardice emanating all the way from Illinois reaches the east coast of Scotland, permit me to add my name to this diverse, distinguished, multinational and multi-faith list.
Clearly orchestrated by obscurantist, if not wholly malignant “outside forces”, those DePaul faculty members responsible for this deplorable decision should be utterly ashamed of themselves in furthering the witch hunt of a hugely principled and laudable human being.
Professor Finkelstein’s exemplary quests for social justice and human rights based on the (curently threatened) canons of international law will retain my utmost respect.
I salute his academic integrity and will support his future actions…
June 14, 2007 at 5:39 pm |
Hines H. Baker and Thelma Kelley Baker Chair in Law
Professor of Philosophy
Director of the Law & Philosophy Program
The University of Texas at Austin
June 14, 2007 at 6:29 pm |
mind-boggling.
dan kaufman
department of philosophy
university of colorado at boulder
June 14, 2007 at 6:30 pm |
I am a professor of history at NYU, and I had the good fortune of having Norman Finkelstein as a teacher when I was an undergraduate at Brooklyn College. Unlike the way Professor Finkelestein has been caricatured, I found him to be open-minded, fair, considerate of dissenting opinions, and intellectually stimulating. In terms of generating ideas and debate, it was one of the most useful classes I had, at either the undergraduate or graduate level. I urge DePaul University to reconsider its decision and act to restore its scholarly legitimacy, which has been gravely damaged.
June 14, 2007 at 6:42 pm |
Matthew Lister
Graduate Student
JD/PhD Program
The Law School and Dept. of Philosophy
University of Pennsylvania
The actions of DePaul University in this case seem motived by transparently political concerns. This is shameful as well as unfortunate. Finkelstein deserves fair treatment.
June 14, 2007 at 6:54 pm |
Conor Roddy
PhD candidate
Dept of Philosophy
University of Texas at Austin
June 14, 2007 at 7:18 pm |
I support the request to dePaul University to review this extremely dubious decision. To my mind this business reveals only one person who should clearly not be enjoying the privileges and immunities of tenure, and that one person is not Norman Finkelstein.
John Gardner
Professor of Jurisprudence
University of Oxford
(opponent of the academic boycott of Israel proposed by members of the UK’s University and College Union, in case you care!)
June 14, 2007 at 7:29 pm |
Department of Philosophy
University of Missouri
599 Lucas Hall (MC 73)
One University Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63121-4499
USA
June 14, 2007 at 7:52 pm |
I have found that Professor Finkelstein’s work is among the most informative and challenging material on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that I ever read.
This politically motivated persecution has rightfully brought the fierce opposition of scholars everywhere. We will always stand up to protect the free exchange of ideas, no matter who they discomfort.
I applaud the tenacity and persistence of the student protesters and view their action as a stern warning to any other college administration that would take similar steps against a renowned scholar.
Colin A. Jones
Oberlin College
Class of 2008
June 14, 2007 at 8:06 pm |
I support this request of DePaul University to reconsider its tenure decision regarding Professor Finkelstein. If this matter weren’t so serious – if it did not threaten the freedom of well-trained and demonstrably capable scholars to engage in serious academic research – then I would shrug this off as the administration of DePaul University acting as little better than small-minded characters ripped straight from the pages of Lucky Jim. Unfortunately, though, this is a shameful and cowardly act worthy of widespread and public condemnation.
I express my heartfelt support to Professor Finkelstein, to his colleagues at DePaul who supported him and to his students, who are losing both a reputable scholar and their alma mater’s good reputation.
Matthew Noah Smith
Asst. Prof.
Department of Philosophy
Yale University
June 14, 2007 at 8:07 pm |
I don’t know Norman Finkelstein and I’m not an expert on the Middle East. I am definitely a Classical Liberal/Soft Libertarian/Classical Republican not a socialist. Form that point of view I believe that the university world must be a safe one for non-conformist characters. I don’t know De Paul and I’m not a US citizen. I’m a British citizen working as a university philosopher in Istanbul. I do have opinions on the Middle East and they lie somewhere between Finkelstein and Dershowitz, and I can’t join various other signatories in sweeping attacks on Zionism. I hope those who have taken the opportunity to let off steam about Zionism would also defend the academic freedoms and rights of pro-Zionist colleagues. There are different forms of Zionism, and there are reasons it emerged other than racism and imperialism as ends in themselves. I don’t support any moves towards a boycott of Israeli universities by British academics. Regardless of all those contextual caveats, the Dean’s letter and the whole denial of tenure is a scandal.
Dershowitz is strictly speaking a separate issue, and since he is an obvious attention seeker it is perhaps playing his game to attack him in public. However, since he got involved in this, it is necessary to point out that he is a disgusting bully, regardless of what one might think about his position on Israel/Palestine. Given his bullying, it was even more incumbent on the Dean at De Paul to make a stand for free speech and strong independent personalities in academic life. For those who don’t know, not only does Dershowitz oppose the motion of the British higher education trades union to discuss a boycott of Israel (despite widespread misunderstandings there is no union policy at present to boycott Israel), he is threatening to take legal action against British academics who boycott Israel with the aim of bankrupting them. What a very nasty piece of work. This is the lack of civility that the sanctimonious Dean at De Paul should be concerned about.
This is an important issue for academic freedom and freedom of speech in the US and the world. How can anyone argue for academic freedom in emerging, and fragile, democracies if in the land of the the 1st Amendment a highly published academic can be denied tenure because some people think he expresses himself rudely? Certainly this will be a blow to the US image in the Middle East region, apart from those Israelis who would drag that country, and its neighbours, into perpetual conflict and fear.
I trust this movement to support Finkelstein against the Dean’s decision will spread and will overturn a completely unacceptable conformist authoritarian attack on free speech.
Barry Stocker
Philosophy/Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Maslak 34469
Istanbul
Turkey
Honorary Fellow. Department of Philosophy, University College London
June 14, 2007 at 8:35 pm |
Denying Finkelstein tenure can only have a chilling effect in academe. Inquiry should be open-ended and honest, not driven by one’s allegiances to a state, religion, or ideology. We should not fear that the conclusions we reach, however unpopular, will result in being denied tenure. The administration at DePaul should ignore the vituperations of outsiders who criticize Finkelstein for failing to conform to their political agenda. The administration has an obligation to listen to those who know Finkelstein and are best qualified to judge the quality of his scholarship and teaching, viz., his colleagues at DePaul and other scholars in political science.
Andrei A. Buckareff
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Marist College
June 14, 2007 at 8:37 pm |
Department of Philosophy
Ohio State University
June 14, 2007 at 8:56 pm |
What an appalling decision.
Oran Moked
Graduate Student
Department of Philosophy
Columbia University
June 14, 2007 at 9:15 pm |
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Law
Université of Ottawa
June 14, 2007 at 9:16 pm |
Professor Finkelstein’s denial of tenure is both appalling and tragic. Others, in their posts, have also mentioned the ‘chilling effect’ of such a decision; as an undergraduate student who is en route for grad school, I already feel the weight of such decisions on my shoulders. I stand by Professor Finkelstein and can only hope for the best for Professor Finkelstein.
Navid Nakhaee
Undergraduate Student
UC Berkeley
June 14, 2007 at 9:50 pm |
Patrick S. O’Donnell
Adjunct Instructor
Department of Philosophy
Santa Barbara City College
721 Cliff Drive
Santa Barbara, CA 93109
June 14, 2007 at 10:24 pm |
this is a sad day foir America.
Please add my name in support of the decision of Dr. Finkelstein’s peers in the Department of Political Science to award him tenure and promotion
June 14, 2007 at 10:27 pm |
Despicable and cowardly. De Paul is shaming itself by making a decision that is clearly driven by political considerations rather than academic ones.
Gary Bartlett
Visiting Asst. Prof. of Philosophy
Dept. of Philosophy
Haverford College
June 14, 2007 at 10:31 pm |
Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy
The University of Chicago
June 14, 2007 at 10:57 pm |
Department of Philosophy
Virginia Tech
June 15, 2007 at 12:25 am |
Patrick S. O’Donnell
Adjunct Instructor
Dept. of Philosophy
Santa Barbara City College
721 Cliff Drive
Santa Barbara, CA 93109
June 15, 2007 at 1:47 am |
A travesty or a farce? Will it matter for DePaul if Professor Finkelstein is not awarded tenure? What member of the faculty would want to stay on at such a place?
Murray Gregorson
Graduate Student in Philosophy
London School of Economics
UK
June 15, 2007 at 2:34 am |
This is a terrible day for academic freedom in America. I am astonished at how superb scholarship and integrity are denied tenure at De Paul, while fraud and plagiarism are rewarded at Harvard!
June 15, 2007 at 3:07 am |
PhD student
Department of Philosophy
University of British Columbia
June 15, 2007 at 3:41 am |
I am a professor of social and community psychology in a Norwegian university. I first heard Dr. Finkelstein speak 2 decades ago when I was a post-doc at Queen’s University in Canada. I was very impressed by his command of his topic and by his ability to considerately and even-handedly respond to hostile questions from an audience packed with pro-Israel proponents.
It is shocking that we are now seeing a Jewish scholar denied an academic position because his scholarship offends persons in power. I presume that DePaul University, if given the chance, would similarly deny tenure to Jewish scholars such as Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, and Noam Chomsky because they did not endorse Zionism. It is shameful. DePaul University has decided to set itself in the lowest ranks of academic integrity. Shameful.
Floyd W. Rudmin
June 15, 2007 at 4:37 am |
It’s unbelievable that someone with the research output of Finkelstein can be denied tenure under political pressure orchestrated by Alan Dershowitz who has been proved to be a fraud by Finkelstein himself.
eros corazza
Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences
carleton university
June 15, 2007 at 4:57 am |
Teaching Fellow
Department of Philosophy
Fordham University
June 15, 2007 at 5:23 am |
J. Brendan Ritchie
Winnipeg, Manitoba
One word: shame.
June 15, 2007 at 5:33 am |
I wholly support Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s case for tenure, and I laud his colleagues and students at de Paul who are fighting for academic freedom. The letter of President Holtschneider, stating that an academic “has a duty not to discriminate against colleagues and not to harrass them” would make me laugh if it did not make me cry, in view of what has been done to Finkelstein by outside intervention, and the persecution campaign waged agains him by academics from other unversities. It is comforting to see his own colleagues and his students rise in his favour – count me in
June 15, 2007 at 7:14 am |
graduate student
philosophy dept.
University of California at San Diego
June 15, 2007 at 8:41 am |
It is utterly disgraceful for a Catholic university to allow itself to be bullied by the pro-Zionist lobby. Where lies your integrity? What do you hope to gain by silencing an academician who is dedicated to exposing the truth about Israel’s imperialistic and apartheid policies?
Why is it that when it comes to debating the affairs of the Zionist state academic freedom goes flying out of the window? How long will you persist in your conspiracy with the enemies of Truth and Justice by ‘crucifying’ a man like Prof. Finkelstein? Have you not read what Jesus had said in John 8:32?
Ask yourself honestly – whom do you fear? The God of Abraham? Or the godless, secular, apartheid and imperialistic entity called Israel?
June 15, 2007 at 10:36 am |
Lecturer in Modern African History
School of Arts, Histories and Cultures
University of Manchester
Manchester, U.K.
June 15, 2007 at 11:31 am |
It is a sad day indeed when the Israeli lobby AIPAC and Alan Dershowitz set academic policy and standards to follow for De Paul University: the leading light in his sub-field of academic expertise, Professor Finkelstein, is denied well-deserved tenure on the recommendation and unethical campaigning of Dershowitz, a man who supports torture as a legal means! What a mockery, what a travesty of justice and ethics! De Paul should be proud to honor Professor Finkelstein for his singular and exceptional scholarship, instead of unethically punishing him for celebrating truth and justice in his excellent writings. Tenure decision should have been made based on the overwhelming support of De Paul’s students and faculty, opinions of the leading figures in the field like Professors Raul Hilberg and Avi Shlaim on Professor Finkestein’s scholarship, and Professor’s Finkelstein’s own performance as an educator and not on unethical behind-the-scenes political activism of people like Alan Dershowitz.
June 15, 2007 at 12:06 pm |
Based on his scholarship and teaching Norman Finkelstein should be a full professor at Oxford, Cambridge, or an Ivy League university. Unfortunately he exposed Alan Dershowitz for what he is, and Dershowitz has been on a jihad against NF (and Noam Chomsky) ever since.
It is truly pathetic that DePaul should have caved in to the pressure in both these cases.
Dr. A.G. Warrack
Mathematics Department, NC A&T SU
June 15, 2007 at 12:07 pm |
Please add my name to those who support Professor Finkelstein being granted tenure:
Dr Thom Brooks
Reader in Political and Legal Philosophy
Department of Politics
University of Newcastle
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU
United Kingdom
For what it is worth, I am very much against the UCU plans to boycott Israeli academics.
June 15, 2007 at 12:59 pm |
I support the call for the President of DePaul to investigate this matter.
June 15, 2007 at 2:15 pm |
Tutor
European Public Law & Legal Theory
University of Strathclyde
Glasgow
Scotland, UK
June 15, 2007 at 3:03 pm |
DePaul University has made Catholic College an oxymoron.
All current students should transfer to other colleges and universities.
Everyone else should just boycott DePaul.
Hit them where it hurts.
June 15, 2007 at 3:54 pm |
As a professional, small business owner, and mother I am shocked at
DuPaul’s lack of respect for Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s department at
their school. After all his own department was in support of him!
What does this say about a school that does not respect their own faculty
and student evaluations?
I was raised Catholic and all of my family has been Catholic. I find the
lack of debate about what is taking place in the Palistine territory shocking.
It is an embarrassment that this fine institution is allowing itself to be bullied by a bully who is a racist Zionist, in support of torture, and non
advocate of peace.
Why is DuPaul allowing a member of Harvard to have such judgement in it’s faculty appointments? Harvard might want someone as outright
restricting of freedom of speech and angry on their faculty, however, I hope this bullying is not a sign of the times across the institutions of the United States.
This is the USA and not Israel! Although all Jews do have duel citizenship from birth in Israel despite their country of residence or birth. Thus many Jews have equal, if not more, loyalty to Israel. I find perhaps Mr. Dershowitz is just the beginning of lack of freedom of speech from our faculty and students across the entire country.
When I go with my child this summer for college interviews I will be asking about faculty freedom of speech and how faculty is appointed and everyone else should too. Just remember that if you are interviewing at
an IVY league institution you might want to see if the faculty in the department are representing the best interests of the USA! Read up on the faculty in the department of choice. I never dreamed I would have to do this. Now I know it is a must!
Wake up America before it is to late. The day we lose the ability to debate
facts is the day we stand for nothing but domination by a very aggressive
lobby incressingly controlling not just our educational institutions but Washington as well!
June 15, 2007 at 6:39 pm |
Graduate Student
DePaul University
June 15, 2007 at 6:49 pm |
Tenure for Prof. Finkelstein, shame on DePaul!
June 15, 2007 at 8:51 pm |
.
June 15, 2007 at 10:01 pm |
I would like to add my voice to those asking DePaul University to reconsider this decision, which has brought the standards of tenure review at DePaul into serious disrepute. Professor Finkelstein is being denied tenure on the basis of the position he has taken, rather than on the basis of the scholarly ability and integrity with which he has articulated and defended that position. This should be the cause of serious embarrassment for any university. Please re-open the case.
Kinch Hoekstra
Fellow in Philosophy and Senior Tutor
Balliol College
University of Oxford
June 15, 2007 at 10:11 pm |
Please add my name to those who support Norman Finkelstein and Academic Freedom
June 16, 2007 at 2:02 am |
It is a shame to DePaul university that academic freedom is treated in such a disrespectful manner. Professor Finkelstein’s views, while rather controversial or even inflammatory, provide great insights into the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And it is a further shame that outside influence, in the form of Professor Dershowitz’s dossier, was taken as evidence against Professor Finkelstein’s tenure, despite its biased nature.
Count me to those supporting his tenure.
JC Sunglao
Undergraduate Student
Connecticut College
June 16, 2007 at 5:36 am |
Shame on DePaul! Did you hire Norman Finkelstein in the first place because you thought he might be a “safe Jew”? And are you firing him now because he turned out to be too safe?
June 16, 2007 at 6:58 am |
The denial of tenure to Norman Finkelstein reflects another nail in the coffin of U.S. democracy. Only fools would see themselves prosper in a nation going fascist or promoting divisions leading potentially to civil war. (And no one should allow themselves to believe that such events are unrelated to the growing daily raids against long times resident Latinos and the wall of coherent chauvinism ever more fortified and technologized along our Southern border). And so apparently our nation–especially academia’s administrative elites–is populated by more than a few such fools. I don’t deny that repression works. But that is only until it doesn’t, and then all hell brakes loose and the dominant culture collapses under its own weight. It requires no seer or crystal ball to see such a future. History is replete with similar conditions, yet men–doing what they will do–continue to ignore history’s lessons and drag us all, willingly or unwillingly toward that abyss. There is truth without irony in the fact that Dershowitz is a staunch defender of the twisted logic of torture (i.e. of terrorism at its worst). Norman becomes another victim. As Jews, this time his–and our– resistance is something we can take pride in and strength from. Never Again.
Marc Sapir
June 16, 2007 at 8:21 am |
Norman Finkelstein is a legitimate and serious scholar but the main reason we should support him is the same as the reason why we supported Salman Rushdie: opposing censorship and promoting freedom of speech. There is an obvious issue of academic freedom when a scholar with a Princeton PhD and many scholarly books to his name is not granted tenure, against the advice of his department, but there is also a larger freedom of speech issue. People who do not like his views try to silence and starve him. Shameful and not exactly very respectful of proclaimed American values…such as freedom of speech.
June 16, 2007 at 11:31 am |
President Holtschneider’s decision as set out in his letter of June 8th brings disgrace to his presidency and to his university. It shames a institution whose website proclaims: “By routinely incorporating multiple viewpoints into academic and student life, we have become a model of diversity on campus.”
President Holtschneider’s decision is wrong on the merits, inconsistent with the value for which DePaul pretends to stand, and a disgrace to the academy.
Leslie Green
Professor of the Philosophy of Law
University of Oxford (July 1) &
Professor of Law and Philosophy,
Osgoode Hall Law School
June 16, 2007 at 11:36 am |
The tragic fate that befell Prof. Finkelstein reminds me of reading chapters 7 & 8 of Paul Findley’s They Dare to Speak Out. In that book, the ex-Congressman provides numerous examples of AIPAC’s (the formidable pro-Israeli lobby) pervasive influence upon the American academia.
Though the book was written almost 2 decades ago, its main thesis still remains valid. DePaul University is the latest ‘victim’ of the pro-Zionist’s vicious attempt to suppress healthy academic debate on matters relating to Israel and Occupied Palestine. It is unimaginably appalling that propagandists and fraudsters like Dershowitz and Goldhagen are allowed to get away with their lies and hate-mongering while academicians who are committed to the pursuit of truth are condemned to silence.
I hereby urge the directors and governors of DePaul that from now onwards they should take their oath of allegiance to the Star of David, instead of the American flag!
June 16, 2007 at 11:41 am |
DePaul should be made to change its name to DeShowitz University
June 16, 2007 at 4:04 pm |
I have sent the following letter to the President:
Dear Rev./Dr. Holtschneider and Dr. Epp:
I am deeply pained to hear that you have decided to deny tenure to Professor Norman Finkelstein. I had hoped that you would exercise your own judgement about the reputation of Prof Finkelstein rather than go by the unscholarly nature of the accusations made in the letter of Dean Suchar. Now my faith in the American university system’s ability to protect academic freedom is shattered.
Let me tell you how impressed I was by professor Finkelstein’s speech at York University. I had to stand in a long line for two hours and frisked by security because the university administration was afraid of trouble between the Jewish and Palestinian students. Nothing like that happened, of course, and Prof Finkelstein spoke to a packed hall. It was the speech of an honest, patient, learned, and compassionate man and I was deeply moved by it. I cannot believe that you are denying him tenure.
Please, please, reconsider your decision.
Yours sincerely
Arun P. Mukherjee
professor of English, York University, Toronto, Canada
June 16, 2007 at 4:34 pm |
Professor of Philosophy
Stanford University
Stanford. CA 94305
June 16, 2007 at 7:06 pm |
After attending a presentation at UCLA conducted, in part, by Dr. Bill Martin of the DePaul Philosophy Department, I seriously considered applying to the graduate program there. Unfortunately, I am not certain an enviornment where university officials have such a difficult time judging good from bad scholarship would be the best place to pursue my studies.