Protesting Norman Finkelstein’s Tenure Denial; or, Academic Freedom Declines across the U.S. – Part II

June 26, 2007 03:36 PM

By Terri Ginsberg

NEW YORK

As U.S.-backed military actions in the Middle East become increasingly destructive, with thousands of Arab and Muslim civilians dead at the hands of allied troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Palestinians suffering to an unprecedented degree under brutal Israeli occupation, scholarly intellectuals have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of attempts by pro-Zionist and neoconservative spokespersons to pressure government bodies and educational institutions to curb opposition and suppress dissent regarding such actions.

Nearly three weeks have passed since one such intellectual, Norman Finkelstein, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at DePaul University in Chicago, was denied tenure by that school’s University Board on Tenure and Promotion. The decision to deny Finkelstein tenure was upheld by DePaul’s president, the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, despite a majority (9-3) recommendation by the departmental tenure committee and a unanimous (5-0) recommendation by the Personnel Committee for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Additionally, Mehrene Larudee, Assistant Professor of International Studies at DePaul, was denied tenure ostensibly for having publicly supported Finkelstein in his tenure bid when it was challenged externally by Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor whose bestselling Zionist screed, The Case for Israel, Finkelstein effectively deconstructed and discredited as pseudo-scholarship in his acclaimed study, Beyond Chutzpah: The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. In 2005, Dershowitz attempted unsuccessfully to block the publication of Beyond Chutzpah by making concerted appeals to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that the book was anti-Semitic and laced with Holocaust denial. Amidst furious public and scholarly outcry in support of the book’s publication, the Austrian-born actor-turned-politician ultimately refused to heed those appeals on grounds that their implications stood to jeopardize Finkelstein’s academic freedom.

In the three weeks since Holtschneider’s autocratic move, protests in favor of Finkelstein’s and Larudee’s reinstatement have erupted on the DePaul campus as well as across the U.S. and internationally. Immediately following public announcement of the tenure denials, DePaul students staged a sit-in at their school’s executive offices (and were evicted upon threat of expulsion). These students subsequently presented Holtschneider with a 700-signature petition requesting Finkelstein’s and Larudee’s reinstatement. They have since began a hunger strike, now in its second day, at the DePaul University Student Center to continue “to express the seriousness of their distress over the curbing of academic freedom, as university administration has largely ignored the concerns of students and faculty” (student Media Advisory, June 22, 2007, http://normanfinkelstein.wordpress.com/2007/06/23/depaul-students-fast-for-academic-freedom/ ).

DePaul officials cite Finkelstein’s alleged “uncollegiality” as a main reason for denying him tenure. Holtschneider echoes Dershowitz in asserting that Finkelstein’s scholarly writings are inappropriately polemical and, as such, fail to offer scholarly critique in a manner conducive to constructive dialogue and debate within the academic community. In fact, Finkelstein’s numerous published works are not polemical (a mode of argumentation which is nonetheless perfectly acceptable within academia), but painstakingly analytical. Indeed they are renowned for their intellectual integrity and meticulously researched documentation. In addition to Beyond Chutzpah, Finkelstein, who received his doctorate from Princeton, has written four other books, including the seminal The Holocaust Industry, the revelatory Image and Reality of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict , and, with Ruth Bettina Birn, the important A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth. Each of these books engages variously in exposing the corruption of scholarship on both the Holocaust and the conflict in Israel/Palestine.

By contrast, it is Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel which must be designated a polemic. Unlike the body of Finkelstein’s work, moreover, The Case for Israel is largely devoid of scholarly methodological foundations and controls. That book, not the one written by Finkelstein, distorts facts of Israeli and Zionist history to which the international community of scholars has consented, rehearsing baldly pro-Zionist assertions which ignore the expanding array of scholarship available about Israel/Palestine that in recent years has served indubitably to demystify official Israeli narratives and reveal many of them as blatant propaganda. Israeli “New Historiography,” for instance, exemplified by the writings of respected scholars such as Ilan Pappé and Avi Shlaim, acknowledges and documents al-Nakba, the Zionist massacre and expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians from their historic homeland prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948, which Dershowitz, among other Zionist apologists, is at pains to deny or, at best, minimize (see http://www.counterpunch.com/bendor06232007.html). In effect, as Finkelstein makes plain, The Case for Israel mocks academic protocol and scholarly precedent in precisely the manner that Dershowitz and his supporters, who include the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman and numerous U.S. pro-Israel lobbyists (see http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article7055.shtml), falsely attribute to Finkelstein.

The political challenge to intellectual and academic freedom posed by DePaul’s tenure decisions is clear. DePaul faculty is considering invoking no-confidence measures against Holtschneider and other school officials. Petitions and letters to Holtschneider as well as to John Simon, chair of DePaul University’s Board of Trustees, and the American Association of University Professors, a large nationwide faculty union, protesting the tenure denials and demanding an investigation into them have been drafted and signed by an international array of academic scholars. More radically, unofficial calls have been issued by scholars worldwide for a boycott of both DePaul University and the Catholic Church of which it is a subordinate educational unit unless and until Finkelstein and Larudee are reinstated and granted tenure. In a move not yet taken by U.S. Jews, a Jewish-Canadian human rights organization, Vancouver Jews for a Just Peace, has declared its solidarity with Finkelstein: “[W]e recognize continuities between an attempt to silence a professor and the conditions that make it difficult for marginalized people all over the world to express their political beliefs. Prof. Finkelstein’s dismissal leads us to reflect on Palestinians living in West Bank and Gaza who risk more than tenure when they choose to speak truth to power.”

As protests escalate on Finkelstein’s behalf, others continue to develop around ongoing cases involving Ward Churchill, Sami al-Arian, and Steve Kurtz (a film about Kurtz’s case, Strange Culture, premiered last week at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in New York City). These along with countless unpublicized cases against lesser-known scholars who have publicly criticized U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East and elsewhere make for a chilling academic environment, the future effects of which on U.S. higher education cannot be underestimated. The overdetermined inanity of political battles now being waged almost daily against truthful discovery must be seen as a wake-up call for all of us—scholars, journalists, community organizers and activists—who still recognize and uphold intellectual freedom’s integral relationship to the envisioning and achievement of a more just and lasting global peace.

Terri Ginsberg was most recently adjunct professor at SUNY-Purchase College and is a member of the International Jewish Solidarity Network.

Academic Freedom Declines Across the United States
November 25, 2006 10:42 AM

Please note: This piece was written
by Ithaca College professor Terri Ginsberg and New York-based journalist Rima Abdelkader.

NEW YORK, 25 November 2006, (Arabisto.com): Historian Tony Judt, Professor of European Studies at New York University, was scheduled to speak on the Israeli Lobby and American Foreign Policy at the Polish Consulate in New York City in October. Due to pressure from two Jewish American organizations, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, his talk was cancelled. Judt had also been scheduled to speak on the same topic at Manhattan College, but that speech was canceled due to similar pressures. The ADL and the AJC believe that Judt, a Jewish American, is too critical of State of Israel and as such, should not be allowed to speak publicly on that topic.

In September, University of Colorado’s Chancellor Phil DiStefano announced that his university would consider firing tenured Ethnic Studies Professor Ward Churchill for his criticism of the Bush Administration and its handling of the events of 9/11. Churchill is currently being subjected to university censure for research misconduct by an appointed outside faculty review committee comprised of faculty members from chosen campuses around the country.

The Judt and Churchill cases are not unique. Since the events of 9/11 and the subsequent U.S.-led military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. campuses have become a battleground for an increasing number of publicly scrutinized attacks on professors whose teaching and research entail criticism of Zionism and of U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East. Each attack has involved blatant violations of academic freedom that have gone largely unchecked despite protest from faculty, unions, and scholarly organizations.

Perhaps more troubling is the case of Professor Douglas Giles. Unlike Churchill, untenured adjunct Giles was fired from Roosevelt University in Chicago in November 2005 for using the concept of Zionism as a demonstrative example in his Comparative Religion course. Giles was told by his dean that no classroom discussion of religion is permissible that may be construed as offensive to students of a particular faith.

More recently, University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole was denied a Middle East Studies position at Yale after pressure from neoconservative donors and media pundits who expressed objection to Cole’s public criticisms of Israel. Cole is former president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

The most notorious of these cases occurred at Columbia University in New York in spring 2005. Professors Hamid Dabashi, Rashid Khalidi, and Joseph Massad, among others, who teach at Columbia’s Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) Department, were investigated by a university-appointed non-faculty committee after The David Project accused them of anti-Semitism, and media pundits, elected officials, real estate developers and wealthy donors began demanding that Columbia dismiss them. In the end, Columbia’s investigative committee was unable to substantiate the accusatory claims.

In the U.S., academic freedom is a constitutionally guaranteed right meant to protect the role of the university as a site for producing knowledge where its aim is to serve the public good. As citizens or residents of the U.S., academic scholars are endowed with the right to speak publicly, outside the academic sphere, on issues that may or may not pertain to their fields of disciplinary expertise. In addition, academic freedom stipulates that scholars, not elected officials, private interests, or media pundits, are the ones authorized and entitled to make collective decisions about academic knowledge, and about what may or may not be published and professed.

Regrettably, we are in a time and place where scholars are being intimidated from openly discussing subjects they teach or topics about which they feel strongly unless their ideas align with particular schools of thought, especially with regard to Zionism and to U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East. As we write, academics and university employees in the U.K. are being encouraged to spy on students who appear South Asian or Middle Eastern and who the British government suspects of supporting Islamic extremism. In addition to this, attempts are being made by neoconservatives to block both the hire of Wadie Said, son of the late Edward Said, by Wayne State University Law School in Michigan, and the tenure of anthropologist Nadia Abu El-Haj, author of a book that criticizes Israeli archaeology at Barnard College in New York.

If it is truly contributive to the public good, academia must be responsive to public issues and concerns and must treat scholars who speak publicly in accordance with accepted, usual and customary norms of scholarly practice. Political litmus tests should not be used as criteria for academic appointments, tenure, or promotion, nor should accusations of anti-Semitism be made indiscriminately against scholars who articulate legitimate criticisms of Zionism and of U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East. If elected officials, university administrations, mainstream journalists, and responsible citizens do not speak out and take action against these draconian measures, they will become guilty of facilitating the death of free speech in what may be its last bastion, academia.

Terri Ginsberg is most recently Adjunct Professor of Cinema Studies at Ithaca College, and a member of the International Jewish Solidarity Network (IJSN) www.jewishsolidarity.info.

Rima Abdelkader is a NY correspondent and a member of the Network of Arab-American Professionals of New York (NAAP-NY) www.naaponline.org/ny/.