Academic Freedom on Trial: Norman Finkelstein and the Minority Report

By now it is well-known that the minority report, written by the three faculty members in DePaul’s Political Science Department who cast negative votes in Norman Finkelstein’s tenure case, was heavily relied upon in the negative recommendation written by LAS Dean Chuck Suchar and in President Dennis Holtschneider’s letter denying tenure. It is also well known that the department’s majority report recommending tenure as well as the majority’s rebuttal of the minority report received at best cursory attention or, in the case of the rebuttal, was ignored entirely. Because the issue of academic freedom is at the center of this tenure case (and with the Churchill firing these are dark days for academic freedom), it is important to take a closer look at the report’s contents.

The minority report is comprised of three parts. The first two parts offer an analysis of Finkelstein’s scholarly work, arguing that his scholarship is shoddy and substandard, suffused with personal attacks, and polemical rather than academic. The third part, “Violations of Collegiality” takes up the issue of Finkelstein’s behavior as a colleague. The report concludes by arguing against tenure and promotion.

The overall analysis of the work is broken down into several categories including, “double standards,” “red herrings,” “misleading use of language,” and “false dichotomies.” The minority report finds evidence of shoddy scholarship on a total of 17 pages and two footnotes in a corpus of work that spans five books which together total well over a thousand pages. Finkelstein’s work relies on an overwhelming amount of statistical data from a large and wide-ranging number of documents and reports. The minority report finds no evidence of faulty facts, sloppy citation, or incorrect data. In all cases, the evidence has to do with the conclusions drawn. One example is representative: under the category, “Assertion of claims inconsistent with the evidence he provides,” the report points to “pages 126-7 of Image and Reality [where] Dr. Finkelstein quotes without any disclaimer U Thant’s report of Arab fears of ‘a massive attack on Syria’ (emphasis added). A few lines later he posits that ‘the alarms were almost certainly not false’ (emphasis in original). In support of that conclusion he cites Michael Brecher’s judgment that Israel ‘would launch a limited retaliatory raid.’ A limited retaliatory raid is not a massive attack, so Arab fears were indeed false.” The minority report’s emphasizes the word “massive” and then suggests that if this was rigorous scholarship, the “correct” conclusion would be that a limited attack renders Arab fears false (illegitimate?). But is this the reasonable conclusion to draw? Isn’t it rather the case that most of us will become very alarmed and fearful if we have reason to believe our house or our country might come under even limited attack?

The analysis reads like a badly written undergraduate paper wherein the student thinks he or she has outsmarted the author by catching a few perceived inconsistencies, all the while not engaging with the essential arguments and thereby missing entirely the overall substance of the work. The minority report admits that the examples used to support the claim of shoddy academic work are “minor” but that “taken together and read in the context of the corpus of Dr, Finkelstein’s writings, they raise in our view serious questions about whether this work meets scholarly standards.” But several minor examples do not add up to any major critique of Finkelstein’s work. In fact, taken together, the minor examples are glaring in just how minor they are.

The minority report selectively cites only two negative reviews, but does not so much as mention the many laudatory reviews of Finkelstein’s scholarship. Immediately after citing two negative reviews of Beyond Chutzpah, the authors cut off any criticism of their own selective reporting by suggesting that the reader will criticize their tactics by claiming that the negative reviewers “disagree with his [Finkelstein’s] interpretations or because they are Israeli apologists or because they have a political agenda.” But of course the pertinent criticism is the one just made, namely, that there are numerous positive reviews of Finkelstein’s work and in the service of intellectual honesty, the minority report ought to have acknowledged that fact and shown why these positive reviews are misguided. Moreover, the minority report does not address why the two external reviewers of Finkelstein’s scholarship for the tenure application, two eminent scholars of Middle East politics and history, are misguided in their respective letters, each of which gives high praise to Finkelstein’s scholarship. It should be noted that none of the authors of the report are experts in this field.

Acknowledging that perhaps their examples “may seem to be nitpicks,” the authors go on to say that “they are meant to be illustrative of our assessment that Dr. Finkelstein’s work is designed for advocacy rather than for scholarly enlightenment. While there is nothing wrong with advocacy per se, it should not come at the expense of scholarly standards.” Insofar as Finkelstein’s “slide towards advocacy and away from scholarship” served as part of the basis for President Holtschneider’s letter denying tenure, it is worth stopping for a moment to reflect on this.

First, nowhere in the minority report do the authors address the question of how such allegedly substandard scholarly work passed peer review of two major and well respected presses: Verso and University of California. Secondly, it is clear that the real charge against Finkelstein here is that his scholarship lacks the impartial objectivity that the authors of the minority report seemingly view as necessary to academic scholarship. In other words, the charge is that his work slides towards advocacy because it is suffused with outrage over the lies and deceptions that form US-Israel policy, deceptions uncritically embraced by many “liberal” academics who favor Israel to the almost complete disregard of the real violence done to the Palestinian people. We arrive at the issue of “academic tone.”

Here Hannah Arendt is instructive. Taken to task in a critical review by Eric Voegelin for her passionate and oftentimes angry tone in writing Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt responds by asking if it is possible or even desirable to write sine ira et studio when writing of this event. Taking as an example the immense poverty of the British working classes during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, Arendt writes, “If I describe these conditions without permitting my indignation to interfere, I have lifted this particular phenomenon out of its context in human society and have thereby robbed it of part of its nature, deprived it of one of its important inherent qualities. For to arouse indignation is one of the qualities of excessive poverty insofar as poverty occurs among human beings.” For Arendt, “the sheer horror of contemporary political events, together with the even more horrible eventualities of the future… is the preliminary condition for political philosophy.” Finkelstein understands this preliminary condition; he writes from out of the horror and outrage of the lies and deceptions that form the basis of so much of the violence and injustice done to the Palestinian people, understanding that to do otherwise would deprive his subject matter of its human context wherein as an inherent quality deception, violence, and injustice arouse indignation.

The minority report goes on to claim that Finkelstein’s writings are “suffused with personal attacks.” The authors rely almost exclusively on Finkelstein’s “vendetta against Alan Dershowitz in which Dr. Finkelstein seems focused on demolishing Dershowitz’s reputation and perhaps getting him fired, rather than showing where Derschowitz is in error.” Here the report willfully disregards Finkelstein’s painstakingly careful and relentless analysis of Dershowitz’s errors in Beyond Chutzpah. Ironically, these charges ought to have been leveled against Dershowitz who has played an active and tireless role in attempting to destroy Finkelstein’s reputation, who played a significant role in the negative tenure decision, and who has never been able to show where Finkelstein is in error despite hiring a coterie of lawyers to try to do just that.

Staying with the claim that Finkelstein’s writings are filled with personal attacks, the minority report then argues that he impugned Benny Morris’s reputation, despite its citing Finkelstein’s praise for Morris’s research with Finkelstein disagreeing only on how the findings were used. The report also does not like Finkelstein’s critique of Lawrence Summers and Henry Louis Gates Jr., nor does it like the fact that Finkelstein called Wiesel and Kosinski “charlatans” and “frauds.” The report gives no argument as to why one ought not on occasion to call into strongly worded question the motives of public intellectuals. Surely Norm Finkelstein is neither the first nor the last to call a fellow scholar or a public figure a charlatan or a fraud. Socrates, for example, fires the opening shot in the Apology by calling his accusers “liars” and “flatterers.” One suspects that it is not the name-calling that the authors of the minority report find offensive but the people and the issues being called into question. One can imagine, for example, that had Finkelstein called the current US President a fraud or William Bennett a charlatan, no objections would have been raised, much less served as evidence of excessive nastiness in the public space. This is, of course, Finkelstein’s point. This section of the report concludes with citations from a personal email that was never meant for the public eye; it ought not to have been included. No more needs to be said on this subject unless the authors of the minority report would like to open their emails for public scrutiny.

It is clear that despite their initial disclaimer and several protests to the contrary in the body of the report, the authors of the minority report do not like Finkelstein’s scholarly conclusions. The general charge of their analysis is that Finkelstein does not present the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fairly; he presents stronger evidence against Israel than is warranted; he presents weak arguments that favor the Palestinian side. All this of course mirrors the third charge leveled against Socrates in the Apology: “he makes the weaker argument stronger.” When teaching this work, I ask my students why a person on trial for his life would fail to defend himself against this charge. The students always understand: it is impossible for Socrates (or any of us) charged with such a “crime” to offer a defense as any argument will be viewed as manipulative by accusers whose real motive is to silence this gadfly. Socrates offers the strongest arguments he can muster and it is up to the listeners and readers to respond with better arguments, if they can. None of this occurred with the authors of the minority report. Not agreeing with his conclusions, the authors bring Finkelstein up on charges of weak scholarship and nastiness in the public sphere; they offer the academic equivalence of the cup of hemlock. Socrates ends his defense by saying, “I leave it up to the dogs of Hades to decide.” History will be the judge.

In its penultimate section, “Violations of Collegiality,” the minority report shows its other hand. The personal is the political: “Dr. Finkelstein’s nastiness in his polemical work overlaps with serious failures of collegiality towards those in the DePaul community whom he construes as being his enemies. The three members of the department who have signed this report were among those who he viewed in this manner well before his tenure application was considered.” The authors are quite explicit: Finkelstein’s mean-spiritedness towards the three authors of the minority report is reflected in the mean-spiritedness of the work. Not only do the three authors not like his conclusions regarding US-Israel policy, they do not like him. The three charges: Finkelstein shuts his office door, refusing to talk to colleagues with whom he disagrees; he gets overly angry about an annual evaluation; he does not handle contract disputes well. But to use one of the report’s own categories, “double standards,” it might very well be the case that one of the authors, angry that Finkelstein was hired rather than the candidate he supported, has been refusing to speak to Finkelstein, shutting his office door and waiting for just such an opportunity to help assemble the charges; or perhaps it is the second author of the report, the former chair of the department, who is angry for having been questioned about an annual evaluation and who exacted his revenge by inviting Derschowitz into the tenure process; and finally, perhaps it is the third author of the report, the former LAS Dean, who remains furious over a contract dispute, a dispute that was settled by then Provost John Kozak (whom the third author intensely disliked), ruling in Finkelstein’s favor.

The report expands the charge of non-collegiality by pointing to threats to the administration and an inappropriate word used against a staff person. Here the report falls into innuendo and unsubstantiated claims. No staff person has come forth to verify the charge and there is no specificity or substantiation regarding the supposed threats. What were the threats and in response to what? Perhaps the actions of the administration warranted threats. No details are given. The report ends with baseless speculation that junior colleagues and staff personnel might be threatened in the future by a tenured and therefore unrestrained Finkelstein, a speculation dismissed by the junior, untenured faculty in DePaul’s Political Science department, many of whom signed a second majority report rebutting the minority report — a rebuttal that was not allowed to be part of Finkelstein’s tenure materials sent to the University Board. It must also be asked how a professor who undisputedly receives the highest teaching evaluations in DePaul’s Political Science Department and who has been nominated by his students for an excellence in teaching award every year since time of hire poses such danger in the office corridors.

In its 1999 statement, “On Collegiality as a Criterion for Faculty Evaluation,” the AAUP is clear that the category of “collegiality” ought not to be used in the evaluation of tenure. Indeed, in his June 22, 2007 letter to President Holtschneider, Leo Welch, President of AAUP Illinois-Conference, reminds Holtschneider of this statement: “Historically, “collegiality” has not infrequently been associated with ensuring homogeneity, and hence with practices that exclude persons on the basis of their differences from a perceived norm.” Welch’s letter quotes from the June 2006 report of DePaul University’s Promotion and Tenure Policy Committee which affirms the AAUP guideline: “The Faculty Handbook does not incorporate collegiality as a criterion in promotion and tenure reviews.”

Finally, in a significant misquote that goes straight to the issue of academic freedom, the report concludes, “because of the finality of such a decision, the Faculty Handbook states that ‘the University retains the utmost latitude in determining which non-tenured faculty members will be retained’ and ‘should be left without a reasonable doubt as to the faculty member’s qualifications for tenure before it reaches a favorable decision on a reappointment to which tenure is attached.’” DePaul’s Faculty Handbook actually states, “Consequently, the university has the utmost latitude, within the limits of academic freedom, in determining which non tenured faculty members will be retained.” Clearly, the omission of the “within the limits of academic freedom” clause was not accidental. This omission is the damning detail — the authors of the report are well aware that they are violating Finkelstein’s academic freedom. Did they think by omitting the clause no one would notice?

But many have noticed and are outraged. It is clear that the minority report seriously violates Finkelstein’s academic freedom to tell the truth as he understands it. His scholarship draws on a copious number of documents and testimonies to establish a body of factual truth regarding the Israel-Palestinian conflict as well as US-Israel policy. None of these facts are called into question in the minority report; rather, the report’s thinly veiled charge is that Finkelstein ought not to have brought these unwelcome truths into the public space. Here again Arendt is helpful. In her essay, “Truth and Politics,” Arendt responds to the firestorm that erupted with the publication of Eichmann in Jerusalem, taking up the question of whether she ought to have told the truth in her trial report given that it caused such pain and controversy for so many. Numerous of her critics asked, “Would it not have been better to sacrifice a bit of the truth?” Her answer is unambiguous: “no human world destined to outlast the short life span of mortals within it will ever be able to survive without men willing to do what Herodotus was the first to undertake consciously — namely, to say what is. No permanence, no perseverance in existence, can even be conceived of without men willing to testify to what is and appears to them because it is.” The bedrock of academic freedom lies in this Arendtian insight: the survival of the world depends upon its truth tellers. It is not too much to claim that Norm Finkelstein’s truth-telling, his insistence on the stubborn facts, has helped guarantee the survival of the Palestinian world in the face of so many deceptions that threaten its continued existence.

And so now it is up to the dogs of Hades. Although denied tenure at DePaul, I suspect that like Socrates, Finkelstein will carry the historical day. Like Socrates, he is the gadfly on the back of the twin horses of Israel and the United States; he is the midwife who exposes as ‘wind-eggs’ so much that passes for truth about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. History will judge him well. It is DePaul’s profound loss and shame that he is no longer a member of our faculty. As for academic freedom at DePaul, the dogs are barking.

See also related article: “Minority Rule at DePaul University.”

Peg Birmingham is a Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. Read other articles by Peg, or visit Peg's website.

26 comments on this article so far ...

Comments RSS feed

  1. jaime said on August 13th, 2007 at 8:37am #

    This first paragraph tells us all we need to know about the author and this article.

    “..With the (Ward) Churchill firing these are dark days for academic freedom…”

    —————

    If a university can’t fire or deny tenure to outright frauds, then there isn’t much point in having a university is there?

    Here’s what the AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT (Not ADL, not Dershowitz, etc.) has to say about Mr. Churchill:

    http://www.aimovement.org/moipr/churchill05.html

    “…The American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council representing the National and International leadership of the American Indian Movement once again is vehemently and emphatically repudiating and condemning the outrageous statements made by academic literary and Indian fraud, Ward Churchill …

    The sorry part of this is Ward Churchill has fraudulently represented himself as an Indian, and a member of the American Indian Movement, a situation that has lifted him into the position of a lecturer on Indian activism. He has used the American Indian Movement’s chapter in Denver to attack the leadership of the official American Indian Movement with his misinformation and propaganda campaigns.

    Ward Churchill has been masquerading as an Indian for years behind his dark glasses and beaded headband. … He has deceitfully and treacherously fooled innocent and naive Indian community members in Denver, Colorado, as well as many other people worldwide. Churchill does not represent, nor does he speak on behalf of the American Indian Movement. …”

  2. susie tenney said on August 13th, 2007 at 9:54am #

    Peg Birmingham is fighting a losing cause. Norman Finkelstein is an irrational professor who was been denied steady employment by five universities since he completed his doctorate at Princeton in 1987. Now he has been denied tenure at age 53. All of his employers have documented his problem.

    What’s going on in his mind, you may ask? Similarly, for him, Arab annihilationist actions against Israel are, and will forever be, Israel’s fault.

    DePaul University management, like any good and decent employer in America, requires employees who are team players, can perform to the job standards set out in job descriptions, and reflect credit on the institution or business. Norman Finkelstein failed the grade.

    Surely this man’s energy, elan and drive could be put to better use.

  3. Kim Petersen said on August 13th, 2007 at 10:37am #

    jaime maybe you should be aware of this about Churchill:

    “Ward Churchill, a Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, was one grantee of honorary ‘associate’ membership in the UKB; Churchill’s public statements that he was a member of the UKB, created some controversy, in part because Churchill often failed to distinguish qualified enrollment from honorary membership. Ward Churchill did not possess an issued CDIB during his membership in the UKB, and hence was not eligible for any federal benefits reserved for Native Americans. The UKB issued a press release in 2005 clarifying the former honorary membership of Churchill, but indicating that those memberships are no longer in force.”

  4. Michael Kenny said on August 13th, 2007 at 10:54am #

    The interesting point in all this is why it matters. If Norman Finkelstein is such a magnificent scholar as he is being made out to be, if he is a wonderful a person as he is made out to be, shouldn’t other universities be falling over each other to take advantage of DePaul’s “blunder” and recruit him? Shouldn’t he have so many job offers that he can just tell the Vincentians to take their university and stick it? Why is he hanging on as if he had no where else to go? That a Jewish professor might not totally fit in with the ethos and sensitivities of a Catholic university is not surprising, but America is full of universities with no religious affiliation. Why are they not already fighting over NF? That is the elefant in the room!

  5. Bill Williams said on August 13th, 2007 at 11:46am #

    Dear Jaime, Susie, and Michael:

    Have any of you read a single one of NGF’s books? If so, could you please state which one or ones, and then go on to state what you understood that book or those books to say? Or do the three of your prefer to deal with cliches and Dershowitz-generated arguments that have basis in reality?

  6. Bill Williams said on August 13th, 2007 at 11:48am #

    Michael, you ask why other universities aren’t falling over themselves to hire NGF. The answer is found in Peg Birmingham’s article: “….Finkelstein ought not to have brought these unwelcome truths into the public space. ”

    Best wishes, BW

  7. jaime said on August 13th, 2007 at 12:07pm #

    Re: Ward Churchill & Kim Petersen’s note above…

    Churchill is a fraud, plagiarist and bogus academic. Period.
    Pointing to Churchill as another “victim” as the author of this article defending NF does, certainly doesn’t help Finkelstein’s case in my view.

    Ward Churchill’s CDIB? UKB? ….Who cares? Here’s what really counts:

    http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/churchillreport051606.html

  8. jaime said on August 13th, 2007 at 12:18pm #

    Sorry Bill,

    Actually I’ve read some of Finkelstein’s screeds. They’re opinions. No academic value to them.

    He’s a self-hating head-case who in my estimation needs quite a bit of psychiatric help. That he’s been finally outed as a vindictive fraud to boot was just a matter of time.

    But as a vocal ands articulate self-hating curiosity, he’s found currency with many kinds of bigots (some of them quite violent!) and wacky conspiracy buffs.

    It’s been amusing for a while, but now it’s getting a bit tiresome.

  9. Bill Williams said on August 13th, 2007 at 1:23pm #

    Jaime:

    Please state which of NGF’s books you’ve read, and then kindly state what the thesis of each of these books is. When you write “He’s a self-hating head-case who in my estimation needs quite a bit of psychiatric help,” I have a hard time believing you’ve read–much less understood–anything Finkelstein has written. If I don’t receive a direct response to this challenge, I will have to draw the appropriate conclusion: that you haven’t taken the time to do your homework before launching into you ad hominem attack against NGF, i.e. you’re a calcuating charlatan.

  10. jaime said on August 13th, 2007 at 1:37pm #

    Well Bill,

    obviously our interpretations of Finkelstein’s work differ.

    I think Finkelstein is an idiot. So does De Paul University, apparently.

    You can jump to whatever hysterical conclusions you want.

    I’m not your “errand boy.” Go find one of your “friends” to challenge.

  11. arthur ranscombe said on August 13th, 2007 at 2:55pm #

    Bill Williams,

    I have read all Norman Finkelstein books. They are just hackneyed polemics. You won’t learn anything from them.

    If you turn to page 59 of his book Holocaust Industry, you will find this unscholarly passage which, inter alia, led to his being shown the door: “The Holocaust memoirs of the survivors are fraudulent and few Nazi concentration camp guards were sadists.”

    DePaul was too kind to him. If I were the President of that university, I would have strangled him on the spot.

    I have a copy of the forensic analysis done on this book by the World Association of Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camps. It is part of a class action suit they were about to bring against Finkelstein and DePaul (for harboring him) before he was kicked out.

    Any time you want to read the 119 fraudulent and bogus comments in this book of Finkelstein’s please let me know.

    Oh, by the way, Finkelstein’s book Image and Reality in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict contains over 300 factual errors, besides the tendentious comments.

    And if you want me to really get going, I am prepared to sit down with you and go over the 413 factual errors and phony source citations contained in the Finkelstein book called Beyond Chutzpah.

    Yes, I have also dissected Finkelstein’s Ph.D. thesis, his book whitewashing Nazi Germany and his travelog on his time with the Palestinian Arab Muslims in 1995. I also have collected all his tapes, speeches and articles. They are filled with malignant fabrications of history and testify to a distorted mind-set.

    I apologize for upsetting you. I know you don’t like to hear bad news. But the truth about Finkelstein will come out sooner or later despite all the attempts by blogs such as this one to censor freedom of speech.

  12. Bill Williams said on August 13th, 2007 at 3:06pm #

    Just as I suspected: Since Jaime can’t intelligently discuss, much less name, a single of NGF’s books, Jaime goes off in a different–and I might add–irrelevant direction. Jaime: Can you name the family Finkelstein stays with in the West Bank, the family he repeatedly mentions in his The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years. Better yet, tell us to whom Finkelstein dedicates his _Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History_. I’m sure you’ve read both of these books carefully.

  13. Kim Petersen said on August 13th, 2007 at 4:00pm #

    it is obvious that jaime and arthur ranscombe have nothing substantive to say and are just flinging mud

  14. jaime said on August 13th, 2007 at 4:10pm #

    Arthur,
    I’d be very interested to see that forensic analysis. Not much point in posting it here, but kindly send a copy to:
    moc.oohaynull@locetnaj

    Much appreciated!

    J.

  15. Bill Williams said on August 13th, 2007 at 6:41pm #

    I’d be willing to wager, given what he’s written above, that Arthur Ranscombe actually knows *less* that Jaime about Finkelstein’s writings, despite the pretentions of learnedness. That’s no mean feat. If Ranscombe has done just a meticulous job of documenting Finkelstein’s errors in Beyond Chutzpah and Image and Reality, it’s a wonder a serious publisher hasn’t extended him an advance contract for a book. Perhaps the University of California Press is knocking at his door as I type this sentence. Another charlatan, indeed!

  16. JE said on August 13th, 2007 at 7:16pm #

    Dear jamie,

    You really need to do some research before you go around acting like you know anything about the AIM…clearly you know less than nothing. It took me approxiamately five minutes to find information discrediting your disinformation.

    Simply put the AIM split years ago over ideological differences…

    “As is true with many national liberation movements (PLO, African National Congress), ideological differences emerged within AIM over the years. In 1993, AIM split into two main factions, each claiming that it was the authentic inheritor of the AIM tradition, and that the other had betrayed the original prinicples of the movement. One group, Based in Minneapolis, MN and associated with the Bellecourts, is known as the AIM-Grand Governing Council, while the other segment of the movement, led by, among others, Russell Means, was named AIM-International Confederation of Autonomous Chapters.?

    Now conveniently the AIM-Grand Governing Council which you cited as a credible source on Ward Churchil obviously has an axe to grind with Russell Means and Ward Churchill. Ergo while you ironically state “Here’s what the AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT (Not ADL, not Dershowitz, etc.) has to say about Mr. Churchill.” You are infact using a source that is MORE biased on this issue than the your lovely red herrings.

    My question to you is why to obsesssive right wing trolls find in necessary to go on to leftist website and think we make a toast to them, grape kool-aid in hand?

  17. JE said on August 13th, 2007 at 7:21pm #

    Jamie

    So does De Paul University, apparently.”

    did you even read the above article?

    Your lies stem from your generalizations…the president and a minority of faculty doesn’t not constiute Depaul university…call it semantics but if you are going to form a cogent argument you have think of these things before you put on the court jester’s hat for our entertainment.

  18. JE said on August 13th, 2007 at 7:39pm #

    Bill,

    I’m not sure but I think it’s pretty difficult to mistake an “n” at the bottom of the keyboard for a “t” at the top.

    And why do fascists all label dilligent pursuit of the facts as pretentiousness? Seems to me like a indolent way of eschewing an actual debate on the facts.

    From my experience that’s what seperates a reactionary like yourself, Bill, from anyone wants to lead a reality-based life and contribute to meaningful change in our society. You use your narrow and nebulous ideology, consciously or unconsciouly, to strain out any facts that might hurt your argument. Anarchists like myself don’t have the luxury of being as indoctrinated as you and so we prefer to look at the facts first and then look and them a second a third and fourth time and then formulate a tentative hypothesis on where the truth might actually lie. It’s a bit like the Scientific Method you see and it’s the closest humanity with ever come to objectivity in the political areana.

    I say don’t waste your typos trying to convince people here you’re right. it’s not going to work. I suspect most of the people here, save those lucky enough to be raised by activists, took long and tortuous route to find a place where they wouldn’t be goaded by bored trolling fascists with little better to do than annoy people they disagree with.

  19. Bill Williams said on August 13th, 2007 at 9:30pm #

    Again, Jaime, you avoid any substantive discussion of Finkelstein’s work. Not a surprise.

  20. DEB-Z said on August 26th, 2007 at 4:42pm #

    PROFESSOR FINKELSTEIN’S CLASSES FOR THE FALL ARE CANCELLED!!! THIS DESPITE FULL ENROLLMENT!!!
    DEPAUL WILL NOT EVEN ALLOW HIM TO USE HIS OFFICE THIS YEAR,
    ETC….
    I UNDERSTAND IT FROM PRIOR POSTS, TELL ME IF I AM WRONG,
    A YEAR’S NOTICE IS REQUIRED IF CONTRACT IS NOT RENEWED.
    IS THIS THE CASE WITH OTHER PROFESSORS FROM DEPAUL THAT DO NOT GET RENEWED CONTRACTS???
    WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS CASE AND WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR
    THIS??? WILL THEIR BE A LEGAL REVIEW???
    DO AMERICANS RUN THE USA COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES OR ARE THEY CONTROLED INSTITUTIONS WITH THE LOBBIES
    DICTATING WHAT WE CAN KNOW ABOUT CULTURES AND HISTORY…
    IF IT IS NOT BY THEIR APPROVAL THEN THE PROFESSOR GETS
    AXED???
    THIS IS LIKE MCCARTHY IS IN THE FORM OF A LOBBY GROUP WITH
    EXTREME SPECIAL INTERESTS AND BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS…
    WHO IS WORKING FOR THESE INSTRUCTORS TO BE SURE THEY HAVE
    THEIR DAY IN HEARINGS, INVESTIGATIONS, AND LIDIGATIONS???

  21. DEB-Z said on August 26th, 2007 at 4:44pm #

    DEPAUL INFORMATION ABOUT CLASSES CANCELLED AND LETTER
    FROM HIS STUDENTS ETC. @ http://WWW.NORMANFINKELSTEIN.COM

  22. jaime said on August 27th, 2007 at 9:13am #

    Whoa! No need to “shout,” Deb.

    No need to get all hysterical. But here’s a suggestion. Get your women in black to dress up in their finest and do a BLOCKADE of De Paul.

    Refuse to let anyone enter or leave the campus in protest. And bring some rocks and sticks and couple of Hezbollah flags and maybe posters of Nasrallah and Bin Laden and Che to demonstrate your peaceful intentions.

    Actually, it seems to me that all these protests, and harassment of DePaul management has finally paid off. Mr. Finkelstein can now devot full attention to moving to Iran for his full professorship at Teheran University.

    Meanwhile DePaul is paying him his benefits and wages for the year.
    So it’s all good.

  23. DEB-Z said on August 27th, 2007 at 8:04pm #

    Jaime,
    I see you are still here…Do you work for the LOBBY?
    You do not understand, I am for peace, the Palestine people were
    removed from their homes and many killed very much the same way
    the Jewish people were killed in Europe. How can we a humans on this planet desire this to continue without trying to reach a peaceful settlement? However, I am sure you keep up with all of the books on historical facts with supporting documents and references such as Professor Finkelstein does have in his books…His books are footnoted with references and pages from sources…I guess you read all books about the Israel-Palestine conflict and know about referencing!
    Not like another professor from the ivy tower….I am sure you have read and compared both sets of books.
    Professor Finkelstein does NOT have to teach in Iran! He had a full enrollment for his fall classes in an AMERICAN UNIVERSITY!!!!
    Students and Faculty support him. Students want to participate in Dr. Finkelstein’s classes….you are missing the point!!!
    I think he is a man of peace, a person of great intellectual understanding, and compassion.
    Any university, country, or religion should be proud to have him as part of their group. If I taught at DePaul or even lived near there I would for sure be there to show my support.
    However, I have a senior high student that I am doing college visits with now. I am asking questions and trying to get information about “lobby” influencing classes now and a feel for FREEDOM on the campus…this is sadly lacking at DePaul. I do not want my child educated in an enviroment with faculty like “Chuck” Suchar employed there!!! I am sure I will be paying over $30,000 per year and I take the
    job of finding a good university very seriously.
    I do not need to go to DePaul I see enough predjudice here just in the
    Boston area; last month with the “lobby” against the Armenian
    Geneocide…saying that it never took place!!! Why…perhaps it appears
    because of the Turkish relationship with Israel…
    Over and over again the same song…I am sick of hearing it…brainwashing and spoon feeding history that they invent without
    referencing the facts! Time to let students be exposed to history that is followed up with excellent research….
    Oh I have been trying to find books by the intellectual judge
    “Chuck” Suchar…any names and titles so I can see his academic ability
    to judge Dr. Finkerstein’s work?
    Oh Jaime…nice chatting with you again…I am sure if we met we would
    have a very interesting discussion!…but sometimes that is how understandings and compromising is done…hope to share further discussions with you in the future.
    A mother for peace and equality (Women In Black; read about their work and goals. Work for world peace for our children, families, and neighbors…extend your hand.)

  24. Ed Richardson said on August 28th, 2007 at 10:09pm #

    Sorry, but I believe Finkelstein is selling books, not protesting academic freedom. He has had the free academic rreign to move from university to university, and to publish his work in mainstream media.

    If you want to see real academic suppression, check out Edward Abboud
    http://www.voxpublishing.com/Author.htm

  25. Pratik said on August 30th, 2007 at 11:49am #

    Denial of tenure to the scholar of Prof Finkelstein’s calibre demonstrates incredible and unjust influence of Jewish lobby in America.

  26. paul said on October 16th, 2009 at 9:58pm #

    Finkelstein’s work is well regarded here in Australia and the decision made by De Paul has been noted in Australian universities and is the subject of much undergraduate and post graduate discussion. The choice to search for a few lame points that conceal a buckling to lobbying by power groups is a sign of the end of US academia. I doubt if Chomsky was fabricating a story when he stated that the political science faculty at De Paul actually had to contact Dershowitz and ask him to back off on the pressure he was applying as it had reached the point of stupidity? Is it true they told him to relax as it was a ‘done deal?’ This is being explored at length in Australia and faculty heads in numerous Australian institutions are disturbed.
    Make no mistake, if De Paul think that their international reputation has been maintained by denying tenure to Finkelstein then they are living in a micro climate where they can walk up and down the hallways all day stroking each others egos but the universities around the globe saw your actions and read your small mined findings. Shame on De Paul.

    Its a reflection of a wider shift in US thinking and policy. The time has come for you fools to ask why the majority of the planet has had enough of your games.