I don’t know what’s going on in Chicago these days. I’ve always thought of it as a progressive, tolerant and diverse place by and large. But something’s gotten into Chicago folk over the past few months…First DePaul University unceremoniously dumped Norman Finkelstein for reasons that even the school’s administration’s haven’t been able to articulate convincingly to anyone but Alan Dershowitz.
Then the Chicago Global Affairs Council, after inviting Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer to speak about their new book on the Israel Lobby, canceled the invitation unless they agreed to debate Abe Foxman. It seems that some Council members (no doubt also supporters of AIPAC) decided Walt and Mearsheimer were far too incendiary to speak without some rejoinder from the pro-Israel community. The two original speakers quite rightly balked at being so singled out and thus they were also unceremoniously booted.
Hearing this, some Jewish Chicagoans scoured the Jewish community for a facility (synagogue of community center) that would house a Walt-Mearsheimer event. Guess what, none could be found.
Video image released by DePaul depicting argument between Finkelstein and Suchar after tenure decision meeting. Finkelstein notes Suchar is saying to him: “Fuck you. Fuck you.”And returning to DePaul, not content to be made a laughingstock of the academic world in their treatment of Finkelstein DURING the tenure process, they’ve practically stuck their asses in the air and asked the world to kick them with their latest round of campus buffoonery. It seems Norman Finkelstein is such a danger to the faculty, administrators and students of DePaul that the classes he was to teach during his final year there have all been canceled. His office has been shuttered and he has been denied another office. Even his possessions in his old office have not yet been released to him. This is the equivalent of a corporation’s calling security guards to escort a disgraced ex-employee out of the building. Except in that case they usually give the poor shlub a cardboard box with his possessions in them:
On Friday, August 24th…DePaul’s University…decided to cancel Professor Norman G. Finkelstein’s classes for the autumn quarter.
…What is the stated reason for the cancellation of Finkelstein’s courses…? Professor Finkelstein, it seems, in the judgment of DePaul’s administration, constitutes a security threat to DePaul faculty and staff. In a previous article, I documented that Finkelstein simply confronted Dean “Chuck” Suchar outside of 990 Fullerton on June 14th after the special LA&S emergency meeting devoted to discussing the procedural and academic freedom violations in the Finkelstein and Larudee cases…Suchar apparently alleged that he felt harassed by Finkelstein, calling for the administration to issue a restraining order against his colleague.
In an irony sure not to escape Dissident Voice readers, Finkelstein is being barred from teaching courses devoted to examining “Freedom and Empowerment” and “Justice and Social Equality”. In addition, Finkelstein is being thrown out of his office and might not even have access to office space this coming academic year at DePaul.
According to what I’ve read, this is behavior that is absolutely unheard of in the usually laid back world of academe. To me, this is like a university administration holding up a big sign saying: “SUE ME, PLEASE, for lots of money!” I don’t know much about faculty employment contracts. But I do know that DePaul has broken so many usual conventions that should Finkelstein wish I bet he could sue them for a great deal of money.
An academic blogger is quoted in Inside Higher Education denouncing DePaul’s decision:
John K. Wilson, on his blog College Freedom, wrote: “If anyone doubted whether DePaul was violating Finkelstein’s rights, that doubt must end with this decision…. Even if DePaul pays off Finkelstein, it is violating his academic freedom (and the freedom of its students) by refusing to let him teach and effectively silencing his voice in its classrooms.”
Finkelstein, not the sort to take any insult lying down, has has let the Administration know he will give as good as he gets:
DePaul University has canceled all of Norman G. Finkelstein’s courses, taken away his office, and put him on administrative leave for his final year, but the controversial political scientist said that will not stop him from coming back to teach this fall. If necessary, he said, he will go to jail.
In an e-mail message, Mr. Finkelstein told The Chronicle that he intends “to show up on the first day of the academic year to teach my classes (students are currently searching for an alternative venue) and to use my regular office in the political-science department. If the university attempts to impede my movements, I intend to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience and go to jail. If incarcerated, I intend to go on a protracted hunger strike until DePaul comes to its senses.”
“It is regrettable,” Mr. Finkelstein continued, “that I have been driven to such drastic actions to defend basic principles of academic freedom and my contractual rights, upon which DePaul has been riding roughshod for so long.”
I don’t think the Vincentians at DePaul bargained for what a tough Jew Norman Finkelstein would turn out to be. And I think they better reconsider their idiocy before it bites them big time. How much more horrible publicity like this can they take? Apparently, they’ve hired the celebrities’ favorite crisis PR flack Howard Rubenstein to guide them through this gauntlet of bad press of their own making. But I don’t even think Rubenstein can make lemonade out of the lemons he’s been given by DePaul.
The American Association of University Professors as well has taken strong exception to DePaul’s treatment of Finkelstein:
Jonathan Knight, who directs the program in academic freedom and tenure at the American Association of University Professors, said…that the fact that DePaul is continuing to pay Finkelstein does not end questions about the university’s “extraordinary” actions. Knight noted that Finkelstein’s classroom conduct has never been questioned, and said that removing a professor from teaching in such a case is only justified by real fears about a danger the professor could pose. “That’s a terrible commentary to be making on an individual,” Knight said, and should require real evidence and faculty input.
Unless there has been a real hearing and the opportunity for due process, Knight said, the move is not a matter of placing someone on leave, but a “summary dismissal…”
Given all of these nightmares in Chicago, the DePaul Academic Freedom Committee and other local students and peace activists have decided to plan a mass public forum on academic freedom scheduled for the University of Chicago campus on October 12th. The conference’s keynote speakers are Noam Chomsky (MIT), John Mearsheimer (Univ. of Chicago), Akeel Bilgrami (Columbia), Neve Gordon (Ben-Gurion University, Israel), and Tariq Ali (New Left Review). They ought to invite Dean Suchar and President Holtschneider to be the panel respondents. Maybe they’d learn something.
Thanks for continuing to cover the Finkelstein story.
Since you’ve done so much on the JNF land-use story, I thought you’d be interested in this coverage from an Australian paper. I thought it was quite good; it certainly doesn’t pull any punches.
“Dark Side of Jewish Dream”
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/world/dark-side-of-jewish-dream/2007/08/26/1188066926247.html
That’s one of the best news reports I’ve read on the JNF story. Far better & more comprehensive than what I read even in Haaretz.
Regarding faculty employment contracts, one of the first requirements is that you be productive within your discipline. As I noted a couple of months aRegarding faculty employment contracts, one of the first requirements is that you be productive within your discipline. As I noted in June, Finkelstein has been anything but a productive political scientist.
I am less familiar with issues regarding university rights to cancel listed courses, but I would guess they are entitled to do so. The faculty member does not have a right to teach any given course. Teaching is an obligation of the employment contract. If the university does not want a course taught, it is not clear to me what breech they would be in by cancellation. But I am no lawyer. Just a political scientist. (And one, by the way, who loathes Dershowitz, and would normally like to defend anyone who gets into a spitting war with him. It’s just that I can’t say the tenure denial, at least, was not justified under terms of any standard faculty employment contract.)
I do so love how the anti-Finkelstein forces come up w. such novel ways of interpreting things in order to justify the academic hatchet job performed on him. First, who says they have to be productive “within their discipline?” Second, who says Finkelstein hasn’t been productive within his? His books are prima facie evidence of his tremendous productivity. The fact is your side doesn’t like what he writes so you have to come up w. intellectual casuistry to claim either that his work isn’t “within his discipline” or whatever drivel you’re peddling. And do explain if he wasn’t productive in his discipline why his peers voted 9-3 to approve tenure? And do explain how you can substitute yr own judgment of his merits for theirs who are his direct academic peers & actually had the duty to judge his work?
You clearly haven’t followed the AAUP links in my post. Go there & check out how many provisions the University has violated. They can’t cancel his courses unless he has done something that warrants their cancellation & his banishment fr. campus. He hasn’t threatened anyone with harm as the regulations require. Procedures require them to allow him to appeal their decision & give him due process, which they have not done.
The University will argue that he’s damaging its reputation, but that’s ridiculous because the University itself is the one who’s done the best job of that.
I hope you’re a better political scientist than what you evince in yr argument here. And it doesn’t take a lawyer to read AAUP provisions & know the University has gotten itself into deep doo-doo on this one.
I have the impression that tenure is often granted at Ivy League universities to scholars that have only published one book.
Norman Finkelstein for President!
Richard, please take a deep breath. Because I have the gall–the gall!–to suggest Finkelstine might not be professionally deserving of tenure, you make assumptions about the “side” I am.
I am not taking sides here, and if I did take sides on the arguments between Finkelstein and the likes of Dershowitz, you might be surprised to learn I would be much more in agreement with Finkelstein. (Actually, it should come as no surprise, as I said as much in the comment above.)
But as an academic myself, in the same discipline as Finkelstein, and as one who has served on tenure committees, I was trying to be objective. I thought that might be welcome around this blog. Apparently not.
His CV is anything but impressive. He got his PhD a long time ago, and he has two books and no articles in political science journals. People like that do not usually get tenure. That’s a fact.
Also, at my blog post, I said I was not attempting to substitute my own judgment for that of his immediate peers, who I am aware voted him tenure. However, it is not unusual for departmental peers to vote tenure to a marginal candidate and then to be overridden by campus committees. It happens a lot.
As for my status as a political scientist, I am at a top-5 research institution, where I got tenure in 1995. My PhD is the same year as Finkelstein’s. So I am doing fine, yes. But thanks for your concern.
Joachim says, “I have the impression that tenure is often granted at Ivy League universities to scholars that have only published one book.”
That could be literally true, but someone granted tenure on the basis of one book would be a young rising star (a recent PhD) with offers from other similarly ranked departments and with other publications (such as articles in leading journals of the discipline). It would not be true for someone 18 years out from grad school with no articles in refereed journals of the discipline.
You might not like to know these facts, but they are facts. I am not willing to let my political bias stand in the way of rational judgment. I do not have all the facts. I freely admit that. And that is why, at my blog post (which it appears you did not read) on this, I said:
That’s not taking sides. That’s being honest and objective. If we are serious about Tikun Olam, I think we need to be both honest and objective. I would have thought you’d agree, or I never would have commented here. And I promise not to do so again. I learned my lesson: even people you fundamentally agree with can be rude and ad-hominen in their attacks when you disagree with them on some specific conclusion.
But if you come over to my blog some time, you will see I am most certainly not on the side you immediately assumed I was on.
But it didn’t happen in this case. In fact, both his department AND the campus committee voted FOR tenure. The dean overrode them. And he didn’t use academic or scholarly criteria in rejecting tenure. He used the vague & impossible to quantify criteria of lack of collegiality.
Your arguments about Finkelstein’s supposed lack of publication in periodicals in his field would be much more powerful if the dean and president had used those arguments in denying him tenure. Since they didn’t & they clearly were desperately looking for every critieria they could muster to deny, they too apparently didn’t feel yr argument was relevant to Finkelstein’s situation.
I am sorry if I came on like a ton of bricks in my earlier comment. I’ve read so much drivel attacking Finkelstein that perhaps I jumped to conclusions in yr case which I shouldn’t have. But I don’t think I engaged in ad hominem attacks against you. YOu may feel I misjudged yr position or did not do it justice, but that’s diff. than an ad hominem attack. And I also appreciate the fact that you share my feelings about Dershowitz & should’ve acknowledged that in my earlier comment.
According to his website, Finkelstein has published 5 books as well as many articles.
Thanks, Richard, for your comment at Ararat Scrolls, which I just saw, and which drew me back here.
You make a very good point about the dean’s arguments. I would have thought the case for overturning might have been easy to make on discipline scholarship grounds (assuming his publicly posted CV is complete). “Lack of collegiality” is weak, indeed.
You are also right that your response was not really ad hominen. You did not call me a such-and-such, so you were not attacking me, per se. But the initial response did not address the substance of the point I was making. You have done so now, and I appreciate that. I also thank you for providing me more information about the tenure case itself.
I remain baffled that they did not use the publication record, but you are probably right that they recognize his importance as a public intellectual (even if that is not the same thing as being a productive political scientist, with emphasis on the science). Given that DePaul is not in the top 200, they might not want to focus so much on the discipline itself, as they apparently aren’t good at it. I suspect that’s why they hired someone like Finkelstein in the first place–to make a splash. Well, they did. But not the way they might have expected at the time.
Thanks, Avishalom for being gracious about my little outburst. Many right wingers use my blog & me as their punching bag so I sometimes immediately assume people are of that ilk when they are not.
Another pt I wanted to make is that you noted he ONLY published two books since he completed his PhD. But I think you have to consider how important the books were both to the public and within the discipline. I think they were groundbreaking even if you disagreed with them. They have had a huge impact in the field of Holocaust studies and study of Zionism. So yes, they are only two books in a 10 or 13 yr period. But they are very important ones.
I went on Wikipedia and copy and pasted his section about publications:
Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Verso, 1996. ISBN 978-1859849408
Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. ISBN 0-8166-2859-9.
A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth (Co-author with Ruth Bettina Birn) Henry Holt and Co., 1998. ISBN 0-8050-5872-9.
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Verso, 2003. ISBN 1-85984-488-X.
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History . U of California P, 2005. ISBN 0-520-24598-9.
Thanks, Leung for updating the Wikipedia record. That helps give a fuller picture of Finkelstein’s publications.
When one is trying to get out of a hole, the first rule is to stop digging. DePaul seems to just further embarrass itself. It’s encouraging to know that others step up in support of Dr. Finkelstein as well as Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, but it is clear to anyone involved in these matters just how much pressure is brought to bear against these truth-tellers.
Oh no, I didn’t update the Wikipedia record. What I posted above was taken directly from wikipedia. Sorry I wasn’t clear.
On another note, some of my peers at DePaul have been actively organizing and they have been very effective. This is their website: http://www.academicfreedomchicago.org
its actually quite impressive
Leung: Thanks for updating Finkelstein’s publication record here. Five books is a lot more impressive than two, that’s for sure. I linked to the Academic Freedom site you recommended in my post.
Keep up yr good work at DePaul for academic freedom. Keep the pressure on the administrators and get them to admit their mistakes.
M&W, Judt, and Chomsky are joining the Oct. 12 protest–
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/103917.html
I get the feeling this country’s heading for a real battle.
I actually wish Chomsky wasn’t going to be there. It gets the program into “all the usual suspects” mode. I’d like to broaden the agenda & include new faces & voices in the mix so that the movement for academic freedom gains adherents where it might not have had them before.
That’s why I suggested to the organizers (actually Mitchell Plitnick came up w. the actual name) that they include Tom Segev on the program as someone who is a more mainstream, while still progressive, Israeli figure. Unfortunately, they felt they had no room in their schedule to add someone. They really need someone who does not have a “bash the Zionists” reputation.
I agree with you, Richard, but I thought the problem was dearth of supporters.
Are you implying that the organizers have access to so many supportive “names” that they must choose who will be given time slots and turn down the rest? I’m not familiar with how these type of events are run. What exactly is Mitchell Plitnick’s role in the Oct. 12 protest?
One of the event organizers saw one of my posts here on the subject & wrote to me. I then started corresponding with them & suggesting they get a credible Israeli/Jewish academic figure to participate in order to draw in Jews who might not otherwise be drawn to the subject. Mitchell & a few other progressive Jewish bloggers started throwing around names & he suggested Tom Segev. But the organizers already had Neve Gordon signed up & felt they couldn’t add another speaker to the schedule.
There would be no lack of academics who’d be willing to address an event like this. Many of them would find the subject extremely important even if they don’t agree with Finkelstein on every detail of his analysis. It’s those types I’d hoped they’d reach out to & include in the program. But it appears they mostly have true believers, which is OK. I don’t mean to knock this program as it will be phenomenal & important. I just wish it had been shaped a bit differently.
So much for your “tough Jew” theory.
What do you think a professorship at De Paul is worth? I think it was Finkelstein’s last shot at one, and by the faculty evaluation he should have received it. The Vincentians probably coughed up at least $4 million, and I would consider that a victory because universities should pay when they kowtow to Zionist pressure. Eventually, the overseers and the contributors will tell university presidents to knock it off.