Marathon Pundit: Tenure for Norman Finkelstein at DePaul not a sure thing

Wow, my first DePaul post in a month or so.

Assistant Professor Norman G. Finkelstein of DePaul University's political science department is up for tenure this spring.

Who is Professor Finkelstein?

Well, simply put, he is a holocaust-minimizing "scholar" who likes to poke jabs at those who are pro-Israel by equating them with Nazis. He did that here, and here. Of more recent vintage comes from Norman's own web site, where he writes about the dismissal of an official from the World Jewish Congress for alleged financial misdeeds. The title of his post? Night of the Long Knives, an allusion of Adolf Hitler purge of his brownshirt thugs in 1934.

Finkelstein views holocaust reparations as a racket, a way for elderly Jews to extort money from large corporations.

After unsuccessful stints at Hunter College, Brooklyn College, and New York University, Finkelstein, after being invited as a DePaul guest professor in 2003, was named an assistant professor at the Chicago Catholic college a year later. Yes, this is the same DePaul that fired Thomas Klocek, a pro-Israel professor who attempted to have a rational discussion with some Muslim DePaul students in 2004. Klocek was fired for simply confronting the students extremist views. More on Klocek here.

Until recently, it looked like Finkelstein would receive his long-coveted tenure at DePaul, as but the dean of Finkelstein's college, Chuck Suchar, is against it, as Inside Higher Education's Scott Jaschik writes:

But the debate over Finkelstein is now hitting his home campus — and in a way sure to create more national controversy. Finkelstein is up for tenure. So far, his department has voted, 9-3, in favor of tenure and a collegewide faculty panel voted 5-0 to back the bid. But Finkelstein’s dean has just weighed in against Finkelstein.

In a memo leaked to some supporters of Finkelstein and obtained by Inside Higher Ed, Chuck Suchar writes that he finds “the personal attacks in many of Dr. Finkelstein’s published books to border on character assassination” and that Finkelstein’s tone and approach threaten “some basic tenets of discourse within an academic community.” Suchar says that Finkelstein’s record is “inconsistent with DePaul’s Vincentian values, most particularly our institutional commitment to respect the dignity of the individual and to respect the rights of others to hold and express different intellectual positions.”

While the leaked memo led to some false online reports that Finkelstein had been denied tenure, his case is very much alive and no final decision will be made until June, according to a university spokeswoman, who added that the dean’s memo was not meant for public consumption and that no administrators could comment.

Suchar, a sociologist, is no George W. Bush conservative, as I blogged early last year. He was the brainchild of DePaul's "Confronting Empire" series. America, thankfully not spelled "AmeriKKKa," is that empire, according to Suchar. A DePaul student who confided in me called the series "an indoctrination exercise" that he had to suffer through, as he needed the courses in the series to fulfill graduation requirements.

Friend of the blog Jon Cohen, a DePaul mathematics professor, adds some insightful comments that follows Jaschik's article.

Finkelstein's fate may end up in the hands of Father Dennis Holtschneider, DePaul's president, whose arrival in Chicago came after Finkelstein's hiring. Holtschneider's first crisis was the Klocek affair. A youngish-president, he appears to be about my age, forty-five, and he let his inexperience show as he mishandled the Klocek incident and its aftermath. Other flare-ups during "Holt's" reign include the Ward Churchill fiasco and the school's Chicken Little reaction to the DePaul Consersative Alliance's attempt to hold an "affirmative action bake sale."

As far as the Finkelstein case goes, it won't be a "Silent Spring" for DePaul, and that's not because it may snow in Chicago on Easter weekend.

Finkelstein's name came up in a less than pleasant way (if you're DePaul) last year when he attempted to testify in the case of reputed Hamas member Mohammed Salah. Part of Salah's defense was that his prosecution was a result of pro-Israel forces.

From the Daily Southtown:

Finkelstein said it's impossible to study events in the Middle East over the past four decades without also analyzing the relationship between Israel and the United States. He described a powerful and complex "system" of U.S.-based Israeli interests working to influence American foreign policy.

During that same hearing, Finkelstein referred to Alan Dershowitz, with whom he has feuded for years, as a "complete fraudster."

Salah and his co-defendent were found innocent of the more serious terror charges, but found guilt of lesser crimes. Finkelstein never testified in court in this case.

The Chicago area media finally knows about Finkelstein.

Stay tuned.

Thanks for the links:

Sensible Mom
Zionist Conspiracy
Solomonia
And wow, FrontPage Magazine.

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