Marathon Pundit: Finkelstein defender Peter Kirstein praised David Irving

My late father was a professional fund-raiser. For several years he raised money for St. Xavier University, a Catholic school on Chicago's Southwest Side.

If some of that money ended up getting Professor Peter N. Kirstein hired, then Kirstein is an unfortunate family legacy.

Kirstein, pictured above, first made a national name for himself in 2002 after getting suspended for sending a hateful e-mail reply to an Air Force cadet seeking advice for promoting a political science seminar.

Kirstein wrote:

You are a disgrace to this country and I am furious you would even think I would support you and your aggressive baby killing tactics of collateral damage. Help you recruit. Who, top guns to reign death and destruction upon nonwhite peoples throughout the world? Are you serious sir? Resign your commission and serve your country with honor.

No war, no air force cowards who bomb countries without AAA [Anti-Aircraft Artillery], without possibility of retaliation. You are worse than the snipers. You are imperialists who are turning the whole damn world against us. September 11 can be blamed in part for what you and your cohorts have done to Palestinians, the VC, the Serbs, a retreating army at Basra.

You are unworthy of my support.
Peter N. Kirstein

St. Xavier suspended Kirstein for a while, but with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Kirstein got his job back.

Lately Kirstein has established himself as the most vocal supporter of former DePaul University Professor Norman G. Finkelstein. A holocaust minimizer, Finkelstein was denied tenure by the Chicago Catholic university last month.

Interestingly, Kirstein has to my knowledge been silent about DePaul's firing of Thomas Klocek, who was fired by DePaul for defending Israel from spurious attacks by some Muslim DePaul students.

In Arutz Sheva, friend-of-the-blog Dr. Steven Plaut writes of David Irving hosted conference where Professor Kirstein spoke.

If Finkelstein is, to quote a writer whose name I can't trace, "something you find under a rock," then Irving is what you find at the bottom of a garbage dumpster outside of a gyros restaurant---there are a lot of them near the St. Xavier campus--on the hottest day of summer.

Last year Irving was released from prison after completing a sentence for denying the holocaust, a punishable offense in Austria.

Here's what Kirstein wrote in 2004 of about that conference:

I accepted a speaking invitation from a historian who has been castigated as anti-Semitic—a charge that Mr. Irving has consistently denied—and denounced for a falsified revisionism of Nazi Germany and the destruction of European Jewry. My mission, since my egregious suspension on Veterans Day, November 11, 2002, for an act of conscience through a harshly worded antiwar e-mail, is to demand academic freedom for university historians and no censorship of any historian for antiwar or historiographical incorrectness

As an outspoken peace activist, pacifist and war resister, which were the underlying reasons for my suspension in the twelfth week of a semester, I commend Mr. Irving’s courageous and febrile opposition to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I was not unmindful of this when I agreed to speak at his conference. If antiwar advocates can build coalitions across the ideological divide, then future degradations of the Palestinians, future Holocausts, future illegal walls of separation, future attacks on Jewish interests and future neoconservative crusades against nonthreatening Islamic nations may be averted. Of course, an acceptance of a speaking invitation does not connote uncritical acceptance of the host's ethos. While disagreeing profoundly with Mr. Irving on the importance of racial diversity and the value of embracing ardently multiculturalism, I would neither stifle his speech nor banish his provocative and intrepid revisionism of World War II.

Okay, Kirstein doesn't agree with Irving on everything, who even the left-wing Guardian newspaper called a "discredited historian," but I don't follow his reasoning. His appearance at a conference with slime ball Irving, in my opinion, is tacit approval of the man.

In David Horowitz' book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, Kirstein earned a postion of "honor." He's among the 101. He deserves it.

Kirstein has a lot to say about Finkelstein and Irving, but I'm waiting for him to step up to the plate for Thomas Klocek.

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