Last week, DePaul University in Chicago denied professor Norman Finkelstein tenure despite widespread support for him by DePauls faculty and staff.
Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry, now has less than a year remaining on his contract with the political sciences department of DePaul University in Chicago. He lost his bid for a lifelong post after a four to three vote of the promotions and tenure board.
The decision came at the end of several months of wrangling, both within the Catholic university and within the wider academic and Jewish communities in the US. Mr Finkelstein has argued in his books that claims of anti-semitism are used to dampen down criticism of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and that the Holocaust is exploited by some Jewish institutions for their own gain.
This is the best commentary I have read so far about professor Finkelstein, his work, and the meaning of his tenure denial to academic freedom, especially those academics who dare to challenge Israel and her US rottweilers' version of history and events of the Middle East conflict...
Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, has been relentless in exposing what he calls "The Holocaust Industry": the institutions and organizations that have used the holocaust (the actual historical event) to justify Israel's criminal assault upon the Palestinian population and international law. Among these organisations, he includes the World Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and a host of other fellow travellers. There is no doubt that Finkelstein's work has stoked controversy. But that shouldn't detract from what makes his tenure treatment so worrying: Finkelstein is undoubtedly a path-breaking and serious scholar.
Finkelstein argues that most US commentators obscure or avoid the clear historical and diplomatic record in examining the Israel-Palestine conflict by ignoring or downplaying international law, fooling the US public into believing that Israel's occupation is just, necessary, and lawful. One such example is the failure of the 2000 Camp David talks - a failure that has been attributed, at least in elite circles within the United States, to Yasir Arafat's intransigence. In actuality, what Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak offered Arafat was something no Palestinian leader could accept: a Bantustan state reminiscent of the African national territories.
14 comments:
Good riddance to bad rubbish. Why can't he go practice his "academic freedom" in an Arab country? Or in Europe, even? I'm sure he'd be very popular.
About 10,000 propagandist professors to go and the US school system will be in (relatively) good shape. You don't *really* expect parents to be pleased about spending $30,000 a year to send their kids to be brainwashed, do you? How happy do you think Joe Citizen is when his son Johnny comes home on Spring Break and lectures him about how evil the United States is, Fayyad? Just because these assholes are good for Palestine doesn't mean they should be employed to teach American youth.
ProgrammerCraig: The poster child for academic health of the US.
I come here for a Palestinian American viewpoint on the civil war raging in Gaza and all you guys can write about is Israel, Israel, and Israel. Once you get beyond the point where you say that everything is Israel's fault, I would be very interested on where you all stand on current events.
Thanks.
Good news for Gaza, "The era of justice and Islamic rule has arrived."
Nox,
ProgrammerCraig: The poster child for academic health of the US.
You're right! Why should I object to US Universities hiring anti-American propagandists? What the hell is wrong with me!? Why can't we have good schools, such as they have in Saudi Arabia!?
Give me a break, programmer Craig, with all this BS about brainwashing. There's enough of it on both sides to begin with and I would claim more on the pro-Israeli side than the other, and people like Finkelstein are a rare example of those who actually can reverse the effects of the brainwashing ON BOTH SIDES.
The majority of Americans ARE ALREADY BRAINWASHED into thinking that there's nothing wrong with their country when there is something fundamentally wrong; its foreign policy.
"bad rubbish, propagandist, asshole," any more names you would like to level at Finkelstein? Why don't you try and actually produce intelligent arguments that show the flaws you claim exist in his work? Care to provide examples of things that he said that were not true, unbacked, or propaganda?
His books are not the propaganda you want to fight, or the propaganda that is worth exposing. His books are what exposes the real propaganda that pumps Americans with the illusion that their sons the soldiers are fighting a "good fight," when in fact, it is all dirty dirty dirty!
He SHOULD be employed to teach American youth out of all others in the world, because they are in desperate need for people like him, and because the world as a whole is in desperate need for sane reasonable and responsible Americans, not delusional brainwashed indifferent ones that think everything in foreign policy is fair game and still insist on invoking freedom and human rights when they talk about others!
Finkelstein has more integrity and honor in his dirty socks than people like Dirshowitz and the sick Israeli apologists can ever dream of.
My advice to the president of DePaul and the presidents of other US academic institutions who might find themselves in the same position in the future is Grow a spine and serve the true spirit of academia.
Give me a break, programmer Craig, with all this BS about brainwashing. There's enough of it on both sides to begin with and I would claim more on the pro-Israeli side than the other, and people like Finkelstein are a rare example of those who actually can reverse the effects of the brainwashing ON BOTH SIDES.
You think there is a right wing cabal in US universities, do you? What America are you living in?
As far as "both sides" - I never had anybody even MENTION Israel, or Palestine, when I was in school. Not once. Who do you figure brainwashed me, my anonymous friend? AIPAC?
This full-press with Palestinian propaganda started in the 1990s. After my time as a student. And thank God it hasn't taken hold in the US as it has in Europe. Americans are smarter than Europeans, apparently. Or, less anti-semitic, perhaps?
Well, anyway... what say we boot every Palestinian prof and assistant prof who is employed in a US college? That would be fair, wouldn't it? They can join Finkstein, teaching in Arab countries.
Or, maybe, we can just install hidden cameras in their classrooms and let parents monitor what their kids are being taught? And the very first time that a prof tells them something that isn't true.... BOOM. Fired. Tenure or not.
Because we don't pay college profs to lie to students, right? Right.
Well, why don't you offer him a job at Palestinian U? Oh, wait . . .
"As far as "both sides" - I never had anybody even MENTION Israel, or Palestine, when I was in school."
That is brainwashing in itself. You're never told that there is something wrong. You're never even aware that the money you and your family paid the US government in taxes, part of it just helped put an entire family on the street and out of their now demolished home somewhere in Rafah. You're continuously told that the "terrorists are out to get you, beware!!" and you hear Bush saying "the terrorists want to kill your families." Today, everybody knows that the Middle East matters to the US, but nobody knows the real reason why or how it matters. People think the only reason it matters is because there are bad people there that want to come to the US and kill us, and we must kill them first. They don't understand that the US has had its hand bloodied in the Middle East for decades.
"Because we don't pay college profs to lie to students, right? Right."
I certainly hope professors are not being payed to lie, and I certainly know Finkelstein is one example of a professor who is willing to keep saying the truth even if it cost him his career, and this recent story is the prime example of that. This is why I say he has more integrity than any of those Israeli apologists like Dirsh.
It seems that you are claiming to posses actual knowledge that disproves what Finkelstein says (although all he does is show his readers what the record says, he doesn't invent like others). If you do posses this knowledge, why don't you go and write your own book? Publish an article?
But I guess it doesn't matter. Finkelstein has to defend his arguments in a [failing] Academic forum, and you only have to defend your arguments in ... a comment section of a blog.
Here's one that programmer craig can really sink his panic in to:
The FBI warns universities to watch out for spies!
http://www.cnn.com/2007/EDUCATION/06/12/fbi.colleges.ap/index.html
Other than the fact that he's a flat out racist who happens to hate the same people as you do. Do you REALLY want bad historians and racists to boot in academia? Aren't at least some of you here nominally college students? Is a level playing field even something you care about or is the college experience for you merely an excuse for hate speech and bullhorns. Because if it is then you don't need to pay for tuition.
So which one of you guys lost in court to Lee Kaplan?
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A6B46FB2-E1B0-4637-9682-B4CB9A897FDC.htm
read the sadness of what terrorism does. Now who is the one you can blame?
programmer craig is a Hasbara parrot and Dr. Normon Finkelstein is a truth-teller that hacks like Douche-wiz are openly envious of. The Vatican must really need to kiss Zionist butt to not let an academic of Dr. Finkelstein's caliber gain tenure (he's certainly earned it).
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