Here are excerpts from an article in the Chicago Tribune. Check back to worldcantwait.org, which will be providing ongoing coverage and news of opposition to the attacks on Professor Finkelstein.
DePaul pulls plug on controversial professor: Course canceled a week before class
August 27, 2007
By Ron Grossman
Grossman writes:
The required reading was at the bookstore, the students had the course syllabus, and space in Political Science 235, “Equality in Social Justice,” was standing-room only when DePaul University pulled the plug Friday on what was to have been Norman Finkelstein’s final year at the school.
A controversial scholar–accused by critics of fomenting anti-Semitism and lauded by supporters as a forthright critic of Israel–Finkelstein attracted wide attention across the academic world when he was denied tenure in the spring.
By Monday, the books for his course had been pulled from the DePaul bookstore’s shelves, while his case was restarting a firestorm of protest. The American Association of University Professors was preparing a letter to the university, protesting Finkelstein’s treatment as a serious violation of academic ethics.
Finkelstein vowed not to take the rebuff lying down–or, perhaps more correctly, to do something just like that. In addition to canceling his course, the university informed him that his office was no longer his.
“I intend to go to my office on the first day of classes and, if my way is barred, to engage in civil disobedience,” Finkelstein, 53, said in a telephone interview. “If arrested, I’ll go on a hunger strike. If released, I’ll do it all over again. I’ll fast in jail for as long as it takes.”
Fall classes start Sept. 5 at DePaul, where Finkelstein has been a faculty member for six years. During that time, his star has risen and fallen at the Catholic school, founded by the Vincentian order.
His books brought him far-reaching renown. They also were condemned for their provocative language, as in the “The Holocaust Industry,” where he called efforts to get compensation from Germany for World War II slave laborers a “shakedown.” Finkelstein, himself Jewish, has described leaders of American-Jewish organizations as “Holocaust-mongers.”….
Nonetheless, Finkelstein’s work has been praised by ivory-tower luminaries such as the distinguished linguist Noam Chomsky and the late Raul Hilberg, dean of Holocaust historians. Finkelstein’s supporters are planning a lecture-rally for him in October in Chicago.
Students have held Finkelstein in high regard, reporting that his tone in the classroom is measured, quite unlike the red-hot rhetoric of his books………
Grossman goes on to report:
“According to the norms of academia, a professor denied tenure has the right to a final year of teaching at the university that turns him down. The watchdog of those rights is the American Association of University Professors, the umbrella organization of college teachers, which can censure a school found in violation of its ground rules. Such a finding also can be the preliminary to a lawsuit against the university by the faculty member.
According to Jonathan Knight, director of the AAUP’s program in academic freedom and tenure, a university owes a faculty member denied tenure more than just a year’s salary. He or she has the right to a classroom (and presumably an office). A university can’t simply buy him or her out by invoking administrative leave, Knight said.
He added that a faculty member can’t be put on administrative leave without a hearing except in an extreme emergency.
“We’re not aware of an emergency requiring DePaul to take such action at the 11th hour and 59th minute,” Knight said.
Finkelstein said that, rather than filing a lawsuit, he intends to fight the university’s action with a hunger strike, and the attendant publicity.
“In the court of public opinion, I can win,” Finkelstein said. “I say: ‘Let the people judge.”