Click Here for footage of Depaul students demanding an end to the witch hunt aimed at Professor Finkelstein on Sept.5th.
Below is a statement from the Chicago World Can’t Wait Student Network on the recent attacks on Norman Finkelstein. The statement also includes information on upcoming actions planned for Sept. 5th to support and defend Professor Finkelstein. Check back here for updates on what happened on Prof. Finkelstein’s first day of classes.
DePaul professor Norman Finkelstein is under attack for challenging the ideological foundations of Zionism, exposing the brutal oppression of the Palestinian people, and challenging students to question the “unquestionable.” He has been denied tenure and his classes were abruptly canceled a week before school is set to begin. All of this flies in the face of Professor Finkelstein’s attempt to appeal the denial of tenure in his case, which The American Association of University Professors has supported. In response, Professor Finkelstein has said the following:
“I intend to go to my office on the first day of classes and, if my way is barred, to engage in civil disobedience. 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.”
-Chicago Tribune, 8/28/07
Every student in the Chicago area needs to be at DePaul University for its first day of classes, backing up Professor Finkelstein in his defiant stance in the face of being denied tenure and having his classes cancelled, as part of a political witch-hunt in academia.
If we do not support Professor Finkelstein and join his resistance, a major chill is going to deepen on campuses around the country. As students, what is our education going to be worth if we”re not allowed even the small access we have on campus to perspectives that challenge the status quo, and especially the role of our own government in the world?
Professor Bill Martin, of the Philosophy Department at DePaul recently wrote, “The cost for not standing up will be enormous: DePaul will be destroyed as a place deserving of respect in the intellectual and academic worlds, and, if this happens, academic freedom will be under attack everywhere.”
Students at DePaul and other schools in Chicago are getting behind Professor Finkelstein’s stance- but this needs to be spread much further, very quickly. Everyone who thinks that universities must remain, and in fact be strengthened as centers of critical thinking, discourse and dissent- and not be allowed to be transformed into-full out centers of indoctrination for empire- need to come to his defense, and the defense of academic freedom NOW.
As the Call, The World Can’t Wait- Drive Out the Bush Regime states- “That which you do not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn or be forced to accept.”
Take a stand with Professor Finklestein as he enters his office on Wednesday, September 5th, 10:30 a.m. at 990 W. Fullerton . Wear Orange.
Endorse this statement by emailing chicago@worldcantwait.org, and forward it to every student, student organization, and department that you know.
There’s not a minute to lose.
* Report and Photos of DePaul Convocation where students and faculty wore ” We Are Norman Finkelstein” t shirts.