you don't have to stifle or censor finkelstein, you don't have to like him or agree with him......

but does that mean you have to give him TENURE??

 they're not looking to censor him, but why would you give someone like that the highly respected and rewarded position of tenured professor?  Why should they face criticism for not rewarding such a (insert epithet here) for his conduct and questionable scholarship?

Here's a little lesson for mausner:

Finkelstein met the conditions for tenure: his teaching earned consistently stellar ratings from his students, his departmental colleagues voted overwhelmingly to support his bid (those who demurred were not in his field) and he has a fine publication record. The only reasons the university gave for denying his bid were the weaselly ones Weiss cited; nowhere in the university's requirements for tenure are anything like these transparently ad hoc reasons for denial mentioned.

Even more ominously, a colleague of Finkelstein's named Mahrene Larudee was also denied tenure. Her application was even better than Finkelstein's; unanimous faculty support, a glowing recommendation from the same dean who ignored the poli sci faculty's wishes and recommended denying Finkelstein's tenure bid, and already chosen as director of the International Studies program at DePaul, a position she was to have assumed in a couple of weeks.
In the face of this overwhelming pedigree, how could she have been denied tenure? Well, she was quite involved in organizing support for Finkelstein's tenure bid.

Rather than play by the rules, DePaul invented a set of sham requirements that they then said F failed to meet. Any rational observer would conclude that they then punished another faculty star for having the temerity to vocally support him.

This should be cause for concern for any democrat, regardless of his or her position on the specifics of F's politics.

So, "Why should they face criticism for not rewarding...(Finkelstein)...for his conduct and questionable scholarship?"
Because his "conduct" was not part of the explicit set of requirements tenure candidates are charged with fulfilling, and his scholarship is questionable only to such moral and intellectual pygmies as Steven Plaut and Alan Dershowitz.

Just a short question: Has Finkelstein ever published anything that has been submitted to blind peer review? (If so, I would be grateful if anyone could give me the reference.)
I'm particularly opposed to tenure for Finkelstein, but then again I'm opposed to tenure anyway.

Are these just political bitchfights, or is anyone actually concerned about freedom of conscience and inquiry in the academy? Here's how we can all prove the latter: Everyone who supports Finkelstein should show their good faith by also getting behind Guillermo Gonzales. And vice versa. 

Most certainly Fink's books have been submitted to blind peer review. That's how academic presses like University of California Press (who published his last book) operate. There's no other way he would have even been _considered_ for tenure if the works weren't gone through a blind peer review process. Ditto for his tenure file, it would have been vetted by anonymous reviewers from other universities.

Actually, this is an interesting question. Finkelstein's 'The Holocaust Industry' was published by Verso, which describes itself as "Commissioning intelligent, critical works located at the intersection of the academic and trade markets" (http://www.versobooks.com/verso_info/about.shtml) and does not make any remarks anywhere on its website about peer-review. The UC Press description of "Beyond Chutzpah" describes it as the "long-awaited sequel to [Finkelstein's] international bestseller The Holocaust Industry". (http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10505.html) The UC Press website further states that "All manuscripts undergo extensive peer-review, which includes outside readings by field experts." Interestingly enough, they do not say much about what makes the peer-review "extensive", including whether it is single- or double-blind.Although the peer-reviewing process in the humanities is messed up anyway, I would still be interested to know whether Finkelstein published anything (e.g. journal articles) in a 'reliably' blind peer-reviewed source. (On the question of publishing in the humanities, there's also been a spate of articles reecntly in the Chronicle of Higher Ed.)

In the Humanities (unlike the hard sciences), peer reviews are usually not double-blind. The reviewer knows the author of the text, but the author doesn't know the reviewers unless the reviewers choose to reveal themselves after submitting the review. Based on what I know from colleagues who have published with them (and a friend who worked at one), both UCPress and Minnesota (two of F's presses) follow this format. Otherwise, their presses wouldn't be considered legitimate in academic circles.

 I assume that it'd be pretty easy to see a list of his journal articles. Check his website or look in the academic databases.... 

Moshe,
You are right regarding the review process at most humanities publishing houses (although there are some exceptions, I believe). "The reviewer knows the author of the text": although single-blind peer review has its partisans even in the sciences (see for example http://blogs.nature.com/nn/actionpotential/2005/12/doubleblind_peer_review.html), it seems that especially in the case of someone like Finkelstein, this should be a particularly controversial issue. If you look at the places where he's published (and, yes, I've gone to his website and tracked some of his publications through databases, etc., and so far haven't been able to find one that's conclusively using peer-review with truly 'outside' experts as reviewers), they're all pretty much advertising the same: from Verso (branding itself as a "radical publisher" and "founded in 1970 by the London-based New Left Review") through "Antipode" (a journal of "radical geography", which "publishes articles which offer a radical (Marxist/socialist/anarchist/anti-racist/feminist) analysis of geographical issues") to the "Journal of Palestine Studies" (published by the same UC Press, actually), there does not seem to appear any of Finkelestein's "scholarship" in any non-self-branded "radical" publication, or publication very politically marked from the start. I believe that some "mainstream" publications frequently enough publish controversial pieces, and I do not see why you would need to go out of your way to publish in specifically politicised journals if your "scholarship" is based upon solid research, even if your conclusions break the current common view on an issue. Actually, this stems from my belief that "scholarship" shouldn't be politicised -it should be evidence-based as much as possible.

François: Don't let the title fool you, the Journal of Palestine Studies is no shmate, and is highly respected in the field, and follows all of the protocols of academic journals. In the same regard, the Journal of Israel Studies (published by Indiana) is a legitimate forum of research. While both journals are obviously the products of particular ideological stances (in that each of them recognizes the object of their study as a legitimate and coherent--and national--space), the same can be said for most decent academic journals. They come into being to draw attention to a field that its editors/practitioners feel is under-represented. Heck, the same is true for most fields of research: Jewish studies, American studies, Queer studies. Even the social sciences struggled for recognition a century ago. Hell, to go further back, the very idea of public and open universities was a product of European nationalism. We're all implicated in shilling on behalf of something...  Be well.

http://condor.depaul.edu/~psc/vitae/Finkle_06Feb(revised).pdf

Here is Finklestein's cv as posted on the DePaul University web site. It lists no journal articles. He has a chapter in a book edited by Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens, and he has several books. He lists the same book more than once sometimes when it is published in more than one language

It's not a complete CV. A very quick look in an academic database (JSTOR) shows articles (and reviews and rebuttals) from: Palestine Studies, Jewish Quarterly Review, Boundaries, Contemporary Literature, Social Text, American Literary History, and more. 

"the Journal of Palestine Studies is no shmate, and is highly respected *in the field*"  I rest my case.

The field of "Middle East Studies", I imagine, otherwise known as the field of Israel bashing.  It's an entire academic field based on Edward Said's ideas of 'Orientalism', which is a pathetically lame attempt to raise the Arabs up to proper victim status.  The Arabs, in European eyes from the renaissance through modernity, don't rank as even second or third place as an 'other': they are more like in FIFTH place, after blacks, Jews, Chinese, and AmerIndians.  They're even losers as losers!

So when someone has made a reputation in this 'field', it gives them about the same credibility as a PhD in phrenology or eugenics.  It simply proves you're a moron or a racist.

Never mind that pro-terror destroy-Israel-for-peace morons like Little Dickie Silverstein from Seattle celebrate him.

As for Dickie, see www.richardsilversteins.blogspot.com