In Defense of Academic Freedom

Now why didn't I think of that one when I was fired a few years ago from my job!

going to employ the same methodology to protest my lack of adjunct opportunities this semester. Actually at all Chicago universities.

Really, he is getting paid to not teach this semester; who in their right mind would complain about that?

"If anyone attempted to block Verso's publication of his books... I'd be happy to sign a petition defending Finkelstein's right to expression."

How about if someone tried to block the University of California Press from publishing F's work? As you surely know, the available evidence suggests, and the principals at UC Press aver, that Dershowitz tried just that.
Do you have a soft spot only for Verso, or shall we expect your signature any moment?

"Why is that radicals always protest when they're refused admittance into the very establishment they loathe?"

Rhetorical sludge. He should prefer penury?

"It's only...(Finkelstein)....who must never be boycotted."

Rubbish, and you know it. No one has claimed that F should not be boycotted. There is a useful distinction to be made between a boycott, a popular refusal to engage with a person or entity, and the actions of an institution like DePaul. Don't patronize F if you like, and I promise no one will denounce you.

And while it may be narrowly true that DePaul has a right to withhold tenure, the conditions under which the decision was made, well-documented on F's website and elsewhere, were unquestinably odoriferous. In this case, making reference to the university's rights is beside the point, to a progressive democrat at least.

More important, though, treating F as DePaul is now doing is very likely not within its rights. AAUP has been rather explicit in saying that paying off and vanishing a final-year faculty member, rather than letting him or her teach, violates, except in extraordinary circumstances, its agreement with the university.

I know you don't like Finkelstein, but don't try to pass off your personal tastes as political principle.

When Finkelstein was denied tenure, I sided with Norm Geras on how smelly the university's rationale was. See here.

As for "popular refusal to engage with a person or entity," that sounds to me rather like what the unscrupulous defender of O.J. Simpson and company got up to. I didn't like their methods. But that doesn't mean they were not allowed to do what they did.

Let's define "extraordinary circumstances": A private institution fires a member of its staff on the grounds that the attention he has called to himself and to the institution is unflattering and damaging to the latter's reputation. (Larry Summers of Harvard, according to his detractors, fit the bill here.)

If the real reason for the termination was that DePaul couldn't stand Finkelstein's politics, why did it hire him in the first place and then continue to employ him after The Holocaust Industry was published? And why was he continually fired from other schools?

More interestingly, do you think he's done nothing to jeopardize his own career, that his termination is only the result of a noisy and obnoxious demarche?

As for blocking publication of his books, I should have been clearer: one is entitled to petition a publisher to back away from publishing an author, just as an author is entitled to, say, make accusations of plagiarism against another author in print.

What one is not allowed to do is forcibly stop -- by methods of intimidation, trespass, destruction of capital -- a publisher from going ahead and printing that author's books. Even Dershowitz was limited in his capacity to keep UC Press in check, unless you think asking Gov. Schwarzenegger to step in and use state authority to do what it could never possibly do was anything other than idle stupidity on Dershowitz's part.

this is the THIRD job that Finkie has been fired from? That is an almost unprecedented, and impressive level of bridge burning and general obnoxiousness. Homeboy needs to (well, in addition to learn Arabic and Hebrew) get laid or something. He has a chip on his shoulder the size of the "3rd rate Catholic university" that he so suddenly can't stand the thought of leaving.

But have no fear, some university or another will certainly hire him as a bastion of free speech and the like.

"As for blocking publication of his books, I should have been clearer: one is entitled to petition a publisher to back away from publishing an author, just as an author is entitled to, say, make accusations of plagiarism against another author in print."

Sorry, you'll need to be clearer still. Petitioning is one thing, threatening to take legal action for the flimsiest of reasons, which we know Dersh did, is another. I'd say it reaches the level of "forcibly stop(ping)--by methods of intimidation.....a publisher from...printing that author's books". Wouldn't you?

In contrast to your usually crystalline prose, your second graf was impenetrable. I assume it was in response to my claim that no one is claiming that F is being boycotted, and that a boycott is different from the academic vanishing that DePaul is attempting. You couldn't actually be denying this, could you?

You alluded to my expression, "extraordinary circumstances". Again, we need to be very precise if light is to be permitted entry. I used the expression very specifically to refer to DePaul's churlish booting of F from his teaching obligations, not to the initial tenure decision. I said that there are regulations, codes of behavior, agreements between the AAUP and universities which forbid just the sort of Orwellian (there's some red meat for you!) behavior DePaul is guilty of. These circumstances are pretty specific and don't include besmirching DePaul's reputation. (For the record, while I found Summers' hateful comparison of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism-or was it some weasel formula like "approaches anti-Semitism"?-disgusting, and his comments about women's abilities wrong-headed, I don't think he should've been forced to step down for his beliefs, for similar reasons to yours for opposing Irving's incarceration).

"If the real reason for the termination was that DePaul couldn't stand Finkelstein's politics, why did it hire him in the first place and then continue to employ him after The Holocaust Industry was published? And why was he continually fired from other schools?"

And if the real reason was that F is a sociopathic malcontent, fired from job after job, why did DePaul hire and continue to employ him? Looks like we have a wash.

To grant you one thing, I do think F does himself no favors by ignoring some of the normal courtesies most of us take for granted. His students appear to love him-none of the type of (trumped up) complaints against the Columbia folks from a few yrs back-but I gather he's nettlesome to superiors.
Of course, you, like a provocative adolescent, refuse to call me by the name I've chosen. This cuts into the legitmacy of your concern about anyone else's civility.

Anyway, you get major points for admiring the peerless Billy Bragg-and citing the source instantly ("What is, 'Must I Paint You a Picture', Alex"). Nice.

Sorry, you'll need to be clearer still. Petitioning is one thing, threatening to take legal action for the flimsiest of reasons, which we know Dersh did, is another. I'd say it reaches the level of "forcibly stop(ping)--by methods of intimidation.....a publisher from...printing that author's books". Wouldn't you?

No, unless everyone who threatens to sue somebody for baseless reasons is intimidating or forcibly stopping anything other than good sense. Let's put it another way: Is anything Dershowitz did illegal?

The point of my second graph was that if a politically-motivated campaign, called a "boycott," can threaten to stifle the easy dissemination of scholarship and ideas from one source (in this case, an entire country), then I really don't see how this is distinct from what Dershowitz would like to do to Finkelstein. It's semantics, really, because, as you've no doubt gleaned from my previous comments, I don't consider the anti-Israel blockade on academics to be a proper boycott at all. It's a maliciously motivated attempt to punish Israeli scholars for the actions of their government, actions over which they have no control. And that Israeli scholars are mostly Jews also raises a red flag to anyone with two IQ points to rub together.

You write:

Again, we need to be very precise if light is to be permitted entry. I used the expression very specifically to refer to DePaul's churlish booting of F from his teaching obligations, not to the initial tenure decision. I said that there are regulations, codes of behavior, agreements between the AAUP and universities which forbid just the sort of Orwellian (there's some red meat for you!) behavior DePaul is guilty of. These circumstances are pretty specific and don't include besmirching DePaul's reputation.

First, those "teaching obligations" are set by the university and are thus subject to the university's withdrawal. Second, if DePaul feels that firing Finkelstein is worth endangering its stature with the AAUP, then this begs the question of just how badly it wants him gone. DePaul violates no law in choosing to sack a professor. Before Summers was ejected from Harvard, he decided that Cornel West was unemployable so long as he made rap records and produced no substantive scholarly work. This was his right as president of the university.

Furthermore, I'd say DePaul's reputation has been besmirched by its attachment to Finkelstein given his open endorsement of a militia-cum-political party which officially calls for the annihilation of Middle Eastern Jewry and that, until 9/11, had killed more Americans than any other non-state militia. If we must disagree on this, then let's consign the word "reputation" to semantic limbo as well...

And if the real reason was that F is a sociopathic malcontent, fired from job after job, why did DePaul hire and continue to employ him? Looks like we have a wash.

Only if you make it appear that I said he was a "sociopathic malcontent," which I did not. By F's own admission, DePaul is a lackluster school. Should we be surprised to find that it has hired someone with a lackluster academic career? Where's the contradiction in that? The issue you have to address is: Why even a third-rate Catholic university had had enough of Norman Finkelstein.

Of course, you, like a provocative adolescent, refuse to call me by the name I've chosen. This cuts into the legitmacy of your concern about anyone else's civility.

I don't accord much respect to Internet trolls and anonymities who cite my elsewhere-expressed opinions without granting me the courtesy of paying them back in the same coin. This puts us on unequal footing and gives you an unfair and undeserved rhetorical advantage.

Added to which, I had no idea until now that you were that other commenter, so you can perhaps see how your shadow-lurking is not only rude and dishonest but also confusing.

"""How about if someone tried to block the University of California Press from publishing F's work? As you surely know, the available evidence suggests, and the principals at UC Press aver, that Dershowitz tried just that."""

Not so. UC Press was going to publish a claim by Finkelstein that Dershowitz had committed "plagiarism." Dershowitz told UC Press that if they published F's claim then D would sue the UC Press

UC Press backed down. Finkelstein says that UCs lawyers told him that he could not state explicitly that Dershowitz had engaged in "plagiarism." F, having no choice, agreed. D then refrained from suing.

Everybody won. F got his book published, and D got the libelous accusation removed.

"""Rubbish, and you know it. No one has claimed that F should not be boycotted. There is a useful distinction to be made between a boycott, a popular refusal to engage with a person or entity, and the actions of an institution like DePaul."""

No there is not, because DePaul is not a government institution. It can hire or not hire Finkelstein as it wishes.

"""And while it may be narrowly true that DePaul has a right to withhold tenure, the conditions under which the decision was made, well-documented on F's website and elsewhere, were unquestinably odoriferous."""

The sweet smell of perfumed flowers wafts from reading Dershowitz's account of why F should be denied tenure, and DePaul's subsequent statements consistent with that pleasantly scented view.

"""In this case, making reference to the university's rights is beside the point"""

No, it is very relevant. If DePaul has the right to deny Finkelstein tenure then doing so does not deprive F of rights.

"""More important, though, treating F as DePaul is now doing is very likely not within its rights. AAUP has been rather explicit in saying that paying off and vanishing a final-year faculty member, rather than letting him or her teach, violates, except in extraordinary circumstances, its agreement with the university."""

DePaul has been equally explicit that it has no contractual obligation whatever to offer F classes to teach.

"""I know you don't like Finkelstein, but don't try to pass off your personal tastes as political principle."""

Here is the principle: DePaul has acted wisely and within its rights in denying F tenure or teaching duties.

Michael-

Ismail here (happy?)

Looks like we're not getting anywhere on this, so I'll leave the last F-related comment to you. I really can't let one remark of yours pass by in silence, though, to wit:
" And that Israeli scholars are mostly Jews also raises a red flag to anyone with two IQ points to rub together."

Here we have the notorious "Get Out of Jail Free" card that Israel has dealt itself. It's a Jewish state, you see, so if you present a robust and thorough denunciation of its policies, or if you support punishing the state for its crimes, you're anti-Jewish. The blockade of Gaza is not anti-Muslim, of course, it's anti-Hamas or anti-terrorism or whatever. But blockading Israel would be anti-Jewish.

I would be embarrassed to tout this shell game, as should you.

Here's the deal: Israel is a state. As such, it must answer for its political decisions. Just as boycotting Saudi Arabia for its hellish policies need not be anti-Muslim (although it may be, just as anti-Israel sentiment may be anti-Jewish), so boycotting Israel need not be anti-Jewish.

The only red flag, I'm afraid, is waving from the perpetually paranoid redoubts of hunkered-down Zionists, wildly projecting their bellicosity and unfairness to the world at large. Your suggestion that strong actions against Israel are perforce suspicious is precisely the sort of thing that has stifled discussion of the mideast for decades. It is incorrect, inimical to debate and scurrilous.

I find it both odd and troubling that so many seem to rally against a truth-teller merely because he tells the truth about an entity that they claim sort sort of allegiance towards. The people that attack Dr. Finkelstein do not do so with facts but smear. Mr. Weiss' piece ignores virtually all of the elements that establish Dr. Finkelstein is more than qualified for tenure. He cites DePaul's rights, and leaves out how they abused those of Dr. Finkelstein. I see him no better than a shill with an agenda, seeking approval from those who would deny the truth.

~LanceThruster

You're not punishing the state, you're punishing its citizens and doing so without a declaration of war against their state. This is elementary stuff by now, yet you keep recurring to the same shibboleth. Why? A protest that aims to convince other governments not to do business with the Olmert regime until that regime ends the occupation and tears down its separation wall -- that at least would bear some symbolic resemblance to making Israel "answer for" its crimes. (Again, and I'm sorry if you see this as knee-jerk Euston mudslinging, but your argument follows the same deranged logic as that of Ward Churchill who said that U.S. citizens had to "answer for" U.S. foreign policy on 9/11.) Why must innocent citizens be not just the target of the boycott, but the ONLY target of it? That's what's smelly to me in this whole twisted affair.

And yes, if a Saudi Arabian boycott harmed a bloc of Saudis who routinely inveigh against the monarchy and struggle to reform their country, I'd wonder about the true nature of that boycott too. Just as I'd wonder about anyone who proposed censuring Iran's dissident movement as a hamfisted way to get back at the mullahs.

It seems to me the discussion is not stifled at all, but alive and well. See John Pilger's latest excrescence in the Guardian and the responses it's generated.

Finkelstein has made a career of personal invective rather than scholarship. Dersh would have never gotten involved with Finkelstein if he had not accused Dersh of plagiarism. F claims that he exposed plagiarism in Joan Peters book "From Time Immememorial", but that charge has never stuck except on F's website. Tenure is based upon scholarship, not volume of personal invective. Anyway, Id ont see why Finkelstein is so upset. He could get a plum job in the UK,Germany, or Iran. I am hoping David Irving joins the "distinguished" panel of Judt, Chomsky, Mearsheimer, and other Al Zawahiri acolytes

Finkelstein will have to take a break on his hunger strike on Yom Kippur, and gorge with cheeseburgers and bacon. To fast otherwise on this day might seem like he is making a concession to evil Judaism. Perhaps he can start a group called "Jews against Judaism"

"F claims that he exposed plagiarism in Joan Peters book "From Time Immememorial", but that charge has never stuck except on F's website."

Elvis Baldwell must really have liked Peters' book-he awarded its title an extra syllable.

Finkelstein's criticism of the ninny Peters went way beyond plagiarism, which I'm not sure he accused her of at all. He correctly and exhaustively cited her selective citation of sources, her elision of crucial phrases from quotations, and her outright fabrications.
As far his criticisms finding support only on his website, you may find it illuminating to consult the following contemporary reviews of Peters' fables:

Albert Hourani in The Observer
Yehoshua Porath in NY Review of Books
I. & D. Gilmour in London Rview of Books

In Israel, the newspapers Davar and Koteret Rashit leapt all over Peters' raggedy ass, and the philosopher Avishai Margalit called her on her systematic lying as well.

The best indication of the civilized world's rejection of her breathtaking cataracts of deception, of course, is that she is rarely if ever cited by serious scholars anymore, except to cite her minutes-long popularity as an object lesson in transient social lunacy.

Note to Craig: any chance that you can make the arithmetic problems a little more difficult so as to keep such ignorant time wasters as Elvis here from leaving his droppings? Shouldn't take much-raising the bar from addition to, say, division should do the trick.

"...You're not punishing the state, you're punishing its citizens."
"...your argument follows the same deranged logic as that of Ward Churchill who said that U.S. citizens had to "answer for" U.S. foreign policy on 9/11."

Well, no. Boycotts are not surgically precise actions. African-Americans who declined to patronize businesses with regressive policies unintentionally (but not unknowingly) may have hurt employees of those businesses whether or not those employees were themselves racists. Strikes inconvenience or harm lots more people than just the greedy bosses who are targeted.

I think you probably realize that analogizing my position to an apology for mass murder is dishonest. Or maybe you don't think that substituting death via incineration, suffocation and defenestration for getting the cold shoulder from academia does fatal violence to your comparison.

"Why must innocent citizens be not just the target of the boycott, but the ONLY target of it?"

I myself am not typically in the market for cluster bombs, so boycotting the IOF wouldn't work, though I happily support withholding military aid to Israel unless it comes to its senses and I've frequently encouraged my representatives to do so. No luck so far.

"And yes, if a Saudi Arabian boycott harmed a bloc of Saudis who routinely inveigh against the monarchy and struggle to reform their country, I'd wonder about the true nature of that boycott too."

But the Israeli academy has, by and large, been either gleefully compliant with Tel Aviv's policies or has maintained a crypt-like silence about them, so your invocation of the Saudi democrats won't do. Do you know of a single Israeli professional academic group which has officially come out against its government's baleful policies in Palestine? How much fuss did the academy raise about the scandalous school closings perpetrated by Israel? I realize that there are good folks who protest against the occupation in the Israeli academy and elsewhere in the society (how could there not be?), but this is not a reason to forego a peacful method of applying pressure on a nation which has been as recalcitrant to correction as Israel has been. The most effective and well-known Israeli critics of the occupation, of course, are academic refuseniks, having decamped to friendlier venues.

I am happy to learn that the baseless accusations of anti-Semitism are not doing their job as well as intended. For those interested in tracking down Pilger and his interlocutors, though, the wily Zionist Weiss was trying to prevent your enlightenment via misdirection; the conversation may be found at New Statesman, not The Guardian.

Ismail

Elvis raises a good point. Why does Finklestein only apply for US jobs? With his credentialls, couldnt he head one of the legendary colleges of Oxford or Cambridge? The Germans and Swiss would love him too, because he would clear them of any Holocaust guilt.