DePaul University suspends Norman Finkelstein
Hey all. I’m heading back to china in a few days, and i should be blogging more once i get back. In the mean time, check out the latest bit of academic McCarthyism going on in the USA: DePaul University recently denied tenure to Norman Finkelstein, who is a wonderfully intelligent writer and critic of Israel. I highly recommend all of his books (or at least the several that i’ve already read ;). Anyway, according to the academic rules, a professor that is denied tenure must still be allowed one more year of teaching at the school, but DePaul university has suspended him, cancelled his classes, and taken away his office. All of this for daring to tell the truth.
You can read the latest about this here and here. In the second link, the American Association of University Professors explains to the President of DePaul how dumb he is, and in the first one Norman Finkelstein threatens civil disobedience if his office is taken away and vows to continue teaching. Taken together with the recent witch-hunt that cost Ward Churchill his teaching job, this is a very disturbing trend in the increasingly fascist United States.
Ride hard, ride free
August 31st, 2007 at 07:22 am
I would like to see the minutes to the meeting at which Holtschneider and the DePaul management decided they could simply push Finkelstein out. Was it ignorance do you think that explains their utter disregard for academic procedure, or sheer arrogance?
Sadly I expect it was the latter. Whether or not they can get away with this will be interesting to observe. Without wishing to over-dramatise this event the outcome of NF’s *dismissal* and his subsequent objections may serve as something of a barometer for the current political mood in the US. If Finkelstein is re-instated we can all breathe a sigh of relief for freedom of speech regardless of whether or not we agree with his views. If his denial of tenure is upheld then surely this is confirmation of the disturbing lurch to a more thought-controlled and, as you said, fascistic USA.
September 2nd, 2007 at 18:48 pm
Norman Finkelstein is a profoundly ignorant islamofascism prostitute, must be stripped off all degrees and removed from academy forever.