The Finkelstein Ultimatum

Shortly before the start of its 2007-2008 academic year, Chicago’s DePaul University canceled the classes of assistant political science professor Norman G. Finkelstein, placing him on paid academic leave and taking away his departmental office. His first class would have been today, and he still plans to fight for it.\nDePaul’s actions came in the wake of Finkelstein losing his bid for tenure in a highly contentious and highly publicized process that pitted university administrators against faculty, and Finkelstein against Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz. Finkelstein, an outspoken critic of the Israeli government and its political and academic supporters (such as Dershowitz) earned Dershowitz’s ire by alleging that he plagiarized material in his 2003 work “The Case For Israel.” Dershowitz, however, denied the claim and successfully convinced the University of California Press to remove it from Finkelstein’s 2005 book “Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.”\nThus, when Finkelstein made a bid for tenure, Dershowitz retaliated with a public campaign against him, arguing that Finkelstein’s scholarship was “nothing more than ad hominem attacks on his ideological enemies” and that Finkelstein would “misuse (his tenure) on a national and international scale to promote his bigotry” (Chronicle of Higher Education, April 27). In the end, DePaul’s dean of the College of Arts and Sciences overruled the decisions of Finkelstein’s department and a college-wide faculty committee, denying Finkelstein tenure on the basis of “violating the Vincentian norms of the Roman Catholic university with writing and statements that were deemed hurtful, that contained ad hominem attacks and that did not show respect for others” (Inside Higher Ed, Aug. 27).\nWhile the editorial board might not agree on the merits of Finkelstein’s research, we can agree that hurt feelings are hardly a strong basis for the denial of tenure, much less ejection from a university. Incompetence in the classroom, insufficient research or a demonstrable breach of academic ethics could have served as reasons to deny tenure. Instead, DePaul University canned Finkelstein for being a combative loudmouth – and while that might make him somewhat disagreeable, such qualities are well in line with the norms of academic freedom.\nThe ivory tower has never been, and probably never will be, immune from bruising conflicts. Take, for example, the fight between supporters of Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who invented calculus; or between supporters of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin over whose polio vaccine was more effective. The fight between Finkelstein and Dershowitz might be particularly vicious and public, but it’s hardly an aberration.\nDePaul is within its rights to pull Finkelstein’s class, but that doesn’t mean it should. Isn’t it better to drag challenging ideas into the light of scrutiny, where they can be tested and dissected, exonerated or debunked? Intellectual inquiry needs to be many things, but who ever said it had to be nice?