[Marxism] more on Finkelstein tenure/Dershowitz campaign

[Anna Fierling <anna_fierling@xxxxxxxxx>]

from today's chronicle of higher education:
   
  This article, "Harvard Law Professor Works to Disrupt Tenure
Bid of Longtime Nemesis at DePaul U." is available online at
this address:

http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=tqyfjnxDdNnvzcffqm3kYcxKjWm3pgDH

This article will be available to non-subscribers of The
Chronicle for up to five days after it is e-mailed.
   
  Harvard Law Professor Works to Disrupt Tenure Bid of Longtime Nemesis at 
DePaul U.  By JENNIFER HOWARD
    The highly public feud between Norman G. Finkelstein of DePaul University 
and Harvard Law School's Alan M. Dershowitz has taken an unusual procedural 
twist, with Mr. Dershowitz attempting to weigh in on Mr. Finkelstein's bid for 
tenure at DePaul.   How Mr. Dershowitz's move will play out remains to be seen. 
Mr. Finkelstein's department supported his tenure bid, but the dean of his 
college has refused to support him. A final decision is expected next month.   
There's no love lost between Mr. Finkelstein, an assistant professor of 
political science, and Mr. Dershowitz, a law professor. The two scholars have 
attacked each other repeatedly in the past few years, hurling accusations of 
plagiarism and polemicism at one another.   They've taken adversarial stances 
on such issues as the Israel lobby, anti-Semitism, and what Mr. Finkelstein 
terms "the Holocaust industry." Mr. Dershowitz threatened to take legal action 
against the University of California Press if Mr.
 Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of 
History (2005) went to print with allegations that Mr. Dershowitz plagiarized 
portions of his 2003 book The Case for Israel (The Chronicle, July 22, 2005).   
Last fall, with Mr. Finkelstein up for tenure, Mr. Dershowitz sent the DePaul 
law school faculty and members of the political-science department what he 
described, in a letter dated October 3, as a "dossier of Norman Finkelstein's 
most egregious academic sins, and especially his outright lies, misquotations, 
and distortions."   "I hope that this will serve as an introduction and primer 
to the so-called scholarship that Finkelstein will present this term as he is 
considered for tenure," Mr. Dershowitz wrote.   Mr. Finkelstein said in an 
interview on Monday that Mr. Dershowitz had embarked on "this frenetic and 
relentless campaign to deny me tenure."   "He sent to every member of the law 
school ... a dossier which came, I think, to about 50
 pages, leveling or, I should say, recycling all of the allegations he's been 
putting forth for the past couple of years. And he sent a copy of that dossier 
to every member of my department."   The packet included what Mr. Dershowitz's 
letter called "some of the lies I am absolutely confident that Finkelstein 
told" on such points as Israeli torture and whether or not Mr. Dershowitz 
writes his own books.   In a telephone interview on Wednesday with The 
Chronicle, Mr. Dershowitz confirmed that he had sent the information to 
"everybody who would read it." He said he had compiled the material at the 
request of some two dozen DePaul students, alumni, and faculty members who were 
alarmed at the prospect of Mr. Finkelstein's receiving tenure.   Asked what he 
hoped to accomplish, he said, "Revealing the truth -- all I'm doing is 
disclosing the truth."   Mr. Dershowitz continued, "It would be a disgrace to 
DePaul University if they were to grant tenure. It would make them the
 laughing stock of American universities. ... His scholarship is no more than 
ad hominem attacks on his ideological enemies."   He added, "I think, by every 
standard, he's worse than Ward Churchill. ... He's a propagandist, not a 
scholar."   Given Mr. Dershowitz's history of clashes with Mr. Finkelstein, 
some might conclude that the matter had by now become more personal than 
professional. Mr. Dershowitz denied that. "For me, it's not personal. It's 
institutional." He said that Mr. Finkelstein sent "a message to other 
pro-Israel writers: If you dare write anything scholarly in favor of Israel, I 
will call you names, I will call you a plagiarist."   Mr. Dershowitz's 
involvement has stirred serious concern among the DePaul faculty.   Gil Gott, a 
professor of international studies at DePaul who is chairman of its Liberal 
Arts and Sciences' Faculty Governance Council, said in an e-mail message on 
Wednesday that the council had taken up the matter at its November 17, 2006,
 meeting. (Mr. Gott was not then chair of the council.)   According to the 
minutes of the session, the council voted unanimously to authorize a letter to 
DePaul's president, Dennis H. Holtschneider, and the university's provost, 
Helmut P. Epp, along with the president of Harvard University and the dean of 
Harvard Law school. The letter was to express "the council's dismay at 
Professor Dershowitz's interference in Finkelstein's tenure and promotion case" 
and also to explain "that the sanctity of the tenure and promotion process is 
violated by Professor Dershowitz's emails."   The minutes add: "A discussion 
followed in which members expressed their views that this was a very disturbing 
intrusion which attacked the sovereignty of an academic institution to govern 
its own affairs."    Asked whether it was unusual for a scholar to weigh in on 
tenure deliberations at another university, Mr. Dershowitz responded, "What's 
so unusual about a concerned academic's objecting to his
 receiving tenure? He would be the first person in history ever to receive 
tenure based on no scholarship other than personal attacks."   Mr. Finkelstein 
contacted The Chronicle last weekend to discuss his concerns about the status 
of his case. He said that his department had investigated Mr. Dershowitz's 
claims and "concluded that none of the scholarly allegations that Dershowitz 
leveled against me had any merit."   But he added: "DePaul is in a growth mode, 
and they see me as an albatross because they?re getting all this negative 
publicity because of me. And they want to get rid of me. And now the question 
is, what's going to prevail? The principles of fairness, the principles of 
academic freedom, or power and money in the form of a mailed fist?"   According 
to Mr. Finkelstein and to departmental reports sent to The Chronicle, his 
department voted 9 to 3 in favor of granting him tenure, with the majority 
voicing strong support for his scholarship and giving him high marks
 for his pedagogy. One of the reports described him as "an outstanding teacher 
whose contributions to student learning and transformation are impressive." It 
concluded that "while not all members of the department share a love of polemic 
and inflammatory rhetoric as practiced by Norman and his adversaries, there is 
clearly a substantial and serious record of scholarly production and 
achievement."   The College Personnel Committee subsequently voted 5 to 0 in 
favor of tenure for Mr. Finkelstein. But Charles S. Suchar, dean of the College 
of Liberal Arts and Sciences, shot down the recommendation in a March 22, 2007, 
memo, a copy of which was also obtained by The Chronicle.   In language similar 
to that used by Mr. Dershowitz, the dean wrote, "I find the personal attacks in 
many of Dr. Finkelstein's published books to border on character assassination 
and, in my opinion, they embody a strategy clearly aimed at destroying the 
reputation of many who oppose his views."   Because
 the process is not yet complete, the DePaul administration has not made a 
public statement about Mr. Finkelstein's case.   "No comment at this time," Mr. 
Suchar wrote in an e-mail message. "The promotion and tenure review process is 
still under way, and final decisions are not expected until mid- to late May." 
The final decision on whether Mr. Finkelstein receives tenure rests with the 
provost and president of the university.   Also online are both Mr. 
Dershowitz's Web site and Mr. Finkelstein's. 



Anna Fierling
Otto-Suhr-Institut
FU-Berlin

"Freiheit ist immer Freiheit der Andersdenkenden."
 
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