[Marxism] Fisk on Finkelstein

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

Fisk on Tenure

Fear and loathing on an American campus

I have a desire to take Norm, Chuck and Al and bang their bloody  
heads together

04.14.2007 | The Independent
by Robert Fisk

On the night of 11 September 2001, Al Dershowitz of Harvard law  
school exploded in anger. Robert Fisk, he roared over Irish radio,  
was a dangerous man. I was "pro-terrorist". I was "anti-American" and  
that, Dershowitz announced to the people of County Mayo, "is the same  
as anti-Semitic".

Of course I had dared to ask the "Why" question; Why had 19 Arabs  
flown aircraft into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and  
Pennsylvania? Take any crime on the streets of London and the first  
thing Scotland Yard does is look for a motive. But when we had  
international crimes against humanity on the scale of New York,  
Washington and Pennsylvania, the first thing we were not allowed to  
do was look for a motive. How very odd. The 19 murderers came from a  
place called the Middle East. Was there a problem out there?

But Al would have none of this. And I got the message. To ask the  
"Why" question made me a Nazi. Which is why I subsequently received a  
flood of mail, much of it from Denver - what has Denver got against  
me? - telling me that my mother was Adolf Eichmann's daughter.  
Thanks, Al. I'm sure you didn't dream of the hate mail your silly  
diatribe will inspire. I guess Irish radio host Eamon Dunphy did. He  
pulled the plug on Al.

I'm recalling all this nonsense because Al has been back at work  
attacking his old nemesis, Norm Finkelstein, who has just applied for  
tenure at DePaul University in the US where he is an assistant  
professor of politics. Norm's department has supported him but Al has  
bombarded faculty members with a blistering attack on Norm and all  
his works.

So let me just explain what these works are. Finkelstein, who is  
Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors, has published a number of  
works highly critical of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian West  
Bank and the use Israeli supporters make of the Holocaust of six  
million Jews to suppress criticism of Israel's policies. He has  
accused Dershowitz of plagiarising portions of his 2003 book The Case  
for Israel. Finkelstein's book, The Holocaust Industry, earned  
Dershowitz's continued fury.

Now, I've known Norm for years and he is a tough, no-holds-barred  
polemicist, angry against all the traditional supporters of Israel,  
especially those who turn a blind eye to torture. Personally, I find  
Norm's arguments sometimes a little overwrought. In radio  
discussions, his voice will take on a slightly whingeing tone that  
must infuriate his antagonists.

But Al is clearly trying to destroy Norm's career, adding that the  
"dossier" he sent to DePaul academics - we remember that word  
"dossier" rather too well in Britain and, I should add, Al has  
absolutely no connection to DePaul University - contains details of  
"Norman Finkelstein's ... outright lies, misquotations and distortion".

It will be a disgrace, says Al, for DePaul to give tenure to Norm.  
"His scholarship is no more than ad hominem attacks on his  
ideological enemies." As if this is not enough, Al - who is also  
Jewish - takes a crack at philosopher and linguistic academic Noam  
Chomsky who has supported Norm and whom Al refers to as "the high  
priest of the radical anti-Israeli left".

Enough, I hear readers shout. I agree. But Norm's politics department  
give him top marks for scholarship and says he "offers a detailed  
argument that suggests that Dershowitz plagiarised or inappropriately  
appropriated large sections of others work in The Case for Israel".  
Norm has a "substantial and serious record of scholarly production  
and achievement" and has lectured at the University of Chicago,  
Harvard, Georgetown and Northwestern Universities.

So far so good. But now up pops "Chuck" Suchar, the dean of DePaul's  
College of Liberal (sic) Arts and Sciences, with an extraordinary  
recommendation that Norm should not be granted tenure. While  
acknowledging that "he is a skilled teacher" with "consistently high  
course evaluations," Chuck has decided "that a considerable amount of  
[his work] is inconsistent with DePaul's Vincentian values, most  
particularly our institutional commitment to respect the dignity of  
the individual and to respect the rights of others to hold an express  
different intellectual positions". Norm's books, according to Chuck,  
"border on character assassination and ... embody a strategy clearly  
aimed at destroying the reputation of many who oppose his views".

Now I have to say that scholars who read this column will be  
interested to know of Chuck's own work. I gather it has absolutely  
nothing to do with the Middle East, though I'm sure his study of  
Gentrification and Urban Change: Research in Urban Society (1992) had  
American readers queuing round the block of their major bookstores in  
search of first editions. All I do ask is how a college dean could  
involve himself in the same kind of ad hominem attacks against one of  
his own colleagues that he has accused that same colleague of being  
guilty of.

I loved too, that bit about "Vincentian values". That really does  
warrant a chortle or two. St Vincent de Paul - the real de Paul who  
lived from 1581 to 1660, not the de Paul of Chuck's soft imagination  
- was a no nonsense theologian who was captured by Muslim Turkish  
pirates and taken to Tunis as a slave. Here, however, he argued his  
religious values so well that he converted his owner to Christianity  
and earned his freedom. His charitable organisations - he also  
created a home for foundlings in Paris - became a legend which Chuck  
Suchar simply dishonours.

All over the United States, however, Norm's academic chums have been  
condemning Suchar's tomfoolery; even in Beirut, where Norm has  
lectured, academics of the American University have insisted that he  
be granted tenure in his department, Arabs supporting a Jewish  
professor and son of Holocaust survivors.

Of course, I grant that all this is a little heavy for the real world  
and I do have a secret desire to take Norm, Chuck and Al and bang  
their bloody heads together. But what is happening at DePaul  
University is a very serious matter in the anodyne, frightened  
academic world that now exists in the US. Norm's moment of truth  
comes up in May. As they say watch this space.












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