[Marxism] DePaul settles with Finkelstein

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/09/2007090603n.htm

Today's News

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Tenure Dispute at DePaul Ends With a Settlement and Professor's Resignation

By PAULA WASLEY

Chicago

A long-running battle between DePaul University and the controversial 
political scientist Norman G. Finkelstein reached an anticlimactic 
conclusion here on Wednesday as the professor announced his decision to 
resign from the university.

Mr. Finkelstein has attracted both venom and praise for his writings on 
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and what he has termed the "Holocaust 
industry." Since last spring, he has been at the center of a highly 
publicized tenure feud that included public sparring with one of his 
critics, the Harvard University law professor Alan M. Dershowitz.

Mr. Finkelstein learned that he had lost the tenure fight in June, but 
at the time was still scheduled to teach a final year at the university.

When DePaul officials abruptly canceled his fall classes on August 24, 
barring him from his office and putting him on administrative leave for 
his final year, Mr. Finkelstein vowed to teach the classes anyway. Last 
week he told The Chronicle that he intended to engage in an act of 
"nonviolent civil disobedience" on Wednesday, DePaul's first day of 
classes, by attempting to return to his office, even if it meant risking 
going to jail. If incarcerated, he said, he would begin a hunger strike 
(The Chronicle, August 27).

More than a hundred of his supporters gathered Wednesday on the campus 
of the Roman Catholic institution, anticipating a dramatic showdown 
between the professor and the university.

Instead of handcuffs and hunger strikes, however, the months of conflict 
ended with Mr. Finkelstein announcing that he and the university had 
reached a settlement agreement, and that, as a result, he would 
immediately resign.

Time to Move On

About 11:30 a.m., he read aloud a written statement, agreed upon by his 
lawyer and the university.

"Over the past several months, there has been considerable outside 
interest about the tenure decision," the statement said. "This attention 
was unwelcome and inappropriate. In the end, however, it had absolutely 
no impact on either the process or the final outcome. Professor 
Finkelstein is a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher."

That last sentence appeared to resolve a sticking point for Mr. 
Finkelstein, who told the crowd that, with DePaul's acknowledgement of 
his scholarship, "I felt finally I had gotten what was due to me, and 
that maybe it was time, for everyone's sake, to move on."

Now, he said, he could depart DePaul with his "head up high and 
reputation intact."

More fireworks had seemed to be in store Wednesday morning.

At 9 a.m. a few dozen students, most of whom had taken classes with Mr. 
Finkelstein or had enrolled in his canceled classes, had gathered at 
DePaul's quadrangle, awaiting his arrival on the campus. Many were 
wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "We are all Professor 
Finkelstein."

As a symbolic gesture, Mr. Finkelstein had planned to teach one of his 
canceled classes, "Equality and Social Justice," to the students 
assembled on the lawn. But the meeting quickly devolved into a media 
frenzy with Mr. Finkelstein, in a white polo shirt with dark stripes and 
faded black jeans, mobbed by television crews. Mr. Finkelstein dispensed 
with the lecture, and spoke instead of his six-year career at DePaul and 
of his bitterness over his recent treatment by the university.

"I do not at all relish the prospect of a confrontation with DePaul 
University," he told the crowd, but he said that since the tenure-review 
process began, he had been the object of "scurrilous and filthy attacks 
on my person, my profession, and my family."

"Frankly, I think it's preposterous to claim that I didn't earn tenure 
at DePaul," he said. That the university had cast his scholarship into 
doubt in its tenure decision, canceled his classes, and denied him the 
use of his office, he said, was "demeaning to the university, demeaning 
to its very impressive student body, and demeaning to myself." He would 
not accept that treatment, he said.

While Cameras Roll, Lawyers Talk

Standing amid television cameras, with a hand on his hip, Mr. 
Finkelstein thanked the students for supporting him and joked with them 
about his habit of singing 1960s folk songs in class. A female student 
who had taken one of his classes offered a teary testimonial: "You are a 
very great professor," she said.

The session was interrupted when a message was passed to Mr. 
Finkelstein, telling him that his lawyer had reached a settlement with 
the university.

As the professor left to consult with his lawyer, students picked up 
placards with slogans like "Norman Finkelstein, Target of Hate 
Campaign," "Norman Finkelstein, Righteous Jew," and "Fight Academic 
Terrorism," and marched to the offices of DePaul's political-science 
department.

There the protest gathered steam, and adherents. Well over 100 students 
-- most from DePaul but a handful from nearby Columbia College Chicago 
-- as well as some faculty members and local residents, joined in 
chanting, "Stop the witch hunt. Tenure now," as city police officers 
attempted to keep them from disrupting traffic.

The protest, and the suspense over Mr. Finkelstein's future, ended back 
at the quad, where the professor read aloud his statement. A few in the 
crowd wept when he announced his resignation; others booed loudly at the 
statement's description of DePaul's tenure process as "fair and effective."

Although the terms of the agreement with DePaul were bound by 
confidentiality restrictions, Mr. Finkelstein said he would continue to 
speak out about the unfairness of the tenure process and in support of a 
colleague, Mehrene E. Larudee, who was also denied tenure this spring. 
Ms. Larudee, an assistant professor of international studies, had 
advocated on his behalf (The Chronicle, June 12).

Ms. Larudee's case was "piece of unfinished business that will haunt 
DePaul until it is corrected," Mr. Finkelstein said, and he urged his 
supporters to apply their zeal to appealing her tenure decision.

Mixed Views of the Settlement

Several students in the crowd expressed both support of Mr. Finkelstein 
and disappointment with the final outcome.

"I think he made the right decision. There's no real way DePaul could 
back down," said Lizzy Boden, a junior at DePaul, who took an honors 
seminar with Mr. Finkelstein last spring. "I'm still really 
disappointed. I wanted them to at least let him teach. He's one of the 
best professors I've ever had."

Sy Bar-Sheshet, a junior from Columbia College who joined the protests, 
was less restrained. "This is an issue bigger than Professor 
Finkelstein; it's about academic freedom," he said. "If he's satisfied, 
then that's good, but I'm not, and I think the majority of students are 
not."

Once Mr. Finkelstein's announcement was over, his student supporters 
began regrouping to plot their next move.

"I think this has shown that student demonstrations can make a 
difference," said Kathryn Weber, a political-science major and president 
of a student group, the DePaul Academic Freedom Committee, formed in 
reaction to the tenure decisions on Mr. Finkelstein and Ms. Larudee.

"In some ways, we're glad that it's been resolved, but in other ways 
kind of disappointed they couldn't push it more in our direction," she 
said of the day's events. Her group, she said, would continue to protest 
the university's tenure decision on Ms. Larudee. But more immediately, 
she said, they planned to take Professor Finkelstein out to dinner.

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