Dean rejects promotion for critic of Israel, saying he lacks ‘Vincentian values’
By ROBERT McCLORY
Chicago — An attempt to deny promotion and tenure to an outspoken professor at DePaul University here has created a tidal wave of protest in the academic community and among rights activists. Letters to university officials and online petitions are urging, even demanding, that Norman Finkelstein, an assistant professor of political science, receive promotion and tenure despite a recommendation by Charles Suchar, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, that he be rejected.
One petition, placed online April 4, garnered some 3,000 signatures within a week. A letter sponsored by the Norman Finkelstein Solidarity Committee attracted more than 100 signatures from scholars and professors within a few days. Another letter, signed by some 600 academics in the United States and abroad, was to be delivered to the university president by week’s end.
Finkelstein has been at DePaul for six years and is an advocate of Palestinian rights. He contends that the university is determined to use a subterfuge, namely his alleged failure to promote “Vincentian values,” to get rid of him because his position is unacceptable to supporters of Israel’s human rights record. The university was founded by the Vincentian religious order and continues to promote the concern for the poor exhibited by St. Vincent de Paul.
Finkelstein’s 2005 book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, drew a chorus of complaints from supporters of Israel, most notably from Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz. In the book Finkelstein rejected, case by case, the glowing characterizations of Israeli policy in Dershowitz’s own book, The Case for Israel. Finkelstein contended that the record shows that Palestinian houses were wantonly destroyed, that Palestinian prisoners were brutally tortured, that Palestinian medical centers were directly attacked, and that the Palestinian population was needlessly provoked to violence under Israeli policy.
In his writing and frequent speeches, Finkelstein pulls no punches, calling apologists for Israelis’ occupation tactics liars and victims of dementia. The dialogue between Finkelstein and Dershowitz has been particularly vitriolic, including mutual accusations of character assassination and libel. In Beyond Chutzpah, Finkelstein accused Dershowitz of plagiarism; Dershowitz has called Finkelstein an “enemy of peace, civility and decency” beloved by neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers.
An earlier book by Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, in which he accused Israel supporters of using the Holocaust to justify Israeli policies and claims, also provoked pointed charges and counter-charges between the two men.
In his role as DePaul professor, Finkelstein has received praise. Considering his application for promotion and tenure, the College Personnel Committee noted that he repeatedly received strong evaluations from students, many regarding his class as a “transformative experience.” The committee also praised his skill in encouraging discussion of controversial and complex topics. Some committee members were troubled by his frequent personal attacks on his critics but nevertheless found his “passionate scholarship” to be of a “high standard.”
The committee recommended promotion and tenure by a 5-0 vote. He was also supported by a committee in his own political science department, by a 9-3 vote. The three dissenters submitted a minority report objecting to Finkelstein’s often abrasive approach to his critics. A third university-wide committee will also consider Finkelstein’s credentials. The final decision on promotion and tenure will be made by the DePaul University president, Vincentian Fr. Dennis Holtschneider, probably in June.
Despite the overall positive finding by Finkelstein’s peers, Suchar, the arts and sciences dean, issued a lengthy memorandum in which he stated his objections. He acknowledged Finkelstein’s abilities as an instructor, but said, “My own estimation of the tone and substance of his scholarship is that a considerable amount of it 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 and express different intellectual positions – what I take to be one significant meaning of what we term Vincentian ‘personalism.’ ” On that basis, said Suchar, he could not support Finkelstein’s application.
Several DePaul professors said it is unusual for a dean to contradict the strong recommendations of university committees, and they were puzzled by Suchar’s appeal to something as vague as Vincentian values. So was Finkelstein.
In his small, cluttered office on DePaul’s northside Chicago campus, Finkelstein appeared calm and self-assured and made frank comments about his situation. He was born in Brooklyn, and both his parents were Holocaust survivors. He has visited the Israeli-occupied territories more than a dozen times.
“I’m a Jew,” he said. “No one can call me an anti-Semite or a Holocaust denier. And no one can refute the facts I present in my research.” But, he said, he is not surprised at the dean’s failure to recommend him. “I think they have been trying to get rid of me for a long time because I’m an albatross here,” he said. The dean’s decision, in his view, is “a rabbit they pulled out of the hat in response to pressure by the organized Jewish community. There’s no other way to look at it.”
“Wherein does it say in the university rules that Vincentian values are a criterion for promotion and tenure?” Finkelstein asked. “In academic venues it’s your teaching and the quality and quantity of your work. These are things that are measurable.” At no time, said Finkelstein, either when he was hired or during his six annual reviews by his department chair, were Vincentian values raised or was he given any indication his performance was deficient. “It’s hard to believe the university would act in such an egregious way if it was not being pressured from the outside,” he said.
In fact, there is no mention of Vincentian values in the faculty handbook. The only reference this writer could find was toward the end of the university mission statement, which says, “Motivated by the example of St. Vincent … the DePaul community is above all characterized by ennobling the God-given dignity of each person. This religious personalism is manifested … in a sensitivity to and a care for the needs of each other … with a special concern for the deprived members of society.”
Vincentian Fr. Edward Udovic, senior executive for university mission, said the school has traditionally made every effort to be welcoming and inclusive, especially to those who are excluded from society by culture race, religion or ethnicity.
Suchar did not return phone calls from NCR, nor were other DePaul staff willing to talk on the record about the case. The chair of the political science department, Michael Budde, said he could not comment either but acknowledged that Dershowitz has attempted to insert himself in the discussion.
“He has inundated the administration with material,” said Budde. “He has no respect for the procedures of a university. His insistent and persistent pressure has polluted the quality of discourse inside and outside; he has done no favors to this university.”
Dershowitz himself has declined to discuss with the press his involvement at this time.
One DePaul professor, speaking anonymously, noted what she saw as the irony of rejecting Finkelstein on the basis of Vincentian values. “Finkelstein embodies Vincentian values,” she said. “He really cares about human rights, he talks about them constantly, it’s what he lives and breathes. So now they want to say the central issue is his failure to make nice in his writings?”
Finkelstein said he holds no grudges against the university. “I have been always treated fairly,” he said. “And I understand the pressures they are under. But there is a need for a little honesty, for an acknowledgment of what is really going on here.”
Robert McClory is a Chicago freelance writer and a frequent contributor to NCR.
More on tenure:
- Tenure? (4 articles: The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, The Harvard Crimson, FrontPageMag.com)
- Chomsky on Dershowitz, Finkelstein and tenure
- Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg & Israel scholar Avi Shlaim on tenure
- No tenure for Finkelstein!
- Fisk on Tenure
- PLAUT ON TENURE
- On Dershowitz and Finkelstein
- Princetonian on tenure
- Tenure and the Times
- Jerusalem Post on tenure
- Jewish Week on Tenure
- JDO Launches Campaign “Operation Drive Out!” to Drive Self-Hating Jewish Professor Hater of Israel- Mocker of the Holocaust- Out of De Paul University
- The Nation on Tenure
- Dershowitz in Wall Street Journal on tenure
- CUNY on Tenure
- Fox News on tenure
- Chicago Tribune on tenure
- Chicago Sun-Times on tenure
- Tenure, from a mile high
- Comment on Tenure
- Alan Dershowitz and Peter Novick in Chronicle of Higher Education on Tenure
- Chicago Jewish News on Tenure
