• Photos and more from DePaul students

    by  • 07.02.2007 • Beyond Chutzpah, Images, News

    At noon on June 25th, 2007, 5 DePaul students began a hunger fast to oppose the DePaul administration’s attempts to deny tenure to Professor’s Finkelstein and Larudee. They plan on making their presence known in the student center over the next several days and are calling on Thursday the 28th to be an international day of solidarity for all to hunger strike in support of tenure for these two courageous professors.

    Website for the Fasters

    For the Faculty Uprising

    June 2007 | DePaulASU.net

    A showdown is brewing. DePaul faculty council, which represents all the faculty at DePaul, and the Faculty Governance Council, which represents the LA&S faculty, both decided, overwhelmingly, to allow Professor’s Finkelstein and Larudee to appeal their tenure denials. The administration is claiming that there is no appeal process for cases like this. Who is right?

    To answer that we have to look at the faculty handbook. While the section on tenure doesn’t discuss an appeal to the President’s decision, a section on contracts does discuss appeal a termination. The language of that section is a little vague though. It refers to a termination of a contract, so it’s validity to this case depends on whether you consider the tenure track and tenure one single contract or two separate. It’s likely that the school will argue that they are two separate contracts.

    It may not matter what the administration argues though.

    There were serious inconsistencies with the tenure process. The way the school brought in extraneous evidence into the tenure process is a troubling issue. Fr. Holtschneider accuses Prof. Finkelstein of ad hominum attacks on his colleagues and behavior that is not in accordance with Vincentian Personalism. This is troubling because the tenure process is not the process to determine whether or not a candidate has engaged in such behavior. Even if such behavior was admissible to the tenure process, it would have to be proven in a separate process. For example Thomas Klocek faced a harassment board which asked him to remedy certain issues, which he did not. When his contract was under review, they looked at how he did not meet those standards and decided not to renew his contract. Never before was Finkelstein notified that he was being ad hominum or uncollegial or non-Vincentian. Not even in his yearly tenure reviews.

    Also it’s important to note that this is a case of the administration seeking to extricate, remove, or at best marginalize, the faculty’s voice in regards the tenure process. With Finkelstein, the best support he received came from his colleagues. The Political Science department wanted him as one of their tenured friends, and voted 9-3 to have him inducted into the club. The college of LA&S tenure review board voted 5-0 to approve tenure. Altogether, Finkelstein received 16-7 votes in favor of tenure. Larudee was also overwhelmingly popular among her colleagues. She was supposed to be the chair of the International Studies Department next year. Likely her vote was 17-6.

    None of this faculty support mattered to the administration though. When Fr. Holtschneider met with students, he explained to them that the votes did not matter to him, what mattered was the reasoning behind them. Who decides what is and isn’t good reasoning though? Reasoning is a subjective thing. I don’t find it all to convincing that the universe was created by a magical sky wizard in 7 days. Nor do I find it convincing that Sacco and Vanzetti were murderers, and I don’t find the anti-Finkelstein and anti-Larudee arguments convincing either.

    What I do find convincing is the idea of democracy, and grassroots power. The decision for tenure should not rest with a dictator like Fr. Holtschneider. It should rest with the faculty and students who make up the tenure review committees and make democratic decisions on the issue.

    What next? What should faculty do? Many faculty will try to stay out of the issue and say “I don’t know enough about the case,” unless it becomes an issue over their power. The AAUP has clear guideline on shared governance which DePaul is violating in it’s rush to stamp out academic freedom. Faculty will defend these rights. What we should push is more than simply tenure for two professors, but for the faculty, and students to be the final word on who receives tenure and who does not. That means stripping the president of those powers to decide. This would be a monumental step. To reach that it means the the faculty should go through with the appeal next fall. When the administration refuses to recognize it, the faculty must not budge in their demands. They will have to try different ways to route the administration out of office, and to seize the means to grant tenure themselves in regards to funds, etc. They might want to consider going on strike, even if it’s a one day or one week strike. All of this might lead to forming a faculty union or even turning the University into a cooperative where faculty, students and staff own and operate the school in a democratic fashion.

    Who is John Simon?

    June 2007 | DePaulASU.net

    In the week since Professor’s Norman Finkelstein and Marueen Larudee were denied tenure by DePaul University, a lot has happened. Feeling that the two progressive faculty members were being targeted because of their political views critical of US and Israeli foreign policy, many took action. Students met with President of the school Fr. Holtschneider, and unhappy with his rationalizations, they sat in his office for 3 days and 2 nights before being kicked out under threat of arrest and expulsion. Community members joined a rally to support academic freedom and the Faculty Council and Administrative Faculty Council held meetings which affirmed that DePaul did not follow the tenure process according to the faculty handbook and authorizing an appeal to the professor’s denied tenure.

    What is becoming clearer over time is the behind the scenes role played by those who should not have a say in the tenure process. It should be a faculty and student decision, but more and more we are seeing evidence of interference by those with political agendas.

    While many people are aware that Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and apologist for Israeli torture tactics, has been lobbying to prevent Finkelstein from receiving tenure, few are aware of some of the details of his influence at DePaul. Dershowitz has claimed in print that his involvement in DePaul’s tenure process was a result of being asked into it by Patrick Callahan, the former Political Science department chair. In student’s meeting with Fr. Holtschneider though, Holtschneider explained that Dershowitz was inviting himself into the tenure process by e-mailing and asking Holtschneider for a meeting. Holtschneider explained to us that he didn’t even read the letters but instead handed them over to DePaul’s general council.

    It’s becoming clear though that Dershowitz’s influence at DePaul might go above Holtschneider.

    The director of DePaul’s Board of Trustee’s is a lawyer, John Simon, who works for the law firm Jenner and Block. Jenner and Block has ties to anti-Finkelstein groups like the Jewish United Fund. In fact 50 lawyers with the firm attended a fund raiser for the group, featuring keynote speaker Alan Dershowitz. Recently the Jewish United Fund released a press statement praising DePaul’s decision to deny tenure to Finkelstein.

    This raises troubling questions. Did John Simon meet with Dershowitz to discuss the Finkelstein tenure case? How much money do anti-Finkelstein groups like the Jewish United Fund donate to DePaul and how much of an influence does this have on a tenure process which is supposed to be independent of the corrupting influence of money? How much influence does the Board of Trustee’s have over the tenure process? I am e-mailing both John Simon and Alan Dershowitz with these questions today. Stay tuned for their responses.

    More articles on tenure denial:

    More articles leading up to the tenure decision: