• The Chronicle of Higher Education on the Settlement

    by  • 09.08.2007 • Beyond Chutzpah, News

    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 Depaul portion of 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 acknowledgment 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.”

    At the same time, in his portion of the statement, Mr. Finkelstein said he
    was “denied tenure due to external pressures climaxing in a national
    hysteria that tainted the tenure process.”

    Earlier in the day, more fireworks had seemed to be in store.

    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 a “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.

    More articles on tenure denial:

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