History Matters

Upcoming Events

• PROGRAMME JOHANNESBURG

  Thursday 13 August Topic: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of knowledge. Venue: Wits University, Graduate School Seminar Room, S.W. Engineering Bldg, East Campus Time: 1.15 pm

  Topic: What’s wrong with Zionism: A Jewish Perspective Venue: University of Johannesburg, Council Chambers, University, Administration Bldg. Auckland Park, Kingsway Campus. Time: 5.30 pm for 6 pm Friday 14 August

  Topic: Israel/Palestine: Roots of the conflict, Prospects for peace Venue: University of Johannesburg Time: 2pm Saturday 15 August Topic: The Israeli lobby and the misuse of anti-Semitism Venue: Amec Time: 2.30pm

  CAPE TOWN

  Monday 17 August The Nazi holocaust, the Holocaust industry, and Palestine (45-60 minute talk and 20 minutes questions) Venue: International Peace University of SA time: 10am

  Topic: On the Place of Civility in Academic Life (50 minute talk and 30 minute questions) Venue: Stellenbosch University, “New Social Forms” Seminar, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Humanities Bldg, Room 401 Time: Lunch Time

  Topic: Israel and Palestine : Roots of Conflict and Prospects for Peace (1 hour talk and 30 minutes questions) Mowbray Town Hall Time: 7 pm. Tuesday 18 August Debate with Denis Davis:

  Topic: The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (25 minute talk by NF, 15 minute response from DD and 15 minute response by NF, followed by 30 minutes questions from floor) Venue: University of Cape Town Time: 7.30 pm Wednesday 19 August

  Topic: The Holocaust Industry (40 minutes talk and 20 questions) Venue: University of Western Cape, Centre for Humanities Research Building, Main Campus Time: 1 pm

  DURBAN

  Thursday 20 August Topic: Media coverage of oppressive state regimes: The case of Israel Venue: Arthur Smith Hall, City Campus, Durban University of Technology, Cnr Pixley Kaseme (West) St and Anton Lembede (Smith) St. Time: 12 noon

  Wolpe Lecture — Topic: Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: What we can learn from Gandhi (30 to 35 minutes) Venue: University of KwaZulu-Natal: Howard College Auditorium Time: 5 – 7 pm Friday 21 August

  Topic: Perspectives on Reconciliation in the Middle East Venue: Diakonia, Mirriam Cele Room, Diakonia Centre, Durban Time: 12:30—3:00pm

  Biography of Norman Finkelstein

  Norman Finkelstein is an American political scientist and author, whose primary fields of research are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. A graduate of SUNY Binghamton, he received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and, most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007. Amidst considerable public debate, Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul in June 2007, and placed on administrative leave for the 2007-2008 academic year. Among the controversial aspects of this decision were attempts by Alan Dershowitz, a notable opponent of Finkelstein’s, to derail Finkelstein’s tenure bid. On September 5, 2007 Finkelstein announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms. An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure, and asserted that outside influence played no role in their decision. The statement also praised Finkelstein “as a prolific scholar and outstanding teacher.” Finkelstein made his reputation with his doctoral thesis, which examined the claims made in Joan Peters’s best-selling From Time Immemorial. Peters’s book, a “history and defense” of Israel, deals with the demographic history of Palestine. Demographic studies had tended to assert that the Arab population of Ottoman-controlled Palestine, a 94% majority at the turn of the century, had dwindled towards parity due to massive Zionist immigration. Edward W. Said, for example, claimed that between 1918 and 1947 the “ratio of alien settlers” increased from one to ten to one to two. The controversy that surrounded Finkelstein’s research caused a delay in his earning his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Noam Chomsky wrote in Understanding Power that Finkelstein “literally could not get the faculty to read [his dissertation].” According to Chomsky, Princeton eventually granted Finkelstein his doctorate only “out of embarrassment [for Princeton],” but refused to give him any further professional backing. In this regard, Finkelstein’s tackling of highly sensitive issues suffered a similar fate to the earlier groundbreaking work of Holocaust authority Raul Hilberg, a scholar who would in later decades lend his support to Finkelstein when the latter’s publications came under fire for their polemical character. “The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering” was published in 2000. Here, Finkelstein argues that Elie Wiesel and others exploit the memory of the Holocaust as an “ideological weapon.” This is so the state of Israel, “one of the world’s most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, [can] cast itself as a victim state” in order to garner “immunity to criticism.” He also alleges what he calls a “double shakedown” by “a repellent gang of plutocrats, hoodlums and hucksters” seeking enormous legal damages and financial settlements from Germany and Switzerland, moneys which then go to the lawyers and institutional actors involved in procuring them, rather than actual Holocaust survivors. In early 2007 the DePaul University Political Science department voted nine to three, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee five to zero, in favor of giving Finkelstein tenure. The three opposing faculty members subsequently filed a minority report opposing tenure, supported by the Dean of the College, Chuck Suchar. Suchar stated he opposed tenure because Finkelstein’s “personal and reputation demeaning attacks on Alan Dershowitz, Benny Morris, and the holocaust authors Eli Wiesel and Jerzy Kosinski” were inconsistent with DePaul’s “Vincentian” values. In June 2007, a 4-3 vote by DePaul University’s Board on Promotion and Tenure (a faculty board), affirmed by the university’s president, the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, denied Finkelstein tenure. The university denied that Alan Dershowitz, who had been criticized for actively campaigning against Finkelstein’s tenure, played any part in this decision. A self-declared “forensic scholar,” Finkelstein’s books each take as their foil one or more works of mainstream scholarship which he purports to expose as deeply flawed and even fraudulent. The authors whose work he has thus targeted, including Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and Alan Dershowitz, along with others such as Benny Morris whose work Finkelstein has also cited approvingly. Finkelstein’s work has attracted a number of supporters and detractors across the political spectrum. Notable supporters include Noam Chomsky, prominent intellectual and political critic; Raul Hilberg, Holocaust historian; Avi Shlaim, Israeli New Historian; and Mouin Rabbani, Palestinian jurist and analyst. According to Hilberg, Finkelstein displays “academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him… I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost.   The case for Norman Finkelstein By Matthew Abraham The Guardian Thursday 14 June 2007 On Friday, June 8, DePaul University President Dennis Holtschneider announced that he had decided to uphold the university’s tenure and promotion board’s ruling denying outspoken political science professor Norman Finkelstein tenure. In a press release, the president is quoted as saying that academic freedom “is alive and well at DePaul University”. Not surprisingly, the announcement of Finkelstein’s tenure denial has spawned a national discussion. Academics everywhere have been forced to ponder the implications for the future of academic freedom in the United States, especially those who dare to criticise US and Israeli policy in the Middle East. Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, has been relentless in exposing what he calls “The Holocaust Industry”: the institutions and organizations that have used the holocaust (the actual historical event) to justify Israel’s criminal assault upon the Palestinian population and international law. Among these organisations, he includes the World Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and a host of other fellow travellers. There is no doubt that Finkelstein’s work has stoked controversy. But that shouldn’t detract from what makes his tenure treatment so worrying: Finkelstein is undoubtedly a path-breaking and serious scholar. Raul Hilberg, the leading scholar on the Nazi holocaust, has called Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry “a breakthrough” and states that Finkelstein “was on the right track” in his documentation of how the World Jewish Congress, with the aid of the Clinton administration, extorted billions of dollars from Swiss banks in the name of Holocaust survivors, only to pocket the money for Jewish organisations. And, although The Holocaust Industry is Finkelstein’s most frequently cited book in defamatory attempts to cast him as a “Holocaust denier” and a “denier of justice to Holocaust survivors”, Image and Reality in the Israel-Palestine Conflict – a thorough criticism of the central political and philosophical tenets informing Zionism – is his most scholarly and substantial work. But Finkelstein’s detractors avoid discussion of Image and Reality for exactly that reason: it is considered a first-rate piece of scholarship. Finkelstein argues that most US commentators obscure or avoid the clear historical and diplomatic record in examining the Israel-Palestine conflict by ignoring or downplaying international law, fooling the US public into believing that Israel’s occupation is just, necessary, and lawful. One such example is the failure of the 2000 Camp David talks – a failure that has been attributed, at least in elite circles within the United States, to Yasir Arafat’s intransigence. In actuality, what Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak offered Arafat was something no Palestinian leader could accept: a Bantustan state reminiscent of the African national territories. Finkelstein’s latest exposure of US and Israeli apologetics for state violence was of famed Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who was at the centre of Finkelstein’s analysis in Beyond Chutzpah: The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. In August 2003, Dershowitz published The Case for Israel, which Finkelstein uses as a foil in Beyond Chutzpah, demonstrating that Dershowitz misrepresents key diplomatic, legal and historical aspects of the conflict. Dershowitz attempted to block publication of Beyond Chutzpah by inundating the University of California Press with threatening letters from the major New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine, and Moore throughout the spring and summer of 2005, stating he would sue the press if it did not ensure that every claim Finkelstein made about Dershowitz was factually correct. Beyond Chutzpah was vetted by six experts of the Israel-Palestine conflict and several libel attorneys. When he could not prevail upon the press or the University of California’s Board of Reagents, Dershowitz asked Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to intervene. Schwarzenegger refused to do so on grounds of academic freedom. Finkelstein wasn’t so lucky at DePaul. But, by all accounts, Finkelstein far exceeds DePaul’s teaching and publication requirements; indeed, he has the teaching and publication record for full professorship. His tenured colleagues in the political science department voted 9-3 in favour of his tenure and promotion to associate professor. (And the three professors who voted against Finkelstein’s tenure are not experts on the Israel-Palestine conflict or the holocaust.) The college’s personnel committee unanimously upheld the department’s recommendation in a 5-0 vote. In a memo dated March 22, Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences Charles Suchar withheld support of Finkelstein’s tenure application and agreed with the authors of the minority report, arguing that Finkelstein’s tendency to engage in demeaning and reputation-damaging attacks compromised the quality of his scholarship. The dean invoked “Vincentian Personalism” as a tenure criterion, and reported to the university’s board that Finkelstein has an “apparent penchant of reducing an argument and oppositional views to the inevitable personal and reputation damaging attack, demeaning those with whom he disagrees.” Surprisingly, these concerns had never been raised about Finkelstein’s work previously by DePaul’s administration. To thank for these new concerns we have Alan Dershowitz, who distributed an “information packet” to the faculty and waged a one-man war against Finkelstein. Throughout the months of April and May, Dershowitz availed himself of the pages of the New Republic, FrontPage magazine and even the Wall Street Journal to attack a world-renowned scholar and one of DePaul University’s most accomplished teachers. Dershowitz has maintained that the Finkelstein case is not about academic freedom but about academic standards. DePaul administrators ended up rationalising the tenure denial along similar lines. That Finkelstein’s opponents have succeeded should give pause to anyone concerned about academic freedom in the United States. Suppressing critics of Israel: The campaign against Norman Finkelstein Bitta Mostofi, The Electronic Intifada, 10 May 2007 In recent weeks a considerable amount has been written and said about Norman Finkelstein’s bid for tenure at DePaul University. As most academics are aware, it is unique for a tenure decision, something that is an inherently internal process, to be subject to external discussion. Unfortunately, Finkelstein’s case is important because of the way in which is not unique. Forces outside DePaul have attempted to interfere with the University’s process in an effort to sway its decision towards denial of Finkelstein’s tenure. This campaign is part of a pattern of attacks aimed at silencing prominent critics of the Israeli government. The goal is to erode the willingness of academics, journalists, politicians and individuals to speak out against Israel’s human rights record for fear of losing their jobs. In discussing Finkelstein’s case on Democracy Now, Avi Shlaim, Oxford professor and notable scholar on the Israel-Palestine conflict, stated, “Israel has no immunity to criticism, moral immunity to criticism, because of the Holocaust. Israel is a sovereign nation-state, and it should be judged by the same standards as any other state. And Norman Finkelstein is a very serious … a … well-informed … and hard-hitting critic of Israeli practices in the occupation and dispossession of the Palestinians.” Finkelstein’s academic credentials speak for themselves. He received his doctorate from Princeton University on the Theory of Zionism and has since gone on to publish a number of works on the topic including, The Holocaust Industry and Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Most recently, Finkelstein authored, Beyond Chutzpah. This latter work includes a vigorous critique and breakdown of Alan Dershowitiz’s, The Case for Israel. Dershowitz unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the publication of Beyond Chutzpah through threats of a lawsuit and a plea to Governor Schwartzenager to stop publication; nonetheless the University of California Press did in fact publish the book. Having failed to bury Beyond Chutzpah Dershowitz then proceeded to intervene in Finkelstein’s academic career at DePaul University as a means of silencing him. As early as 2005, Dershowitz began sending the President of the University as well as other faculty, staff, and students, lengthy articles and documents attacking Finkelstein. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed Dershowitz claims that he “was specifically asked by the former chairman of DePaul’s political science department to ‘point [him] to the clearest and most egregious instances of dishonesty on Finkelstein’s part.’” What Dershowitz leaves out of his claim is that this request was not made out of the blue. It came in June of 2006, well over a year after Dershowitz initiated contact with the DePaul professor who wrote the letter, other faculty, and DePaul’s President Father Holtschneider. The solicitation in question reads: “I have contacted Professor Peter Novick to follow up on his indictment which you quoted in your letter of November 10, 2005, to Father Holtschneider and in the manuscript titled ‘Literary McCarthyism’ which you sent me the previous year.” It is worth noting the oddity of even considering Dershowitz’s evaluation of Finkelstein in that Dershowitz himself is not considered a scholar on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Additionally, DePaul’s political science committee evaluated the accusations waged against Finkelstein and concluded that the accusations were not founded in any legitimate criticism of his scholarship. The Department invited two independent scholars from the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania, chosen for their expertise on the Israeli-Palestine conflict, to evaluate the academic merit of Finkelstein’s work. They concluded that his work was an important contribution to the field. Sadly, the interference of Dershowitz and others has jeopardized the integrity of the tenure process. DePaul’s normal tenure process has three stages: Departmental, Collegiate, and University. The final recommendation from all levels must then receive a stamp of approval from the president of DePaul University, Rev. Holtschneider. According to DePaul’s own stated criteria a professor’s tenure bid is evaluated based on their teaching, scholarship, and service to the University. If the professor is found to be strong in two of the three criteria, particularly teaching, then tenure will most likely be awarded. In Finkelstein’s case the Political Science Department voted 9-3 in favor of granting him tenure and the College voted unanimously (5-0) to award tenure. On Friday April 13, 2007, Finkelstein met with the University board, the outcome of which is rumored to come within the next week. Even then the President of the University must approve it. By all accounts things have gone in Finkelstein’s favor. However, the Dean of the College attached a letter of dissent, not unlike Bush’s signing statements, siding with the Department’s minority opinion and going against the College level’s own recommendation. The Dean acknowledges that students find Finkelstein’s teaching to be exceptional and that the College level found his scholarship to be sufficiently noteworthy and praiseworthy to be granted tenure. Left with no legitimate way of opposing Finkelstein’s tenure bid, the Dean relies on appealing to the Catholic, and specifically Vincentian, tradition of the University, essentially creating a whole new basis for evaluating tenure — Vincentian personalism. The Dean proceeds to discuss Finkelstein’s lack of collegiality and respect for the opinions of others. In response to a focus on the tone of Finkelstein’s scholarship and not the substance itself, the Academic Association of University Professors (AAUP) of Illinois issued a statement stating “On Collegiality as a statement for Faculty Evaluation,” “Certainly an absence of collegiality ought never, by itself, to constitute a basis for … denial of tenure …”. Moreover, as Professor Kirstein at Saint Xavier University points out, “Tonality is usually a red herring to destroy controversial speech that elites don’t like.” If we are to be honest with what has taken place here we must acknowledge, as I know Finkelstein would be the first to do, that what he is experiencing is nothing compared to what Palestinians face on daily basis in the Occupied Territories and exile. What is important is the ability for people in the west to make an honest and truthful evaluation of the Israel-Palestine conflict. In the last year there has been a failed attempt to oust Joseph Massad from Colombia University where falsified accusations were made against that Professor’s treatment of students in his classroom who did not share his opinion. Renowned Professors Steven Walt and John Mersheimer came under heat after they released a paper detailing the negative influence of the Israeli lobby has on U.S. foreign policy. Despite the media assault on Jimmy Carter’s book, Peace not Apartheid, it did go on to become a best seller. All of this seems to speak to the fact that the truth is making its way to the public forum and perhaps threatening the fabric of lies that are required for Israel to continue the policies it currently utilizes. The tremendous effort to silence Finkelstein seems rooted in the fact that Finkelstein has dared his entire career to unabashedly speak the truth, risking his livelihood and a thing he loves dearly — teaching. In an interview on Democracy Now, Raul Hillberg, a scholar credited with founding holocaust studies, stated quite movingly, “[i]t takes an enormous amount of academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him … So I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost. The AAUP of Illinois, in commenting on this case stated, “[w]e respectfully submit this statement to express our conviction that the surest protection of academic excellence is academic freedom.” The shameless efforts by Dershowitz and others to suppress this freedom are a sign not of their strengths, but in fact a reflection of their fear in letting the truth be heard. As a DePaul alumni, I have known DePaul intimately. I know that the institution and its students are strong enough to handle this academic freedom, if the University has the courage to allow it. Whether or not DePaul caves to pressure, Finkelstein’s work will likely maintain the same voice and integrity, while the rest of us must resist the temptation of self-censorship. Bitta Mostofi is a member of the Electroinc Iraq editorial team and a long time human rights activist. Bitta received her Bachelor’s and Juris Doctor degrees from DePaul Univeristy in Chicago. She currently works as a civil rights attorney at the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Chicago.

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