Israel Matzav

Holocaust denier denied tenure at De Paul University

Holocaust denier Norman Finkelstein has been denied tenure at De Paul University in Chicago. (Hat Tip: The American Thinker)

Norman G. Finkelstein, the controversial political scientist who has been engaged in a highly public battle for tenure at DePaul University, learned today that he had lost that fight. In a written statement released to The Chronicle, the university confirmed that Mr. Finkelstein had been denied tenure.

Mr. Finkelstein’s department and a college-level personnel committee both voted in favor of tenure, but the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences wrote a memorandum against it, and the University Board on Promotion and Tenure voted against granting tenure. The final decision rested with the university’s president, the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, who said in the statement that he had found “no compelling reasons to overturn” the tenure board’s recommendation.

“I played by the rules, and it plainly wasn’t enough to overcome the political opposition to my speaking out on the Israel-Palestine conflict,” Mr. Finkelstein said in an interview. “This decision is not going to deter me from making statements that, so far as I can tell from the judgment of experts in the field, are sound and factually based.”

Mr. Finkelstein’s case has excited widespread interest, in part because of the involvement of Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor of law at Harvard University. The two scholars have sparred repeatedly in public. Last fall, Mr. Dershowitz sent members of DePaul’s law and political-science faculties what he described as “a dossier of Norman Finkelstein’s most egregious academic sins, and especially his outright lies, misquotations, and distortions.”

Informed of the news this evening, Mr. Dershowitz said, “It was the right decision, proving that DePaul University is indeed a first-rate university, not as Finkelstein characterized it, ‘a third-rate university.’ Based on objective standards of scholarship, this should not have even been a close case.”

Now that Finkelstein will apparently have some time on his hands, Steven Plaut has some ideas for how he might spend it:

That being the case, the question arises of what Normie will now be doing for a second career. Being helpful sorts, we have given the matter some thought and have come up with a list of possible career moved for him, once DePaul requires that he remove his carcass off campus in a few weeks:

1. He can be the new Dean of History at the University of Teheran.

2. He can grew side curls and join the Neturei Karta.

3. He can open a fast food stand that serves fish and chips to the British Association of University Professors and the University and College Union.

4. He can be Avram Burg's butler in France.

5. He can become official Baathist mascot at soccer games in Damascus.

6. He can write a Master's thesis under Ilan Pappe about how the Jews murdered all the Arabs in Atlantis.

7. He can get a job tearing squares of toilet paper on Friday afternoons for Chicago area synagogues, before the sabbath.

8. He can become a make-pretend cowboy and then chase make-pretend Indian Ward Churchill.

9. He can paint circles on his rear end and then pose next to the security fence around the Gaza Strip.

10. He can change his name to Norman X and go to work for Louis Farrakhan.

11. He can be adopted legally as the son of Ernst Zundel, Neo-Nazi deported from Canada to Germany.

12. He can be David Irving's cell mate.

13. He can join Gush Shalom.

14. He can serve as designated driver for when Mel Gibson gets drunk.

15. He can be the chief pimp for the "Women in Black".

16. He can test explosives belts for the Hamas.

17. He can write some more anti-Semitic garbage with Alexander Cockburn.

18. He can work as a shabbas goy at the Ramat Hovav garbage dump.

19. He can serve as pothole filler.

20. He can get tenured at Ben Gurion University.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:16 PM