A political science professor at DePaul University in Chicago who has accused some Jews of improperly using the legacy of the Holocaust to get compensation payments has been denied tenure by a close vote after a drawn-out public fight.
Prof. Norman Finkelstein has said that Israel uses the Holocaust as an excuse for the fight against anti-Semitism and has managed to trick Germany into paying exorbitant sums of money in compensation. He also called Holocaust survivor and scholar Eli Wiesel a “clown prince.”
The Catholic college’s president said Finkelstein’s views offended many groups, and they had therefore decided not to accept him as one of their tenured lecturers.
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
13 Responses
If only the folks at the University of Colorado were as brave as the DePaul folks, they would kick out Prof. Ward L. Churchill…
With a name like Finkelstein I don’t know if this is good news or horrible news.
who is this guy, the grand rebbe of nkusa?
One of this guy’s arguments is “Prof. Norman Finkelstein has said that Israel uses the Holocaust as an excuse for the fight against antisemitism….”
I’ve heard this said before (including by the Neturai Karta faction who visited Iran), but I don’t understand it. One would think that the cataclysmic perpetration of the single most deliberate horrifying attempt at genocide in all of Earth’s history would indeed be a valid “excuse” to combat antisemitism. In fact, it should be a most compelling reason to do so! (Especially, if as a secular person he doesn’t believe that Hashem is a major part of the equation.)
His stance is perplexing. Obviously, he’s an anti-Semite! Ironic, isn’t it?
would love to contact this ‘professor’ & teach
him a few things about reality.
Finkelstein is highly regarded by the anti-Semitic crowd, because he’s Jewish. I consider him a monster.
Maybe his name should be Norman Frankenstein
Oh please. The headlined “questioned the Holocaust is so miss leading. He never questioned IT he questioned the use of it. I think he has a right to question the use of it and deep in our hearts we know that it was sometimes over used. This is sad that he was wrong by super over aggresive Zionists with whom most of the Torah world disagrees with
I actually have spoken with Professor Finkelstein. He wrote a book “The Holocaust Business” where he states how some Jewish organizations use the Holocaust to pursue their own agendas and get money. Look what happened to people like my father who got a few thousand dollars but the lawyer who represented him and his fellow landsleit did very nicely.
The place I part company with him is the Holocaust denial. He is fine until he goes into Holocaust denial. Then you wonder if he is truly a self hating Jew. In the end, that is how it boils down to it. It reminds me of a child of Holocaust survivors who became a Nazi as a result of their trying to secularize their son and prevent what happened to them to happen again to their son. It is a type of situation you don’t know if you are supposed to laugh or cry.
Alan Dershowits was one of the notably vocal professors who fought against this monster getting tenure!
Finkelstein is especially dangerous because he is *not* a raving maniac. He does not bluster and rant; he is very calm, deliberate, and well-spoken.
He was recently interviewed on NPR’s “World View” program, and the most disturbing part of the program was the fact that he was asked almost *no* difficult questions. For example, he discussed at length how reasonable and smart Palestinians could be.
I would have expected the interviewer to follow up with a question like, “Well, if they’re so smart and reasonable, why do most of their organizations advocate the complete destruction of Israel?” or “What about the systematic dehumanization of Jews in their textbooks and teaching materials?” or “What about attempts by Israel to compensate landowners as well as build housing for Palestinians claiming to be displaced?”. But no such questions were forthcoming. Unfortunately, NPR lived up to its reputation this time around.
Finklestein is a liar. I have seen him lie and get called out for it. He is part of the evil Finkelstein-chomsky-cockbun trio that tries to attack everything related to israel and judaism. His parents where holocaust survivors.
He is also an intellectual lightweight who tried to become controversial in order to get tenure out of fear that denying it would appear to be censorship. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Dersh, he was exposed for what he is.
An additional thought: We shouldn’t applaud DePaul University too hard for denying Professor Finkelstein lifetime job security.
DePaul University has one of the worst reputations nationally for censoring conservative speech and for allowing anti-Israel viewpoints to be presented while suppressing pro-Israel viewpoints.
Added to that is DePaul’s anecdotal reputation in Chicago’s Jewish community for making it extremely difficult for Shomer Shabbos students to reschedule finals or thesis defenses that coincide with Shabbos or holidays.
This is hardly a case of a courageous educational institution standing up against a professor with a political agenda: by denying tenure, the university is hoping to gain a slight veneer of credibility while avoiding the publicity that would be generated if Dershowitz, et. al., *really* examined the environment at DePaul.