[wvns] Finkelstein Denied Tenure

DePaul Rejects Tenure Bid by Finkelstein and Says Dershowitz Pressure
Played No Role
by Jennifer Howard
The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 8, 2007
http://chronicle.com/news/article/2462/depaul-rejects-tenure-bid-by-finkelstein-and-says-dershowitz-pressure-played-no-role

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."

In the DePaul statement, Father Holtschneider decried the outside
interest the case had generated. "This attention was unwelcome and
inappropriate and had no impact on either the process or the outcome
of this case."

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