Fear and loathing on an American campus
I have a desire to take Norm, Chuck and Al and bang their bloody
heads together
By Robert Fisk
04/14/07 "ICH"
-- -- On the night of 11 September 2001, Al Dershowitz of
Harvard law school exploded in anger. Robert Fisk, he roared
over Irish radio, was a dangerous man. I was "pro-terrorist". I
was "anti-American" and that, Dershowitz announced to the people
of County Mayo, "is the same as anti-Semitic".
Of course I had dared to ask the "Why" question; Why had 19
Arabs flown aircraft into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon
and Pennsylvania? Take any crime on the streets of London and
the first thing Scotland Yard does is look for a motive. But
when we had international crimes against humanity on the scale
of New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, the first thing we
were not allowed to do was look for a motive. How very odd. The
19 murderers came from a place called the Middle East. Was there
a problem out there?
But Al would have none of this. And I got the message. To ask
the "Why" question made me a Nazi. Which is why I subsequently
received a flood of mail, much of it from Denver - what has
Denver got against me? - telling me that my mother was Adolf
Eichmann's daughter. Thanks, Al. I'm sure you didn't dream of
the hate mail your silly diatribe will inspire. I guess Irish
radio host Eamon Dunphy did. He pulled the plug on Al.
I'm recalling all this nonsense because Al has been back at work
attacking his old nemesis, Norm Finkelstein, who has just
applied for tenure at DePaul University in the US where he is an
assistant professor of politics. Norm's department has supported
him but Al has bombarded faculty members with a blistering
attack on Norm and all his works.
So let me just explain what these works are. Finkelstein, who is
Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors, has published a
number of works highly critical of Israel's occupation of the
Palestinian West Bank and the use Israeli supporters make of the
Holocaust of six million Jews to suppress criticism of Israel's
policies. He has accused Dershowitz of plagiarising portions of
his 2003 book The Case for Israel. Finkelstein's book, The
Holocaust Industry, earned Dershowitz's continued fury.
Now, I've known Norm for years and he is a tough,
no-holds-barred polemicist, angry against all the traditional
supporters of Israel, especially those who turn a blind eye to
torture. Personally, I find Norm's arguments sometimes a little
overwrought. In radio discussions, his voice will take on a
slightly whingeing tone that must infuriate his antagonists.
But Al is clearly trying to destroy Norm's career, adding that
the "dossier" he sent to DePaul academics - we remember that
word "dossier" rather too well in Britain and, I should add, Al
has absolutely no connection to DePaul University - contains
details of "Norman Finkelstein's ... outright lies,
misquotations and distortion".
It will be a disgrace, says Al, for DePaul to give tenure to
Norm. "His scholarship is no more than ad hominem attacks on his
ideological enemies." As if this is not enough, Al - who is also
Jewish - takes a crack at philosopher and linguistic academic
Noam Chomsky who has supported Norm and whom Al refers to as
"the high priest of the radical anti-Israeli left".
Enough, I hear readers shout. I agree. But Norm's politics
department give him top marks for scholarship and says he
"offers a detailed argument that suggests that Dershowitz
plagiarised or inappropriately appropriated large sections of
others work in The Case for Israel". Norm has a "substantial and
serious record of scholarly production and achievement" and has
lectured at the University of Chicago, Harvard, Georgetown and
Northwestern Universities.
So far so good. But now up pops "Chuck" Suchar, the dean of
DePaul's College of Liberal (sic) Arts and Sciences, with an
extraordinary recommendation that Norm should not be granted
tenure. While acknowledging that "he is a skilled teacher" with
"consistently high course evaluations," Chuck has decided "that
a considerable amount of [his work] is inconsistent with
DePaul's Vincentian values, most particularly our institutional
commitment to respect the dignity of the individual and to
respect the rights of others to hold an express different
intellectual positions". Norm's books, according to Chuck,
"border on character assassination and ... embody a strategy
clearly aimed at destroying the reputation of many who oppose
his views".
Now I have to say that scholars who read this column will be
interested to know of Chuck's own work. I gather it has
absolutely nothing to do with the Middle East, though I'm sure
his study of Gentrification and Urban Change: Research in Urban
Society (1992) had American readers queuing round the block of
their major bookstores in search of first editions. All I do ask
is how a college dean could involve himself in the same kind of
ad hominem attacks against one of his own colleagues that he has
accused that same colleague of being guilty of.
I loved too, that bit about "Vincentian values". That really
does warrant a chortle or two. St Vincent de Paul - the real de
Paul who lived from 1581 to 1660, not the de Paul of Chuck's
soft imagination - was a no nonsense theologian who was captured
by Muslim Turkish pirates and taken to Tunis as a slave. Here,
however, he argued his religious values so well that he
converted his owner to Christianity and earned his freedom. His
charitable organisations - he also created a home for foundlings
in Paris - became a legend which Chuck Suchar simply dishonours.
All over the United States, however, Norm's academic chums have
been condemning Suchar's tomfoolery; even in Beirut, where Norm
has lectured, academics of the American University have insisted
that he be granted tenure in his department, Arabs supporting a
Jewish professor and son of Holocaust survivors.
Of course, I grant that all this is a little heavy for the real
world and I do have a secret desire to take Norm, Chuck and Al
and bang their bloody heads together. But what is happening at
DePaul University is a very serious matter in the anodyne,
frightened academic world that now exists in the US. Norm's
moment of truth comes up in May. As they say watch this space.
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
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