Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Finkelstein's Bitchin'

College Freedom
by John K. Wilson
Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Available at: http://collegefreedom.blogspot.com/2007/06/finkelsteins-bitchin-as-one-of-few.html

As one of the few people in America who has never referred to someone as a "bitch" and dislikes the term intensely, I am quite amused by Alan Dershowitz's recent article for David Horowitz's online zine. Dershowitz cites a Chicago Sun-Times report on the minority report of three members of DePaul's department of political science objecting to Norman Finkelstein.
As Peter Kirstein observes, the story further confirms that DePaul used inappropriate collegiality criteria as the reason to oppose to Finkelstein. However, Dershowitz focuses on one element of this report: that Finkelstein allegedly called a female staff member a "bitch." Needless to say, if every professor who ever called someone a "bitch" was fired, we'd pretty much clear out every university. To use an unproven claim like this, which is entirely unrelated to Finkelstein's qualifications, should outrage everyone on the left or the right. How long will it take to find someone who ever heard Dershowitz use the word "bitch" or some other offensive term?

It is ironic that the DePaul professors who were so unprofessional in denying Finkelstein tenure because he was unkind to them use the term "unprofessional" in describing Finkelstein's rudeness, as if politeness rather than the search for truth embodied the work of a professor.

5 comments:

Charles Johnson said...

Dear Mr. Finkelstein's supporters,

Mr. Finkelstein professes to be a proponent of free and unrestricted speech. Why hasn't he linked to the Chicago Sun-Times article and the minority report from the DePaul tenure committee about his alleged sexism? Why did he selectively leak only the majority report? How can his readers accurately gauge the wisdom of DePaul's decision to deny him tenure without all of the available information?

We, his readers, are left to conclude that the reasons provided in the report are accurate reasons for his denial of tenure.

Sincerely,

Charles Johnson

Anonymous said...

As the yahoo-group identity does not work and I do not want more blogs, this will come anonymously.
1.The link is on now, I think the Chicago Sun Time was slow in responding to Norman asking for the link.
2. Our ugly f(r)iend D. and his ilk can repeat the recipes given in Schopenhauer´s The Art of Deception infinite times. As he has exhausted the "anti-Semite"-accusation, now it´s "sexist". For us, who know Norman´s style, using a word like "bitch" is highly improbable, he would say something witty if the respective woman were stupid or obnoxious.

vicmanb said...

Charles - I see you have reposted your previous comment - I will repost my answer here:

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the minority report. The fact is that no one really knows how the minority report was leaked out, though faculty in the Political Science dept were expressly forbidden from distributing it. I think there are employee disciplinary actions to be taken if the rules are broken in this regard. Nontenured faculty in the dept despite being in the personnel committee have also not seen it. It is under very tight wraps. The truth is I have never read a copy myself and am very eager to read the whole thing. While the Sun Times may have a copy, we don't. It is DePaul who has suppressed the minority report...

You are right, there are no ways to accurately gauge the reliability of the decision, we have not been given the chance to see the minority report! From faculty that have told me they know the minority report, they said that President Holtschneider's letter to Finkelstein almost exclusively cited from the minority report. Of course there is no way to know because we have nothing to compare to.

I talked with a different senior faculty, and there is a rebuttal written by the majority in response to the minority report, which was handed to the Dean and the President but was not put in the file. The reason? Because the rebuttal was not delivered by Finkelstein himself, but the senior faculty who helped write it.

At this time, we are left to conclude that provided in the report are only a part of the real story - we are not allowed access to the minority report.

If you have any further questions please feel free to continue posting questions. I hope to try to answer then to the best of my abilities.

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