19 June 2007
A controversial author and political scientist who claims Jewish groups have exploited the holocaust, has lost his public battle for tenure at a US university. Norman Finkelstein, the author of 'The Holocaust Industry' who claims Israel uses accusations of anti-Semitism to deflect criticism of its policies blamed his rejection by the DePaul university in Chicago on a campaign against him due to his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "I met the standards of tenure DePaul required, but it wasn't enough to overcome the political opposition to my speaking out on the Israel-Palestine conflict," Mr Finkelstein told the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. His long-time foe, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, had circulated a dossier cataloguing what he called Mr Finkelstein's "academic sins, outright lies, misquotations, and distortions".
The university's president, the Rev Dennis Holtschneider, said in a letter: "In the opinion of those opposing tenure, your unprofessional personal attacks divert the conversation away from consideration of ideas, and polarize and simplify conversations that deserve layered and subtle consideration." However, Rev. Holtschneider denied that the campaign against Mr Finkelstein had had any impact and rejected any suggestion that academic freedom had been infringed.
