DePaul Anti-Semitism

Subject: JAT action alert: anti-Semitism at DePaul
DATE:    20 September 2005
TYPE:    Action Item
SCOPE:    Global
SUBJ:    Anti-Semitism at De Paul University

In the past three years, De Paul university has:

* hired a notoriously anti-Semitic and unscholarly professor;

* fired a professor for advocating a factual approach to the Middle East; and

* sponsored an anti-Semitic art exhibit with "scholarly" captions that misstate history.

ACTION
------
Write to the President of DePaul University asking that he convene a panel of disinterested scholars from other universities to look into the situation at DePaul and to determine why the university has three times taken positions antithetical to the high standards of scholarly rigor expected of American Universities. And ask why in these three cases where Jewish issues were involved, the commitment to uphold evidence-based standards of fact was ignored.

CONTACT INFO
------------
The Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider C.M.
President, DePaul University
1 E. Jackson Blvd
Chicago, IL 60604
Phone:    312-362-8890
Fax:   312-362-6822
Email:    dholtsch@depaul.edu

SAMPLE LETTER
-------------
[As always, please try to frame a letter in your own words rather than just copying the sample.]

Dear Rev. Holtschneider:

I am writing to express my dismay at the failure of DePaul University to uphold those standards of scholarship that Americans expect from our Catholic Universities.

First, there is the hiring by DePaul of Norman Finkelstein, a man whose book denigrating the significance of the Holocaust has been characterized by Brown University Professor Omar Bartov as "a series of vague, undocumented and contradictory assertions." The hiring of such a man can only be seen as a deliberate insult to the memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Then, last September, Adjunct Professor Thomas Klocek, perhaps inadvisedly, stopped to correct the misstatements and inflammatory half-truths being circulated by the Students for Justice in Palestine. Dean Susanne Dunbleton's complaint that the "students' perspective was demeaned" is outrageous. The DePaul faculty and administration have an obligation to teach students that opinions must be supported by evidence. The opinion of these students, that "the Palestinians are being treated by Israelis the same way Hitler treated the Jews," is demonstrably untrue. In fact, Dean Dunbleton's statement is an indication that the DePaul administration fails to understand that the mission of a university is to teach an evidence-based approach to knowledge, not simply to affirm whatever "perspective(s)" students bring with them.

Finally, the recent display at the DePaul art museum not only included overtly anti-Semitic images, it featured a curatorial commentary that abandons the evidence-based approach to knowledge. The statement that there was a Palestinian State in existence in 1948 is demonstrably untrue, and the implication that the existence of a Jewish State in the ancient homeland of the Jewish people is an illegitimate "occupation" is highly political, anti-Jewish, and unworthy of a scholarly institution.

I am certain that you are as horrified as I am to discover that in several instances members of the academic community at DePaul have not only failed to uphold the scholarly standards that have long been the pride of America's Catholic universities, but have even opened the University to charges of anti-Semitism.

I urge you to immediately clear DePaul's name by convening a panel of recognized academic leaders to review the situation at DePaul and determine how such unscholarly standards and anti-Semitic attitudes can have infected the campus, and what should be done about it.

Sincerely yours,

BACKGROUND
----------
1. In 2002 De Paul hired Norman Finkelstein as an assistant professor. He will soon be up for tenure. Finkelstein is scorned in the mainstream scholarly community for his minimization of the Holocaust. His work attempts to place Hitler in the mainstream of acceptable thought, arguing that the Fuhrer's ideas "were no different from commonly held ideas of Western moral and political philosophers."

Brown University professor Omer Bartov, writing in the New York Times Book Review, described Finkelstein's infamous book, "The Holocaust Industry," as "a series of vague, undocumented and contradictory assertions."
http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.01.18/news4.html

Finkelstein is also notorious for his hatred of Israel, and for saying that he "truly honored" the Hezbollah terrorist organization. According to Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a member of the board of trustees of the City University of New York, "If he weren't Jewish he could be a classic anti-Semite." CUNY decided not to rehire Finkelstein following criticism by fellow professors of his "one-sided" approach to teaching complex issues and "bullying" of students.

Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, the President of DePaul, has defended Norman Finkelstein. "Finkelstein was hired at the recommendation of the Political Science faculty after extensive reference checks and an evaluation of the quality of his teaching. The faculty were aware of his published works that have provoked disagreement from many quarters, but also recognized that mainstream publishers, publications and reviewers have taken his research seriously, if critically." ( http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/005681.shtml )

In fact, far from taking Finkelstein's research seriously, the respected journal of ideas, Commentary, called Norman Finkelstein's ideas "crackpot."

And here is an assessment of Finkelstein's scholarly work from Finklestein's own thesis advisor at Princeton, Peter Novick: "many of (Finkelstein's) assertions are pure invention... No facts alleged by Finkelstein should be assumed to be really facts, no quotation in his book should be assumed to be accurate, without taking the time to carefully compare his claims with the sources he cites..."

The flaw in Rev. Holtschneider's argument is that he asserts that "Dr. Finkelstein has fulfilled his teaching responsibilities and presented his views at forums alongside other faculty who hold opinions that differ from his, thus contributing to the marketplace of ideas where concepts rise and fall on their merits." Actually, when false ideas are promoted by prestigious institutions, they can rise not because of their "merits," but because the institutions lend them credibility. Anti-Semitism, the hatred of Jews, is an idea that has shown its power to take on rapid credibility when important institutions promote or condone it.

Universities are not charged with defending freedom of speech; the Constitution takes care of that. No one denies the right of Norman Finklestein to hate Jews and to deny the Holocaust, but we have a right and arguably an obligation to question the judgment of a university that appoints to a teaching post a man who diminishes the horror of the Holocaust and demonizes the Jewish State.

According to the British philosopher Kenneth Minogue in The Concept of the University.

Universities were based, like all social institutions, on something valued -- on a "value judgment," to use the current jargon. They were based (if I may use an old formula) on "the disinterested pursuit of truth." It was this pursuit, as it were, that constituted the moral basis of their authority. They had no direct concern with justice, and no one was ever sent to a university to make him courageous. Their excellence was to be found in their limits. Academia dealt in the virtues of truth and exactitude. ( see an excellent essay on this topic http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/23/apr05/notes.htm )

This responsibility is shirked, when appointments are given to those, like Finkelstein, whose work consists not of reasoned and substantiated argument, but of "vague, undocumented and contradictory assertions." DePaul will soon be considering giving tenure to Norman Finkelstein.

Extensive documentation of Finkelstein's unscholarly and anti-semitic work can be found at http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=12. It includes a remarkable list of "The 10 Nuttiest Things "The Nutty Assistant Professor" Has Said". The list includes such memorable Finklestein canards as: this one on Jewish devil-worship: "I don't know about Judaism, but [Israel Shahak, an anti-Jewish zealot who wrote that Jews worship Satan] did. He knew it well. He took an interest in it and I have no doubt that what he wrote is accurate." this slander of the victims of the Shoah: "Finkelstein says...that most 'survivors' are bogus." and this typical Finkelstein fantasy on Pan Am 103 "Libya had nothing to do with it [the blowing up of Pan Am 103, for which Libya has acknowledged responsibility] but they are playing along. And that is the thing with the Swiss banks ...because they are so afraid of those hoodlums.... They are ruthless and reckless thugs [referring not to Libyan terrorists or Nazi war criminals, but to Jewish leaders seeking compensation for Nazi crimes]." This is the "scholarly work" of a man De Paul University is considering for tenure.

2. On Sept. 15 2004 Thomas Klocek, an adjunct professor with an unblemished record who taught courses in "Critical Thinking" was passing a student activities fair table where Students for Justice in Palestine were distributing literature. He noticed that the literature stated that "the Palestinians are being treated by Israelis the same way Hitler treated the Jews." He stopped and pointed out that some assertions in the leaflets were untrue.

Students tableing for an organization called United Muslims Moving Ahead joined the conversation and the encounter apparently degenerated into a shouting match with Klocek on one side and the two groups of Arab students taking the opposite position. Klocek was suspended without pay.

Klocek was accused by the Arab students of "demeaning their ideas" and "dishonoring their perspective." He has been suspended by the Universtiy without pay.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43819

Even though the students had called Israelis murderers and compared Israeli leaders to Hitler, Dean Susanne Dumbleton apologized in a letter to a student newspaper, expressing her deep regret that the students' "perspective was dishonored" and their ideas demeaned. (The student newspaper website has deleted the original article, but you can read about it in many places by doing a Google search on the quotation.)

There is, according to Dean Dunbleton, nothing to regret about students who believe that the Palestinian situation is equivalant to deliberate genocide, while an instructor who points out factual errors that students find uncogenial deserves to be fired.

3. In February, 2005, an exhibit entitled "The Subject of Palestine," opened at the DePaul University Art Museum, organized by Students for Justice in Palestine and co-sponsored by more than a dozen university departments and programs.

The exhibit was offensive in many ways. Some of the art was overtly anti-Semitic, such an an "image of a gaunt, ugly face with a scraggly beard and 'WANTED FOR OCCUPATION' branded across his forehead." One reviewer described the exhibit as "an insight into the general Palestinian psyche: deep sympathy for themselves coupled with a total indifference to the sufferings of others -- nothing in the exhibit hinted that Palestinians have for years been blowing up thousands of men, women and children, hoping to achieve their political ends."

In America we allow artists to be offensive. What we do not permit is that Universities deliberately promote untruth as fact, and that is what the literature does.

Unlike the artistic expressions in works of art, catalogues and curatorial signs accompanying works of art are scholarly productions held to scholarly standards of fact. In this exhibition one reads: "Resistance is the Palestinian response to the tragedy known as the Nakhba, when in 1948 statehood was lost to Israeli occupation."

You can't lose something you do not have. The Palestinians, who have never had a state, certainly did not lose "statehood" to Israel in 1948.

Does DePaul University really stand behind the statement that the very existence of Israel is an illegitimate "occupation"? The United Nations in 1948 and, indeed, fair-minded people everywhere, saw the two-state partition drawn up by the United Nations as a reasonable attempt to recognize the legitimate aspirations of both Jews and of Palestinian Arabs.

Further details about the art exhibit and the generally anti-Israel and frequently anti-Semitic atmosphere on the DePaul campus can be found at:
http://www.juf.org/news_public_affairs/article.asp?key=5961
http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17728