Alan Dershowitz, Civility, and Censorship

BY JOHN K. WILSON Today’s CBS Sunday Morning featured a segment bemoaning the loss of civility, which is apparently the great crisis of our times. It included lawyer (and law professor) Alan Dershowitz declaring, “It’s hard to have dialogue without civility.” Dershowitz has complained about being shunned in Martha’s Vineyard for his defense of Donald…

Invitation to Norman Finkelstein to Speak at the University of Pittsburgh Withdrawn at the 11th Hour

An opinion piece, titled “Missed Opportunity; A Canceled Speaker Deserved to Be Heard at Pitt,” was recently published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette [September 26, 2015: A, 6]. After indicating that Finkelstein had been invited to participate in the university of Pittsburgh’s inaugural National Security Symposium, the op-ed writer offers this pithy summary of the very dubious…

A Transnational Occupation

This is a guest post by Kamala Visweswaran. She is a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California–San Diego. She is the editor of Everyday Occupations: Experiencing Militarism in South Asia and the Middle East (University of Pennsylvannia Press, 2013). My current Academe article, “Palestinian Universities and Everyday Life Under Occupation,” is not an article that describes causes, but rather the consequences of…

Interview with Matthew Abraham

Matthew Abraham’s new book, Out of Bounds: Academic Freedom and the Question of Palestine, examines intellectual freedom and the Israel-Palestine debate in America. Illinois Academe editor John K. Wilson conducted this interview via email with Abraham, who has served on the Illinois AAUP Council and the Illinois AAUP’s Committee A.

An Interview with Norman Finkelstein

John K. Wilson of Academe Blog interviewed Norman Finkelstein via email about his thoughts on the 5th anniversary of being denied tenure by DePaul University. Academe Blog: Have you been considered for any faculty jobs since leaving DePaul? Do you feel like you’ve been blacklisted from academia?

The Significance of Norman Finkelstein

By Matthew Abraham The facts on the Finkelstein case at DePaul have been covered in some detail elsewhere, so I will not review here what is already quite well known. It is difficult to dispute that DePaul was subjected to enormous financial and political pressure as it considered Finkelstein’s tenure application. The documentary record itself…

An Interview with Alan Dershowitz

John K. Wilson asked Alan Dershowitz to respond to some questions via email about his role in the denial of tenure to Norman Finkelstein. With the exception of correcting Dershowitz’s mistake of referring to Peter Novick as “Michael,” his full and unedited response is below. Here are the questions:

The Tenure Denial of Norman Finkelstein

By Peter Kirstein DePaul University denied Dr. Norman Finkelstein tenure and promotion to associate professor on Friday, June 8, 2007. I posted on my blog several leaked documents, none from Finkelstein I might add, including College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean Chuck Suchar’s infamous non-recommendation for tenure. I was attending the AAUP annual meeting…

Finkelstein, Academic Freedom, and a Demand to Fire Professors

Five years ago this week, DePaul University denied tenure to political scientist Norman Finkelstein (pdf of tenure denial letter). To mark the anniversary of this important academic freedom case, Academe Blog will have essays by Peter Kirstein and DePaul professor Matthew Abraham, and interviews with Norman Finkelstein and Alan Dershowitz. Finkelstein remains a figure who…