To the Editor:
In a classic example of chutzpah, Norman G. Finkelstein — who has tried to get the New York University law professor Burt Neuborne disbarred and who has filed complaints against me with the Harvard University administration — now has the temerity to accuse me of intruding on the tenure process at his university for responding to a specific request by a faculty member for documentation of Finkelstein’s made-up quotations and false citations (“Harvard Law Professor Seeks to Block Tenure for Adversary at DePaul U.,” The Chronicle, April 13). In my letter I prove that his alleged scholarship is nonexistent and fraudulent.
As the distinguished University of Chicago emeritus professor Peter Novick has said: “As concerns particular assertions made by Finkelstein, ... the appropriate response is not (exhilarating) ‘debate’ but (tedious) examination of his footnotes. Such an examination reveals that many of those 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.”
Finkelstein should not be denied tenure because of the tone of his scholarship, but because his alleged scholarship is nothing more than ad hominem attacks on his ideological enemies.
Tenure at a major American university is a powerful position; Finkelstein would misuse it on a national and international scale to promote his bigotry. It would be a scandal if DePaul University granted tenure to this nonscholar propagandist.
He is far less qualified than Ward Churchill. And when the University of Colorado at Boulder granted tenure to Ward Churchill, people at the university were not aware of the flaws in his scholarship. People at DePaul can claim no such ignorance about Finkelstein.
If I have contributed to the knowledge about Finkelstein’s fraudulent publications by exposing the truth, then I am proud of my role. No university should be afraid of the truth coming out, regardless of its source.
Alan M. Dershowitz Professor of Law Harvard University Cambridge, Mass.
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To the Editor:
Because in his efforts to influence DePaul University’s evaluation of Norman Finkelstein for tenure, Alan Dershowitz has repeatedly cited my criticisms of Finkelstein’s work, I would like to make public portions of an e-mail message I sent to the chair of DePaul’s political-science department — who, at Dershowitz’s suggestion, was requesting information discrediting Finkelstein:
“Professor Dershowitz has intervened in Finkelstein’s case not — God forbid! — as a partisan, but ‘in defense of scholarly standards,’ the same slogan Finkelstein invokes in his attacks on Dershowitz. Can anyone doubt that ... this high-minded talk of scholarly standards is a charade? Each charges the other with poor or dishonest scholarship not as part of any desire to uphold scholarly standards, but in order to discredit the (political) substance of the other’s arguments. ...
“It might be responded that the political origin of the charges against Finkelstein are irrelevant — the sole question before DePaul is whether his work ... contains scholarly flaws. ...
“Of course Finkelstein’s work — like that of all of us — is ‘flawed.’ (‘Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.’) The question is not whether the work is flawed, but whether, on balance, the positive contribution of the totality of his scholarly work outweighs its faults. ... The differential weights which each of us assigns to various sorts of merits and demerits makes this an enormously complex and controversial calculus. What I call tendentiousness, another scholar ... will call moral commitment; what I might call dishonesty, another will call an ‘excess of zeal.’
“I ... [have] been highly critical of Finkelstein’s book, The Holocaust Industry, and I don’t withdraw any of those criticisms. ... But I don’t confuse those criticisms with holy writ. To some this will seem pernicious ‘relativism.’ To me, it is acknowledgment that works exist in multiple contexts, and that we live in a pluralistic academic community. ...
“There are those who relish the adversarial role, ... advancing a cause ... and vanquishing an opponent of that cause. Such people are often inclined to stretch evidence to the breaking point (and occasionally beyond) in the service of their arguments. Professor Finkelstein seems to be of that number, as does Professor Dershowitz. (They are, in this respect, true soul mates.) This is ... not my style, which is much more tentative and cautious. It would be disastrous, I believe, to have a university composed exclusively of people like Finkelstein and Dershowitz, ... [and] equally undesirable to have a university composed exclusively of people like me. ...
“Dershowitz’s highly publicized intervention has ... made it impossible for DePaul to reject Finkelstein’s bid for tenure without everyone concluding that DePaul had capitulated to Dershowitz’s bullying. ... It may be...that your examination of Finkelstein’s written work [and] his teaching ... will lead you to conclude — on grounds having nothing to do with Dershowitz’s intervention — that he is unworthy of tenure at DePaul.
“If that’s the case, you’ll have to live with the opprobrium which the denial will bring to the institution. ...”
Peter Novick Emeritus Professor of History University of Chicago Chicago
http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 53, Issue 34, Page A63