A very bad day for academic freedom - http://chronicle.com/news/article/2462/depaul-rejects-tenure-bid-by-finkelstein-and-says-dershowitz-pressure-played-no-role

Is it Ian? It seems to me there is a difference between "academic freedom" and "academic tenure". While the former is a human right, the latter is surely something that has to be earned.

The question is: what has this person done to earn the latter?

I know nothing of the case though.

Baz

I'm away from home at the moment, and will post more on this affair when I'm back if anyone is interested. Suffice to say that this is a professor who in any other circumstances would undoubtedly have been awarded tenure, and whose work has been highly praised by no less than the leading Holocaust scholar, Raul Hilberg. He has been denied tenure as the result of a relentless political campaign spearheaded by the odious Alan Dershowitz (whose work Finkelstein demonstrated to be both fradulent and plagiaristic) on the grounds of his critical views (backed up by mountains of information, much of it taken from Israel Human Rights Organizations) concerning Israel's actions in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere. The Israeli lobby is flexing its muscles once again (I believe the American ADL once boasted of how they could make or break any politician if they so choose). Academic freedom does not extend to criticising Israel, in many US universities, it would seem. The viciousness of this campaign is quite shocking.

Later I'll give a batch of reliable references - you can always start by looking at Finkelstein's homepage here - you'll see he publishes most of the articles and letters that are sharply critical of him as well as those praising his work. The Wiki pages on Finkelstein and the Dershowitz-Finkelstein affair are unreliable, as they are forever being changed drastically by people trying to unduly weight them one way or another. But the extra links at the bottoms of those pages are worth following up.