Peter N. Kirstein

Cary Nelson, president of A.A.U.P., has called for the reinstatement of Professor Ward Churchill in a one-paragraph blog post in the New York Times. Why A.A.U.P. has chosen to wait after two years of an obvious persecution of a professor and to use a brief blog post to declare this policy is somewhat disappointing. Yet hopefully we will see a robust A.A.U.P. defence of  Ward’s academic freedom and actively engage this matter publicly in its own media and internal Committee A response and recognise that to be silent is to lie. I am hopeful this announcement represents official A.A.U.P. policy which subsequently precipitates robust action:

I agree with Professor Fish that the disputes over Ward Churchill’s work should have remained in traditional scholarly venues and not been made the subject of disciplinary hearings. Ward Churchill should be reinstated as a faculty member at the University of Colorado.

Cary Nelson
AAUP President

— Cary Nelson

Dr Nelson was responding to a surprising Stanley Fish op-ed that supported Mr Churchill’s reinstatement and condemned the “circus” that, under the cover of academic misconduct, expelled him in 2007 from the academy for his 9/11 progressive views. I also posted a blog response in the New York Times.

146. April 6, 2009 1:19 pm Link

Unjustly persecuted professor Ward Churchill waves a dollar after a Denver jury sided with him in his civil suit against the University of Colorado over violation of academic freedom and First Amendment rights. (Paul Aiken, Daily Camera ); From Denver Post, April 3, 2009

While Roger Bowen, former General Secretary of A.A.U.P., can trash Professor Churchill in the Wall Street Journal and claim he does not merit academic freedom protection, an impartial jury argued he does. Dr Bowen in a disgraceful and unseemly letter, claimed Mr Churchill’s hiring and promotion up the various ranks was due to his status as a “provocateur.” Such a reckless, UNPROFESSIONAL charge is an insult to the various review committees that monitored the professor’s publications, teaching and service and is totally unsubstantiated by any evidence. And this calumny from a former General Secretary of the American Association of University Professors? How shameful and egregious.

I know the WSJ loves to print articles that savage and recklessly charge progressive professors. They wrote two editorials calling for my suspension and sanctions in 2002 and never even allowed me to respond. So the Bowens of this world, who were cashiered from A.A.U.P., now become the headhunters for the far right. Well, Dr Bowen, this courageous Colorado jury did not agree with you.

I have written for over a year and  a half that like myself, when I was suspended in 2002 for an anti-war e-mail, it was public rage over political ideology that was the primary reason for Churchill’s dismissal. Yes he did commit academic misconduct but such an airing of these issues would not have occurred had governors, right-wing press elites and pusillanimous university presidents not wanted “to fix the problem.” I do not know if Mr Churchill’s publishing transgressions merited firing; I suspect they did not but the lesson here is simple: When a university gangs up on an academic for unpopular and unconventional speech, and then removes him from a tenured position, it better make sure its own house is in order.

Looking forward, I hope Mr Churchill will return to C.U. as a tenured full professor in Ethnic Studies. If the university ignores this jury verdict, then hopefully it will be forced to restore the professor through other legal remedies. Since he was fired for his beliefs and not his research shortcomings, according to the jury decision, he must be allowed to return to teaching at the university beginning this fall.

$1 win for Churchill

Failing to protect Ward Churchill’s free speech will cost the University of Colorado – at least $1.

The former ethnic-studies professor won his civil case against CU on Thursday after a unanimous jury found he was fired in retaliation for his controversial essay about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But the jury awarded Churchill only the paltry amount in damages, allowing both sides to claim some measure of victory in a four-year battle pitting free speech and tenure against the value of academic purity.

Churchill’s attorney, David Lane, lauded the jury’s decision as a victory for free speech.

“I can’t tell you how significant this is,” Lane said. “There are very few moments that give the First Amendment this kind of life.”

CU president Bruce Benson said the small monetary damages show how much the jury believed Churchill.

“While we respect the jury’s decision, we strongly disagree,” he said in a written statement. “It doesn’t change the fact that more than 20 of Ward Churchill’s faculty peers on three separate panels unanimously found he engaged in deliberate and repeated plagiarism, falsification and fabrication that fell below the minimum standards of professional conduct.”

Former Gov. Bill Owens, who may have started the whole affair with a scathing indictment of Churchill’s essay and a demand for his firing, said the verdict was not a victory for the professor.

“I think the $1 in damages accurately reflects the jury’s appreciation for Ward Churchill’s warm and endearing personality,” Owens said.

Further damages possible

Denver Chief District Judge Larry J. Naves will decide in a separate hearing whether the former Boulder professor can return to his job or receive “front pay” for future years he could have worked at CU.

Lane says he will file a motion to recover legal fees for hundreds of hours of work he and co-counsels Qusair Mohamedbhai and Robert Bruce put into the case – but he deferred questions about a dollar amount.

“We work cheap,” he said. Still, the bill, if assessed to CU, is likely to be well into seven figures.

Ken McConnellogue, a spokesman for CU, said the university is looking at all options regarding an appeal to the verdict, legal fees and Churchill’s reinstatement.

“We’ll cross that bridge if we get to it,” he said of allowing Churchill back on campus.

Lane said CU can’t retaliate against Churchill again by giving him a shoddy assignment on campus or a substandard position or he’ll sue again.

Churchill hugged his attorneys after the verdict was read. CU attorneys Patrick O’Rourke and Kari Hershey shook hands with Churchill and his attorneys before leaving the courtroom without making a statement.

Churchill briefly spoke outside the courtroom and said, “It took four years. It took a while. And it was quick, it was justice.”

CU “has been exposed for what it is,” Churchill said.

“It was found by a jury that I was wrongly fired,” he said. “They not only violated my rights, but my students’ rights and the community’s rights.”

Churchill said he was satisfied with a $1 judgment and said his case was not about money.

“Reinstatement, of course,” he said. “I did not ask for money. I asked for justice.”

Churchill thanked his family and his supporters and his lawyers. He also blasted his detractors, including KHOW 630 AM radio talk show hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman and former Rocky Mountain News editorial page editor Vincent Carroll, now a Denver Post columnist, who Churchill said “tried to shape public consciousness in a false fashion.”

Churchill excused himself from the crush of news cameras and said he wanted to “get some silence and repose.”

About two hours before the verdict was read, jurors asked the judge questions that seemed to indicate one of them was holding out on how much money to award Churchill.

The jury of four women and two men declined to discuss their verdict, walking past reporters under escort from sheriff’s deputies.

“Little Eichmanns” reference

Churchill’s essay, “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” became national news in January 2005 as he was set to make a speech at Hamilton College in New York. A student found the essay, written on Sept. 12, 2001, and protested Churchill’s appearance.

Churchill said the speech was intended to criticize America’s economic and foreign policies. In the essay, he compared some of the victims in the World Trade Center attack to “little Eichmanns” after Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who engineered the destruction of the Jews in World War II.

Owens, several CU regents, and hosts of cable and talk radio shows all called for him to be fired from CU because of his comments.

CU launched an investigation to determine whether that essay was protected speech. Once Churchill was in the spotlight, allegations surfaced that he had committed plagiarism or academic misconduct in other writings, and another series of investigations was launched. A review of his work led to a vote by CU regents in 2007 that the tenured professor be fired.

CU counsel O’Rourke argued that the university fired Churchill solely because he had engaged in fabrication, falsification and plagiarism in some of his writings on American Indians. O’Rourke told the jury that Churchill’s termination had nothing to do with the 9/11 essay.

But Lane told the jury there is no way his client would have lost his job from CU had it not been for the “howling mob” at the university gates who wanted him gone because of the essay.

Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com Staff writer Lynn Bartels contributed to this report.

What’s next

A decision on the job. Denver Chief District Judge Larry J. Naves will decide whether Churchill can return to his job or receive “front pay” for future years he could have worked at CU.

Northeastern Illinois University Provost Lawrence P. Frank http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QuZEZ4uZOt4/SeMN_1tT9uI/AAAAAAAAIHc/InGGlpNxYv4/s200/dr+lawrence.jpg

Dr Lawrence P. Frank, provost  and vice president for academic affairs at N.E.I.U., was dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at St Xavier University where I teach. He left for the provost job at N.E.I.U. in Fall 2002. In Spring semester of 1996 during a job-search departmental vote, Dr Frank repeatedly raised the issue of age regarding a woman who had been brought to campus. Frankly I don’t think school deans should be voting within departments on a job search. That gives these folks TWO votes: one as an ersatz department member and then the exercise of power as a dean. Just arrogant and outrageous!!! Dr Frank insisted there were not enough young people in Arts and Sciences and was emphatic in wanting to hire a younger candidate than the woman. I aggressively addressed questions about the propriety, if not legality, of discussing this aspect of a candidate’s profile. He shrieked at me with vehemence and rage that I would make the charge of ageism. But that is what it was, pure and simple! I have never forgotten this incident and to this day churn at the thought of being rebuked in such an abusive and disrespectuful manner in front of my department colleagues, for daring to make an ethical and warranted challenge to an out-of-control, ageist administrator. I can assure you if I ever again encounter such administrative misconduct and egregious violations of civil rights law, I will use all appropriate means to engage such excess. I think Dr Frank should have been  reprimanded and fired from St Xavier for this single incident for palpable and irrefutable age discrimination in employment practices.

http://steynian.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/no_free_speech.jpg

The following was sent to me by the distingusihed University of Texas Professor Dana Cloud.

Dear Supporters and Signers (and potential signers and supporters) of Justice for Loretta Capeheart petition. The petition is at
http://www.petitiononline.com/j4lc/petition.html.

I am attaching background information on this case for those unfamiliar with it.

Thank you all for your support and your continued commitment to free speech and academic freedom. As of today, we have 700 signatures, including those of prominent scholars Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Please join them, if you have not, in signing the petition to support Loretta. Also, please forward this call far and wide as you see fit.

There is an emerging front in the struggle for academic freedom. Some university leaders are attacking outspoken faculty on the grounds that university employees have no free speech rights when it comes to criticizing their own institutions. This attack epitomizes Northeastern  Illinois University¹s harassment of justice studies professor Loretta Capeheart, who has been targeted by her administration for her outspokenness for workers¹ rights in a 2004 faculty strike, against the Iraq war, in defense of student protesters, and for increased representation of minority scholars at NEIU. In retaliation, she was denied merited awards and an appointment to chair of her department‹a position to which she was elected. NEIU Vice President Melvin Terrell publicly defamed Capeheart, accusing her without  grounds of stalking a student.

Capeheart is suing Terrell for defamation, alongside NEIU¹s President and Provost {Lawrence P. Frank} for retaliation and violation of her constitutional right to free speech. Incredibly, the administrators¹ response argues that Capeheart, as a state employee, may not sue the University or its officials, contravene their positions, question their conduct, or speak as a faculty member on matters of public concern. Their motion to dismiss the case states that clothed in her authority as a faculty member,² Capeheart criticized University policy, ³even going so far as to disagree with the stated positions of the Provost.² ³It is very middle ages,² Capehart said, ³like the lord vs. the serf.²

Unfortunately, the administration has frightening legal precedent, according to the AAUP.  The Supreme Court¹s 2006 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos held that state employees are not afforded first amendment protection if they are speaking on subjects relevant to their professional duties; When UC Irvine professor Juan Hong angered University administrators by opposing the replacement of tenure-track faculty by term lecturers, he was denied a merit salary increase. The Court ruled against Hong, citing Garcetti.

However, there is some good news to report on Loretta’s case!  On March 2, 2009, Judge Blanche Manning, U.S. District Court Judge, Northern Illinois District agreed to hear Loretta¹s case despite the university¹s arguments that it was ³futile² for her to claim any right to free speech. Please see the judge¹s comments below.

There is still much to do to guarantee justice for Loretta and to defend our rights to free speech and academic freedom.  We are asking that you  continue to forward the link to the petition to others concerned with academic freedom and urge them to sign on to the petition.  A press conference will be called for the petition delivery to NEIU President Sharon Hahs in April. An announcement will be forthcoming.

Please sign at http://www.petitiononline.com/j4lc/petition.html , and
encourage others to do so.

Thanks again for your support.

Statement from Judge Manning:

“The defendants oppose the amendment on the basis that it would be futile. Specifically, they contend that the First Amendment protects only speech by public employees that addresses matters of public concern as opposed to matters involving their official duties. See Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 417 (2006) (³when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.²) The defendants contend that the speech at issue was not protected by the First Amendment because (i) it addressed university policy, (ii) occurred at university-sponsored events which Capeheart attended as a university employee, and (iii) concerned her official duties. However, as Capeheart argues, the speech also addressed matters of public concern such as discrimination and the ability of students to express anti-war views. At this juncture, without the benefit of a full record including details of Capeheart¹s speech and the nature of the events she attended, it would be premature to determine whether her speech was protected by the First Amendment. Accordingly, futility is not a basis for denying Capeheart¹s motion for leave to amend.” Judge Manning, 3-2-09

Dana L. Cloud Associate Professor Graduate Advisor, Director of Graduate Studies Department of Communication Studies University of Texas 1 University Station A1105, CMA 7.114 Austin, TX 78712

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~dcloud

 I feel it is injudicious to separate both the results of an investigation and the motivation for its formation. In Mr Churchill’s case, he was clearly the object of ideological rage and animus stemming from his essay on the 9/11 attacks. While academic misconduct cannot be excused or tolerated which appears to have occurred in some of Mr Churchill’s scholarship, I believe dismissal was excessive. His most egregious offense was to write essays under an assumed name and use those sources as confirmation of some of his work. I think such actions cannot be defended but I also believe an investigation of his scholarship that is motivated by passion and anger is guilty of possible overreaction.

As I have written elsewhere, when state governors involve themselves in personnel matters as was frequent and undeniable in this case, a university is subjected to unwarranted POLITICAL presssure to “fix the problem.” Firing a tenured professor should not be conducted under these circumstances and anticipate there would be no public concern about bias and efforts at ideological cleansing.

Witness: Churchill was not apologetic

Professor Joe Rosse, who led CU’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct, has testified that the panel was convinced Churchill had plagiarized, falsified and fabricated some of his scholarly writings and had engaged in academic misconduct.

He also testified that he was concerned that Churchill was not apologetic and failed to recognize standards of good scholarship.

Churchill, a 61-year-old former ethnic studies professor at CU-Boulder, sued the university after he was fired in 2007. He believes he was let go because of the political controversy that exploded following an essay he wrote about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Over the last two days, jurors have asked questions that appear to challenge CU’s case.

In Colorado, judges may allow jurors in civil cases to submit questions for witnesses. The questions are submitted to Denver Chief District Judge Larry Naves before they are read by him to the witness.

This morning, jurors asked Rosse about the panel’s decision to have a full professor serve on the investigative committee rather than an associate professor who specialized in the specific field of American Indian studies.

“It was not either or. We wanted a person that was both a full professor and with expertise,” Rosse said.

“Did you ever consider anyone else to be chair of the investigative committee after Ward Churchill shared his concern about Mimi Wesson having a bias against him?” a juror asked.

Rosse said he could not remember.

Wesson, a CU law professor chaired the investigative committee and has been accused by Churchill of having a bias against him before she headed the panel.

Wesson denied the allegation when she testified earlier in the trial.

Today’s snowstorm stopped the trial this afternoon and also could cause scheduled testimony to be postponed into next week if the weather remains unsafe Friday.

Judge Naves issued an order about noon to close the courthouse.

Felisa Cardona: fcardona@denverpost.com

I recently appeared on a Gaza Panel and noted the issues of academic freedom and the New McCarthyism as competing values in America. In particular in critiquing Israeli policy toward the besieged Palestinian nation there is a taboo on critical thinking or even scholarly discourse.

I appreciate this rather attractive blog running an excerpt:

http://wardchurchilltrial.wordpress.com/page/7/

Dr. Peter Kirstein has posted his remarks for the Chicago Gaza Panel, including a “naming names of the courageous victims of the New McCarthyism who refused to be silent”. (And one of the best jabs I’ve ever seen at the always/already useless Stanley Fish.)

Spanish philosopher Miguel Unamuno, during the Spanish Civil War, declared in 1936, “Sometimes to be Silent is to Lie.” He directed this remark on his campus of the University of Salamanca, where he had served twice as rector, to the pro-Franco fascist General Milan-Astray, who forced him off campus at gunpoint and placed Unamuno under house arrest. This was a shocking violation of academic freedom which I am sure Stanley Fish, now op-ed columnist of the New York Times, would with characteristic nuance defend.

Unamuno died within two months after suffering a heart attack. In this country professors have been denied tenure, denied promotion, subjected to public vilification, experienced censorship of their books, been prohibited from speaking at previously scheduled events, been suspended, denied the right to teach classes in their specialty, pressured to turn down appointments at universities, and have been fired from both tenure and non-tenure track positions for speaking truth to power about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Naming names was used during the McCarthy Era to blacklist and smear supposed communists and internationalists including many academicians. Well I am naming names of the courageous victims of the New McCarthyism who refused to be silent: Norman Finkelstein, Joel Kovel, Terri Ginsberg, Mehrene Larudee, Douglas Giles, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Joseph Massad, Ward Churchill and Juan Cole…

The Chronicle of Higher Education has reported on the A.A.U.P. Illinois Confrence letter to the College of DuPage concerning their proposed draconian implementation of David Horowitz, Academic Bill of Rights and their egregious lack of shared governance with its faculty.

http://chronicle.com/news/article/6134/illinois-aaup-protests-proposed-policy-changes-at-college-of-du-page

I am vice president of Illinois-A.A.U.P. and am proud of our participation in this episode which attempts to defer an institution’s effort to enforce conservative ideological correctness in the name of neutrality.

VIA FACSIMILE (630-858-2869)

 March 18, 2009

 Dr. Robert L. Breuder

President

College of DuPage

425 Fawell Boulevard

Glen Ellyn, Illinois 60137-6599

 Mr. Micheal E. McKinnon
Chair, Board of Trustees

College of DuPage

425 Fawell Boulevard

Glen Ellyn, Illinois 60137-6599

Dear President Breuder and Chair McKinnon:

The leadership of the Faculty Association and other members of the faculty at the College of DuPage have sought the advice and assistance of the American Association of University Professors as a result of a series of actions that the administration and board of trustees have reportedly taken over the past year or so. These actions appear to us to raise important issues relating to the role of the faculty in the governance of the institution. Of immediate concern is the proposed new policy manual, extensively revised with no faculty involvement, that is being considered for adoption by the board at its meeting tomorrow. Faculty members have expressed their concern about the trustees’ apparent failure to follow the college’s well-established and board-endorsed collaborative processes of shared governance (set forth in Policy and Procedure 1001) for revising the manual. In addition, they have complained about potential threats to principles of academic freedom contained in some of the proposed revisions of the manual. We are aware of-and commend to your attention-the analysis of these specific provisions that has already been communicated to the administration and the board by the state council of the AAUP’s Illinois Conference.

The Association’s interest in these matters stems from our longstanding commitment to sound academic governance, the principles of which are enunciated in the enclosed Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, originally formulated in conjunction with the American Council on Education and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. The AAUP adopted the document as policy, and the other two organizations commended it to the attention of their respective constituents. The Statement on Government, which embodies standards widely accepted in American higher education, rests on the premise that appropriately shared responsibility and cooperative action are required between and among the governing board, the administration, and the faculty in determining educational policy and in resolving educational problems within the academic institution. It refers to “an inescapable interdependence” in this relationship which requires “adequate communication among these components, and full opportunity for appropriate joint planning and effort.” It further asserts that “the interests of all are coordinate and related, and unilateral effort can lead to confusion or conflict.” 

 Section 5 of the Statement on Government defines the particular role of the faculty in institutional government, stating in pertinent part:

 The faculty has primary responsibility for such fundamental areas as curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction, research, faculty status, and those aspects of student life which relate to the educational process. On these matters the power of review or final decision lodged in the governing board or delegated by it to the president should be exercised adversely only in exceptional circumstances, and for reasons communi-cated to the faculty. It is desirable that the faculty should, following such communication, have opportunity for further consideration and further transmittal of its views to the president or board.

 The particular authority and primary responsibility of the faculty in the decision-making processes of the academic institution in these areas derive from its special competence in the educational sphere. It follows from this proposition that the faculty should play an active and meaningful role in the development as well as in the revision of institutional policies in those areas in which the faculty has primary responsibility. Moreover, under the Statement on Government “the governing board and president should, . . . in [all] matters where the faculty has primary responsibility, concur with the faculty judgment except in rare instances and for compelling reasons which should be stated in detail.”

 According to the information we have received, relations between the faculty on the one hand and the COD board of trustees on the other have been marked in recent years by turmoil and growing mistrust. Faculty members report that they have frequently been at loggerheads with the board over various academic policy and governance issues, and they object to what they perceive to be a lack of meaningful consultation with the faculty on key educational policy matters where the Statement on Government calls for the faculty, because of its particular knowledge and expertise, to have primary responsibility. They have complained about what they have described as a pattern of board indifference toward or disregard for the legitimate role of the faculty in institutional decision making and a lack of sensitivity to faculty needs and concerns. They contend that the board of trustees has been unresponsive both to complaints they have made over an erosion of faculty rights and to their efforts to secure the board’s assistance in recognizing the faculty’s proper position in the college’s governance structure. These concerns have culminated in their strong objections to the proposed revisions of the policy manual.  

 If, as we hope is the case, the administration and governing board of the College of DuPage wish to address the faculty’s concerns and reestablish the sense of community and mutual trust that seems to have eroded in the past year and that is vital for any college to be able to fulfill its mission, we believe that they need to develop and sustain a more constructive working relationship with the faculty. From everything we have seen, the faculty seems eager to work with you, but it needs to be assured that it will be afforded an appropriate role in the significant decision-making processes affecting the future health of the institution, as expressly called for in the Statement on Government. In our judgment, if the board were to heed the faculty’s call to delay adoption of the proposed new manual to allow for necessary consultation, it would send a strong and positive signal.

 We appreciate that the information in our possession on which this letter is based has come to us almost entirely from faculty sources at the College of DuPage and that you may have additional information that would contribute to our understanding of the events we have recounted and the issues with which we are concerned. We would accordingly welcome your comments. Assuming the essential accuracy of the foregoing, we hope and expect that the COD board of trustees will address the faculty’s concerns and do so in a manner that is respectful of the principles of shared authority and collegial responsibility as well as the principles of academic freedom that we along with our colleagues on the state council of the AAUP’s Illinois Conference have commended to your attention.   

Sincerely,

B. Robert Kreiser

Associate Secretary

BRK:id

Enclosure

cc: Members of the College of DuPage Board of Trustees [via e-mail]

Professor Nancy Stanko, President, College of DuPage Faculty Association

Professor Walter J. Kendall III, President, Illinois Conference AAUP

Professor Larry G. Gerber, Chair, AAUP Committee on College and University Governance

The following letter was sent by the American Association of University Professors (A.A.U.P.)- Illinois State Council to the Board of Trustees of the College of DuPage. They are considering the adoption of what journalist-author David Horowitz has advocated as the common law for academe: Academic Bill of Rights (A.B.O.R.). Rather it is our opinion an attack on academic freedom, teaching and scholarship. Its adoption will place the College of DuPage beyond the mainstream of educational practices in the United States. More importantly it will diminish the quality of education available to its students which ultimtely are the ones who suffer with the crazed imposition of draconian, ideological polemics to restrict open inquiry.

March 16, 2009

Dear College of DuPage trustees:
 
The state council of the Illinois conference of the American Association of University Professors wishes to express our deep concern about the proposed policy changes reflected in the new Policy Manual for the Board of Trustees. We believe it represents an extraordinary attack on academic freedom, shared governance, and intellectual liberty on campus. We believe that the changes would put the College of DuPage outside the mainstream of colleges and universities in the state and in the country.
 
We recognize that the proposed policy manual makes some improvements over the original proposal in areas such as student publications and educational philosophy. However, there are still many serious threats to academic freedom contained in these policies.
 
The most disturbing proposals  give the administration extraordinary power to ban speakers and protests, ban any discrimination based on “viewpoint or opinion,” and  prohibit “demeaning” behavior. These policies will most certainly create a litigation nightmare for the College of DuPage as censored speakers or disgruntled students and applicants sue for “opinion discrimination.”
 
The sheer number of proposed policies that fail to meet AAUP – recommended standards relating to intellectual freedom is a matter of deep concern to us. The Board of Trustees should drop this effort at wholesale, and unfortunately unwarranted, revision of the campus policies in this manner, and instead begin a process of working with campus constituencies, particularly the faculty to revise individual policies. We also encourage the Board to utilize AAUP statements (available at www.aaup.org) as models for these policies.
 
Below we list in detail some of the objectionable proposed policies and why we believe that they are flawed. We encourage members of the Board of Trustees to contact us if you have any further questions about this issue, and we would be happy to open a dialogue about the College of DuPage Policy Manual.
 
Sincerely,
Illinois AAUP State Council
by Walter J. Kendall III, President
 
Specific analysis of College of DuPage proposed policies by the Illinois AAUP:
 
5-30
“Board members and employees of the College are required at all times to perform their duties in such a manner that they present a proper and ethical image to the community and avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”
Requiring employees to meet an undefined standard of “a proper and ethical image” could easily be abused to punish employees based on “image” alone.
 
5-30
A. 1.
“No Board of Trustee member or employee shall use or permit to be used College equipment, materials, services, or other property for personal convenience, benefit, or profit.”
 
This policy is far too restrictive, and needs to be brought in line with modified policy 15-25 by adding “while working” and removing “convenience.”
 
5-30
A.3.
“No Board of Trustee member or employee shall practice dishonest or demeaning behavior.”
 
This policy is too vague in banning all “demeaning” behavior without defining the term. Certainly, it is not intended to ban satire and humor, even though it can have a bite, so to speak.
 
10-110
“The rights of free speech and lawful assembly do not confer upon those who exercise these rights a license to limit, interfere with, or infringe upon the equal rights of others.”
 
This confusing and unnecessary policy is extremely vague, and should be eliminated.
 
10-110
“The President and/or his authorized representative reserves the right to invite, acknowledge, or deny requests for assemblage as well as the right to control the time, place and manner of the assemblages.”
 
Under the Supreme Court rulings about the First Amendment, there can be reasonable regulations of time, place, and manner. But this does not mean a public college has total arbitrary power over the time, place, and manner of assemblies. Nor can the President be given complete authority to deny requests for assemblies. Only in very rare cases, where public safety is immediately endangered, can a public college prohibit an assembly or protest.
 
10-115
“The President and/or his authorized representative reserves the right to invite, acknowledge or deny requests for outside speakers or programs as well as the right to control the time, place, and manner of the speaker or the program to be presented.”
 
This repeats the same flawed policy that gave the administration absolute power to ban protests.
 
10-115
“No person shall be required to listen to a speaker or participate in a program that he/she finds objectionable.”
 
This policy in effect is the antithesis of education. Education is about the wisdom and skills of the ages, and challenging the students to grow and develop in their mastery thereof. See the further comment in 15-10 below. Certainly, faculty members may require members of a class to listen to a particular speaker, just as they can require students to read a particular book, even if a student finds the views objectionable.
 
10-115
“The President may deny a particular speaker or program on campus if it reasonably appears that such speaker or program would advocate:” followed by a long list of reasons, including “violation of any federal, state or local laws.”
 
Any rule imposing censorship based on guesses about what a speaker might say is a threat to both academic freedom and the First Amendment. The list of historical figures who could be banned under this rule includes all of the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr. It could be used to justify enormous censorship. For example, because waterboarding is a form of torture and therefore illegal, any member of the Bush Administration who defended waterboarding could be banned under this rule. If someone breaks the law in a campus speech, legal authorities can deal with that speaker. But preemptive, speculative censorship is never acceptable.
 
10-115
“Any expense incurred as the result of scheduling a speaker or program on campus will be the responsibility of the sponsoring individual/group.”
 
This is vague and troublesome in that at other campuses, controversial speakers have effectively been banned by imposing extreme security costs on sponsors. Colleges should not charge student groups for the security required to protect controversial speakers.
 
10-125
“Posting and display of materials on campus shall be governed by the procedures and regulations established by the Office of Student Activities and published in the Student Handbook.”
 
This rule does not establish the First Amendment rights of the campus community to post and display materials.
 
15-10
“The College will not tolerate discrimination and harassment based on an individual’s viewpoint or opinion.”
 
The essence of education is discriminating between truth and falsity. Policy 25-135 declares that a central mission of the College is “the pursuit of truth.” But under policy 15-10, a Holocaust denier could sue the College for not being hired as a history professor, and a creationist could sue for not being hired to teach evolutionary theory. A student with the “opinion” that 1+1=3 could sue if a math professor gave that student a failing grade. No college has ever imposed such a doctrine of total relativism.
 
15-25
“No volunteer, officer or employee shall engage in dishonest or demeaning behavior in the workplace.”

This policy is too vague in banning all “demeaning” behavior without defining the term.
15-170
Among the list of reasons for termination is the vague category of “unprofessional conduct.” This term is vague and not defined.
 
15-335
“Faculty members have a duty to present controversial issues in an unbiased manner which respects their students’ rights to academic freedom to determine for themselves the proper resolution of such issues.”
 
Faculty members should be evaluated on the basis of competence and professional and disciplinary standards.  Many of the revered books of our civilization are “biased”; the great thinkers all had a point of view. This policy, if taken as written, would have prevented Jefferson from teaching our Declaration of  Independence at the College. As we all know, in James Madison’s word we are not “angels” and thus, it is almost impossible to be “unbiased.” Further, it would appear that under this policy, a creationist student could assert the right to disagree with the scientific reality of  evolution in a biology class. This academic freedom policy also omits several important provisions of the AAUP standards for academic freedom, such as the protection of extramural speech.
 
20-5
“The College will also prohibit discrimination based on an individual’s viewpoint or opinion.”

The danger of adding “viewpoint or opinion” to the list of prohibited acts is that quite obviously there are correct and incorrect opinions about reality. Certainly the Professor’s job is to discriminate between them.  Students are in school to learn how to discriminate between them. If they fail to do so, of course they will be “discriminated” against – questioned in class; or get a poor grade, for instance.
 
25-135
“Academic Freedom -The Concept – Academic freedom and intellectual diversity are values indispensable to the American college.”

The inclusion of the term “intellectual diversity” into the  discussion of the philosophical, conceptual, and contractual  meaning of “academic freedom”  is to either add a vague and thus potentially confusing  redundancy, as the word “diversity” is used in other places in the document; or to attempt to change the settled meaning and understanding of the term. Neither is warranted, and the words “and intellectual diversity” should be deleted from this policy.

The Ward Churchill trial begins after his ideologically inspired firing from his tenured professorship at the University of Colorado in Boulder on July 24, 2007. I received these items from Criticalthinking, a progressive organisation dedicated to preserving academic freedom and thwarting militant pro-defence hawks who seek ideological uniformity across academia.

Here are two blogs that will be keeping up w/ the trial: The Ward Churchill solidarity network at http://www.wardchurchill.net/ and The Ward Churchill Trial website created by Ben, one of his ardent supporters:  http://wardchurchilltrial.wordpress.com/.  Today was the trial opening and the beginning of jury selection.  Here are the Denver Post articles written so far: http://search.denverpost.com/sp?keywords=Ward+Churchill&aff=3&searchbutton.x=0&searchbutton.y  =0&searchbutton=Search.  

Dear Friends and WCSN Supporters,

Ward Churchill is suing the University of Colorado because CU fired him on pretextual grounds, in violation of his First Amendment rights. But more importantly, he’s suing because this case will determine how easily schools across the country can purge professors who challenge the status quo.

We need your help! Lawsuits are expensive. We are raising money for legal expenses – /filing fees, deposing witnesses and obtaining transcripts, plane tickets for witnesses outside Colorado, copying and compiling evidence and exhibits.

All donations will go to attorney David Lane and be used only for direct expenses associated with the lawsuit. 

You can donate to the legal fund directly from the WCSN website at www.wardchurchill.net  or 

by clicking here:  

(You do not need a paypal account.)

These are my remaks for Chicago Gaza Panel, February 26, 2009.

Spanish philosopher Miguel Unamuno, during the Spanish Civil War, declared in 1936, “Sometimes to be Silent is to Lie.” He directed this remark on his campus of the University of Salamanca, where he had served twice as rector, to the pro-Franco fascist General Milan-Astray, who forced him off campus at gunpoint and placed Unamuno under house arrest. This was a shocking violation of academic freedom which I am sure Stanley Fish, now op-ed columnist of the New York Times, would with charactristic nuance defend.

Unamuno died within two months after suffering a heart attack. In this country professors have been denied tenure, denied promotion, subjected to public vilification, experienced censorship of their books, been prohibited from speaking at previously scheduled events, been suspended, denied the right to teach classes in their specialty, pressured to turn down appointments at universities, and have been fired from both tenure and non-tenure track positions for speaking truth to power about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Naming names was used during the McCarthy Era to blacklist and smear supposed communists and internationalists including many academicians. Well I am naming names of the courageous victims of the New McCarthyism who refused to be silent: Norman Finkelstein, Joel Kovel, Terri Ginsberg, Mehrene Larudee, Douglas Giles, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Joseph Massad, Ward Churchill and Juan Cole.

The suffering of Arab peoples must end and perpetrators such as the State of Israel brought to justice before the International Criminal Court. Israel unfortunately is merely the most recent non-Arab nation to dispossess the Arab peoples with approximately 400-500,000 forced out of the Palestine Mandate with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Twenty years later in the 1967 six day War which Israel initiated, despite the gleeful global propaganda of its heroic victory, Israel expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights. (Mearsheimer, Walt Israel Lobby).

I say the latest non-Arab nation to engage in Muslim ethnic cleansing because The Lausanne Treaty of 1923, yes an actual treaty, required the deportation of 350,000 Muslims from Greece to Turkey. While Christians were also subjected to “population exchange,” no other international treaty has targeted specific peoples for mandatory population uprooting.

The Gaza slaughter is another recent act of state terrorism against a defenceless and abused people. Gaza is a strip of land on the Mediterranean that is one of the most undeveloped and densely populated in the world. It was part of the British Mandate in Palestine after World War I and was occupied by Egypt after the 1948 war and is about 25 miles long and 6 miles wide. Its population consists of 1.3 million Palestinians living in absolute poverty. Israel took control of the region during the Six-Day War in 1967, along with the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula which was later returned to Egypt.

When 9,000 Israeli settlers colonised Gaza, they stole one-third of Gaza and the other two-thirds of the enclave was where the huddled masses of Palestinians lived.

Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican Council on Justice and Peace, recently referred to Gaza as “a big concentration camp.” Imagine a Jewish state, born out of the Holocaust, establishing a concentration camp along its border in this manner.

Norman Finkelstein has referred to Gaza as “Israel’s favourite shooting gallery,” and described the attack as: “Israel targeted schools, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, and U.N. sanctuaries, as it slaughtered and incinerated Gaza’s defenseless civilian population.”

Here are some facts on the ground:

First) There had been a ceasefire negotiated by Israel and Hamas, which has been the democratically elected government of Gaza since February 2006, that was reasonably intact from June 2008 until November 4, 2008. On that date, conveniently timed to coincide with the distraction of America’s presidential election, Israel violated the ceasefire by invading Gaza with tanks and airstrikes, and killing about 5 Palestinians. This led to Hamas’s Qassam rocket attacks on Sderot and other Israeli communities as the ceasefire unraveled leading to the full-scale Dec. 27 Israel invasion.

Second) Fatah, the descendant of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, is the Arab faction that runs the West Bank, under Israeli supervision, the other component of occupied, colonised Palestine. Yet there are strong supporters in both Gaza and the West Bank of the other non-ruling group. The Palestinians are a united people in spirit.

Third) Israel waged a twenty-three day assault from December 27 until January 18, 2009 on a civilian population in a manner reminiscent of the wehrmacht during World War II. The timing was deliberate in that it began under the waning days of the Bush administration which Israel knew would not challenge the invasion and it ended just prior to the Obama inauguration so as not to offend the sensibilities of a possibly somewhat less militant U.S. administration.

Fourth) 1,300 Palestinians were killed including 400 children. Thirteen Israelis died and three were civilian. This is a 100 to one ratio and a shocking lack of both proportionality in which a nation uses excessive force beyond military necessity, and discrimination when a military force deliberately ignores non-combatant immunity. The National Lawyers Guild reported the following incidents from their eight-member legal team that investigated the possibility of war crimes in Gaza:

“We spoke to Khaled Abed Rabbo, who witnessed an Israeli soldier execute his 2-year-old and 7-year-old daughters, and critically injure a third daughter, Samar, 4-years old, on a sunny afternoon outside his home. Two other Israeli soldiers were standing nearby eating chips and chocolates at the time on January 7, 2009. Abed Rabbo recounts standing in front of the Israeli soldiers with his mother, wife and daughters for 5 to 7 minutes before one of the soldiers opened fire on his family.

“We spoke to Ibtisam al-Sammouni, 31, and a resident of Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City. On January 4th, the Israeli army forced approximately 110 of Zaytoun’s residents into Ibtisam’s home. At approximately 7 am on January 5th, the Israeli military launched two tank shells at the house without warning killing two of Ibtisam’s children: Rizka, 14 and Faris, 12. When the survivors attempted to flee, Israeli forces shot at them. Her son Abdullah, 7, was injured in the shelling and remained in the home among his deceased siblings for four days before Israeli forces permitted medical personnel into Zaytoun to rescue them. After medical personnel removed the injured persons, an Israeli war plane destroyed the house… The dead remained beneath the rubble for 17 days before the Israeli Army permitted …their…burial.”

The New York Times reported on February 11, 2009 that the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, announced that Israel is blocking needed humanitarian aid from reaching the devastated area. Israel permits only one border crossing into Gaza which can deliver enough daily life-sustaining supplies for only 30,000 people. Ban wants other points of entry to be opened as well. Israel has blockaded the Gazan coast on the Mediterranean and Egypt, which has one border crossing into Gaza, has been reluctant to open that as well.

Israel maintains that Hamas must be disarmed and not allowed to acquire weaponry through tunnels in the south or other means. No other nation in the world is required to have an absence of military self-defence. The Palestinians are basically disarmed anyway. They lack a navy, an army and air force to defend against Israel’s strategic power.

It is interesting there is an absence of international pressure for Israel to reduce its level of military forces. Israel receives about $3 billion dollars in direct assistance each year from the American taxpayer even though Israel is one of the wealthiest nations on Earth with per capita income equivalent to Spain or the Republic of Korea. It receives the most modern US weaponry such as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets which it uses to terrorise defenceless populations.

Israel is the only Middle East state with nuclear weapons and only one of three countries in the world not to ratify the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968. This mythical notion of a Jewish David surrounded by an Arab Goliath in a hostile region is imaginary at best. While it is more of a democracy than some Arab authoritarian states, its aggression and undermining international peace and security through repeated violations of international humanitarian law are more significant in a global context.

Israel is an officially Jewish state with the Star of David hexagram emblazoned on its flag. America has long been critical of nations that are wedded to an official religion. Our own constitution requires that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The United States is not officially Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Baha’i or Druse or Jewish.

There is an inherent undemocratic character about nations that establish an official religion. While the U.S. has been openly critical of Muslim and Communist states that deny religious pluralism, such criticism is never directed at Israel.

Israel’s population is 7.1 million and 76% Jewish and 24% non Jewish with mostly Muslim Arabs with about 2% Arab Christian.) (CIA Factbook). Their 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens: They can’t join the army which means they are denied the generous benefits given to veterans.  (Haaretz 12/20/07)

They can’t marry Palestinian partners and remain in Israel. Marriage could lead to deportation. Israeli law gives official recognition to Jewish cultural institutions but not Arab. Israeli-Arabs have been expelled from their homes in the Negev-a desert area in the south-because they were told they were illegal.

The argument is frequently advanced that Israel and the United States are allies in the war against terrorism. In fact the opposite is the case. A more nuanced and normal relationship with Israel, that is evident in most bilateral relations, would possibly reduce the threat of so-called terrorism. Al Qaeda in particular has declared Palestinian suffering as one of its chief grievances against the U.S. Iran, a supporter of Hamas, also frequently refers to the American lack of balance in its approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict as a source of tension and enmity.

Israel needs less financial support from the economically ravaged United States and the United States needs less of an Israel-centric Middle East foreign policy. Israel’s existence is not reasonably threatened by the facts on the ground and as the most powerful nation in the region, it can afford to demonstrate more tolerance and less racism in its approach to the Palestinian conflict. United States national security and international peace and justice are ultimately served by a resolution of this conflict that brings justice to the Palestinians, secure borders for Israel, a Palestinian state that is contiguous, viable and truly independent and an end to this carnage.

I was honoured to serve on a panel with Dr Kovel at DePaul University’s Academic Freedom Conference last February. He is a great speaker and  the author of Overcoming Zionism which led to the lynch mob of Zionist anti-modernists demanding it be censored by the University of Michigan that distributed Pluto Press. This is part of an ongoing inquisition where the academy is losing voice after voice of conscience and scholarship that challenges the Israel-centric posture of American external relations. Indeed, at that conference at DePaul I stated repeatedly it is easier for an Israeli academic to criticise Israel then it is for an American.

Saturday, 2 February 2008 (Morning to Afternoon) 11:00 – Academic Freedom and the Way Forward - SC 120AB Dr. Marc Ellis, University Professor, Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University Dr. Peter N. Kirstein, Professor of History, St. Xavier University Dr. Joel Kovel, Editor-in-Chief of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism journal Distinguished Professor of Social Studies, Bard College

http://www.joelkovel.org/
STATEMENT OF JOEL KOVEL REGARDING HIS TERMINATION BY BARD COLLEGE
_Introduction_
In January, 1988, I was appointed to the Alger Hiss Chair of Social  Studies at Bard College. As this was a Presidential appointment outside the tenure system, I have served under a series of contracts. The last of these was half-time (one semester on, one off, with half salary and full benefits year-round), effective from July 1, 2004, to June 30, 2009. On February 7 I received a letter from Michèle Dominy, Dean of the College, informing me that my contract would not be renewed this July 1 and that I would be moved to emeritus status as of that day. She wrote that this decision was made by President Botstein, Executive Vice-President Papadimitriou and herself, in consultation with members of the Faculty Senate.

This document argues that this termination of service is prejudicial and motivated neither by intellectual nor pedagogic considerations, but by political values, principally stemming from differences between myself and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism. There is of course much more to my years at Bard than this, including another controversial subject, my work on ecosocialism (/The Enemy of Nature/). However, the evidence shows a pattern of conflict over Zionism only too reminiscent of innumerable instances in this country in which critics of Israel have been made to pay, often with their careers, for speaking out. In this instance the process culminated in a deeply flawed evaluation process which was used to justify my termination from the faculty.
_A brief chronology_
• 2002. This was the first year I spoke out nationally about Zionism. In October, my article, “Zionism’s Bad Conscience,” appeared in /Tikkun/. Three or four weeks later, I was called into President Leon Botstein’s office, to be told my Hiss Chair was being taken away. Botstein said that he had nothing to do with the decision, then gratuitously added that it had not been made because of what I had just published about Zionism, and hastened to tell me that his views were diametrically opposed to mine.
• 2003. In January I published a second article in /Tikkun/, “‘Left-Anti-Semitism’ and the Special Status of Israel,” which argued for a One-State solution to the dilemmas posed by Zionism. A few weeks later,I received a phone call at home from Dean Dominy, who suggested, on behalf of Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitriou, that perhaps it was time for me to retire from Bard. I declined. The result of this was an evaluation of my work and the inception, in 2004, of the current half-time contract as “Distinguished Professor.”
• 2006. I finished a draft of /Overcoming Zionism/. In January, while I was on a Fellowship in South Africa, President Botstein conducted a concert on campus of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, which he has directed since 2003. In a stunning departure from traditional concert practice, this began with the playing of the national anthems of the United States and Israel, after each of which the audience rose. Except for a handful of protestors, the event went unnoticed. I regarded it, however, as paradigmatic of the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel, one that has conduced to war in Iraq and massive human rights violations in Israel/Palestine. In December, I organized a public lecture at Bard (with Mazin Qumsiyeh) to call attention to this problem. Only one faculty person attended; the rest were students and community people; and the issue was never taken up on campus.

• 2007. /Overcoming Zionism/ was now on the market, arguing for a One-State solution (and sharply criticizing, among others, Martin Peretz for a scurrilous op-ed piece against Rachel Corrie in the /Los Angeles Times/. Peretz is an official in AIPAC’s foreign policy think-tank, and at the time a Bard Trustee-though this latter fact was not pointed out in the book). In August, /Overcoming Zionism/ was attacked by a watchdog Zionist group, StandWithUs/Michigan, which succeeded in pressuring the book’s United States distributor, the University of Michigan Press, to remove it from circulation. An extraordinary outpouring of support (650 letters to U of M) succeeded in reversing this frank episode of book-burning. I was disturbed, however, by the fact that, with the exception of two non-tenure track faculty, there was no support from Bard in response to this egregious violation of the speech rights of a professor. When I asked President Botstein in an email why this was so, he replied that he felt I was doing quite well at taking care of myself. This was irrelevant to the obligation of a college to protect its faculty from violation of their rights of free expression-all the more so, a college such as Bard with a carefully honed reputation as a bastion of academic freedom, and which indeed defines such freedom in its Faculty Handbook as a “right . . . to search for truth and understanding without interference and to disseminate his [sic] findings without intimidation.”
• 2008. Despite some reservations by the faculty, I was able to teach a course on Zionism. In my view, and that of most of the students, it was carried off successfully. Concurrently with this, another evaluation of my work at Bard was underway. Unlike previous evaluations, in 1996 and 2003, this was unenthusiastic. It was cited by Dean Dominy as instrumental in the decision to let me go.

_Irregularities in the Evaluation Process_
The evaluation committee included Professor Bruce Chilton, along with Professors Mark Lambert and Kyle Gann. Professor Chilton is a member of the Social Studies division, a distinguished theologian, and the campus’ Protestant chaplain. He is also active in Zionist circles, as chair of the Episcopal-Jewish Relations Committee in the Episcopal Diocese of New York, and a member of the Executive Committee of Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East. In this capacity he campaigns vigorously against Protestant efforts to promote divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel. Professor Chilton is particularly antagonistic to the Palestinian liberation theology movement, Sabeel, and its leader, Rev. Naim Ateek, also an Episcopal. This places him on the other side of the divide from myself, who attended a Sabeel Conference in Birmingham, MI, in October, 2008, as an invited speaker, where I met Rev. Ateek, and expressed admiration for his position.   It should also be observed that Professor Chilton was active this past January in supporting Israeli aggression in Gaza. He may be heard on a national radio program on WABC, “Religion on the Line,” (January 11, 2009) arguing from the Doctrine of Just War and claiming that it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel for human rights violations-this despite the fact that large numbers of Jews have been in the forefront of protesting Israeli crimes in Gaza. Of course, Professor Chilton has the right to his opinion as an academic and a citizen. Nonetheless, the presence of such a voice on the committee whose conclusion was instrumental in the decision to remove me from the Bard faculty is highly dubious. Most definitely, Professor Chilton should have recused himself from this position. His failure to do so, combined with the fact that the decision as a whole was made in context of adversity between myself and the Bard administration, renders the process of my termination invalid as an instance of what the College’s Faculty Handbook calls a procedure “designed to evaluate each faculty member fairly and in good faith.”

I still strove to make my future at Bard the subject of reasonable negotiation. However, my efforts in this direction were rudely denied by Dean Dominy’s curt and dismissive letter (at the urging, according to her, of Vice-President Papadimitriou), which plainly asserted that there was nothing to talk over and that I was being handed a /fait accompli/. In view of this I considered myself left with no other option than the release of this document.

_On the responsibililty of intellectuals_
Bard has effectively crafted for itself an image as a bastion of progressive thought. Its efforts were crowned with being anointed in 2005 by the /Princeton Review /as the second-most progressive college in the United States, the journal adding that Bard “puts the ‘liberal’ in ‘liberal arts.’” But “liberal” thought evidently has its limits; and my work against Zionism has encountered these.A fundamental principle of mine is that the educator must criticize the injustices of the world, whether or not this involves him or her in conflict with the powers that be. The systematic failure of the academy to do so plays no small role in the perpetuation of injustice and state violence. In no sphere of political action does this principle apply more vigorously than with the question of Zionism; and in no country is this issue more strategically important than in the United States, given the fact that United States support is necessary for Israel’s behavior. The worse this behavior, the more strenuous must be the suppression of criticism. I take the view, then, that Israeli human rights abuses are deeply engrained in a culture of impunity granted chiefly, though not exclusively, in the United States-which culture arises from suppression of debate and open inquiry within those institutions, such as colleges, whose social role it is to enlighten the public. Therefore, if the world stands outraged at Israeli aggression in Gaza, it should also be outraged at institutions in the United States that grant Israel impunity.

In my view, Bard College is one such institution. It has suppressed critical engagement with Israel and Zionism, and therefore has enabled abuses such as have occurred and are occurring in Gaza. This notion is of course, not just descriptive of a place like Bard. It is also the context within which the critic of such a place and the Zionist ideology it enables becomes marginalized, and then removed.

For further information: www.codz.org; Joel Kovel, “Overcoming
Impunity,” /The Link/ Jan-March 2009 (www.ameu.org).
To write the Bard administration:
President Leon Botstein <president@bard.edu.
Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitriou dpapadimitrou@bard.edu

I was told by Roger Chapman, the distinguished editor of the Encyclopedia of the Culture Wars, that the original publication date of December 2008 has been extended. Additional entries reflecting the new era of Barack Hussein Obama were being added to the two-volume compendium. I was informed by a library professional staff person at my university that the publisher M.E. Sharpe had indicated August 2009 would be the release date.

Projected to be over 400,000 words in two volumes of text, and illustrated, the Encyclopedia of the Culture Wars  will be published by M.E. Sharpe of Armonk, New York.

I am contributing articles on J. Robert Oppenheimer and Academic Freedom:

Albert Einstein, whose 1939 letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt triggered the atomic bomb Manhattan Project and Dr Oppenheimer, director of Los Alamos laboratory near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ironically, Dr Einstein was excluded from the Manhattan Project by some who felt he was too independent and too radical. He later became a strong opponent of atomic weaponry.

Beware of groups such as Campus Watch, the David Project, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and occasionally David Horowitz for attempting to move beyond critiquing progressive academicians into pressuring institutions or the public at large to remove or sanction such scholars.

From: John May [mailto:xxx@yahoo.com]
Sent: Fri 1/23/2009 7:45 AM
To: Kirstein, Peter N.
Subject: Teaching Philosophy and Raison D’être in being a professor

Professor Kirstein

After reading your “Teaching Philosophy and Raison D’être” I am confused. You state that “I believe teaching is a moral act”. Would those be your morals or the morals of another person, group or society? If they are your morals then would that not make you a vaild target for those who disagree with them? If so then it would be acceptable for David Horowitz to call your teaching into question.

If your view is that it is acceptable for a professor to teach their morals, as long as they are sincere, then I would agree, although haltingly, with your statement that “Different views and competing visions should be introduced when appropriate”. The portion of that statement that causes me concern is the ending, i.e. “when appropriate”. That starts to sound a little arbitrary, or as you state it, like some form of censorship.

I seriously doubt that you would support any professor who sincerely espoused the views of the KKK. Yet that same professor could copy, almost word for word, your “Teaching Philosophy and Raison D’être” and be justified.

It seems to me that balance would requires competing views, whether you embrace them or not. Otherwise you end up being nothing more than what Nietzsche referred to as an epileptic of the concept.

Sincerely

John May

—————————————————————————–

Dear John:  

Teaching is a moral act and of course predicated on the instructor’s morals but within the realm of effective and pedagogical best practices.                                                                                                      

I would support the right of a professor to espouse the views of the K.K.K. in class as long as its history is fairly rendered, students were encouraged to disagree and there was an absence of any hate speech directed toward a student or group. I might be uncomfortable with a colleague who supported the Klan but academic freedom would protect that person’s right to do so as it would for him or her to support the views of George Walker Bush.  

Presenting competing views is essential but not required in all circumstances. With regard to neutrality or always presenting all sides of an argument, allow me to quote myself from a YouTube video on  a talk I gave at New York University:

“Roberta Matthews, former provost at Brooklyn College, astutely noted, “teaching is a political act.” For me it is also a moral act that requires challenging the canon and educating responsible citizens. A professor should not merely recite facts and figures and maintain a sterile neutrality, as dictated by David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights, or cover slavishly both sides of every issue. Is slavery defensible? Is genocide defensible? Is racism defensible? Is homophobia defensible? Are war crimes defensible?”

Thanks for your comments,  

Peter

Campus Watch, the brainchild of former Bush administration official Daniel Pipes, has once again claimed I misrepresent their mission and raison d’être in a recent post. This is the unexpurgated “correction” of this academic-policing organisation followed by my response:

Setting The Record Straight

Campus Watch corrects false allegations made against it.

In a web log post titled “Campus Watch: Returns with Another List of Back to the Future McCarthyisms,” Peter Kirstein writes:

Campus Watch one of the New McCarthyism’s most egregious excesses continues to list academics and other critics of its barnstorming, intellectual-cleansing crusade.

Campus Watch is in no way a McCarthyite organization. We are not an agent of the government, do not have (and do not seek) the power to issue subpoenas or otherwise order anyone to do anything, and do not seek to silence anyone. Rather, we critique Middle East studies for epistemological and pedagogical shortcomings, as laid out clearly in our mission statement.

(Posted by Winfield Myers)

——————————————————————————-

I never claimed Campus Watch was an agent of the government. A charge of McCarthyism does not have to apply literally to government officials or agencies but to ANY group that uses its ideology as a litmus test for loyalty and publicly denounces those with whom it disagrees. Even during McCarthyism, however, purges were rampant both in the public and private spheres from government to Hollywood to higher and secondary education. I never claimed Campus Watch desired the power to issue subpoenas which again is referring to Congressional committees such as the House Un-American Activities Committee. A defence of not being a governmental entity with subpoena power does not parry effectively the charge of McCarthyism.

I never accused Campus Watch of explicitly collecting dossiers on academics which is again an effort to limit the charge of McCarthyism to a Procrustean Bed of 1950s literalism with Red Channels lists and Federal Bureau of Investigation Responsibilities Programmes. They have, however, compiled lists of educators whom they consider disloyal and a threat to the United States. As I wrote in my blog critique:

…”it was Campus Watch that was established in 2002 with the mission to “monitor” Middle East Studies departments on university campuses throughout the United States. They published a list of professors whom they construed as disloyal, sympathetic to terrorism and anti-American with the intent of marginalising or cleansing them from the academy. Hundreds of aroused non-specialists, including myself, demanded they be included in the blacklist as an act of anti-McCarthyism solidarity. 

“Mr Pipes then dutifully published another list with the provocative title: “Solidarity With the Apologists.” “Apologists” was an explicit reference to a term bandied about during the witch hunts of the 1950s, in which academics, Hollywood filmmakers and other intellectuals were accused of being “apologists” for the Kremlin and the “communist menace” in general. Then Mr Pipes removed the original blacklist and the solidarity list from his website. He knew he had gone too far and had to retreat from this excess.

“However, to set the record straight, Daniel Pipes as Colin Wright wrote in Situation Analysis, Spring 2004, believes that those professors who disagree with him should essentially be arrested or expelled from America. Writing for the New York Post, Pipes’s columns were entitled, “The Terrorist Next Door,” (August 12, 2003), “Profs Who Hate America,” (November 12, 2002) and “Terrorist Profs,” (February 24, 2003). Such uncontrolled rodomontade exceeds anything from any of those listed on Cinnamon’s latest list.”

Campus Watch does not directly refute any of my facts or sources. It does not produce any evidence that would merit a correction. Therefore, I believe Campus Watch’s stunning denial of “attacking professors who criticise Israel…or critics of American policy in the Middle East” is risible. Does Daniel Pipes himself deny that Campus Watch is unabashedly “pro-Israel” and that it does not attack or criticise academicians who critique Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians? Does Daniel Pipes himself claim that his organisation does not feel threatened by academicians who construe US policy as biased and contrary to the national interest in its failure to protect the innocent and be an honest broker in the region?

Campus Watch is entitled to its ideology, its passion and its position on the issues. Yet when it crosses the line in demonising and derivatively attempting to influence the academic due process of review and assessment particularly in Middle East Studies programmes, then it should be vigorously denounced and challenged. If it were to issue even a one-sentence apology for its blacklists and efforts to marginalise professors, it would enhance its credibility in its efforts to “set the record straight” and offer ”corrections” to its many critics.

Campus Watch is “Watching.”

Campus Watch, one of the New McCarthyism’s most egregious excesses, continues to list academics and other critics of its barnstorming, ideological-cleansing crusade against academic freedom. In its latest efforts in “Setting the Record Straight,” Daniel Pipes’s website has published a list of individuals who have allegedly erroneously written about the academic watchdog and its highly nationalistic, confrontational mission to stifle debate on the Middle East. I am included in their latest gambit to “set the record straight”:

“writing at his blog, allows his fixation with Campus Watch to get the better of him, again. This time, he ascribes an article to Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes that was, in fact, written by Campus Watch West Coast representative Cinnamon Stillwell.”

I had written a response to Cinnamon’s critical commentary of an academic freedom conference that I participated in at New York University last February. I forthrightly acknowledged my unintentional error nineteen days later, on March 14, 2008, concerning the provenance of the piece. Somewhat gratuitously Cinnamon continues to express exasperation that she was not cited as the author. Again, I acknowledge the error. {Update: Campus Watch, subsequent to my post, has noted my corrections of the misattribution.} The broader issue is not provenance but the approach to dealing with disparate views on issues of colonisation, racism, peace and justice in the Middle East.

Indeed, I don’t think the Pipesian West Coast henchwoman has truly ”set the record straight.” I wrote in my response to their criticism of the N.Y.U. “Freedoms at Risk Conference:”

…”they believe no American academic should criticise Israel; no American academic should explore Palestinian suffering behind the walls of death and despair; no American academic should teach, utter, write or speak about any aspect of the Middle East, Israel, Iraq, Iran unless it entirely comports with the muscular, preemptive world-wide war against Islam–with YOUR son or daughter–not theirs.”

I believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the savage destruction of Gaza have certainly raised significant questions about the judiciousness of our foreign policy and whether the 4300+ American deaths have justified such actions. Wars must remain within the public sphere of vigorous dissent and debate as lives are lost and dreams shattered.

I don’t believe Ms Stillwell has fairly addressed my main point. For those who may be unaware, it was Campus Watch that was established in 2002 with the mission to “monitor” Middle East Studies departments on university campuses throughout the United States. They published a list of professors whom they construed as disloyal, sympathetic to terrorism and anti-American with the intent of marginalising or cleansing them from the academy. Hundreds of aroused non-specialists, including myself, demanded they be included in the blacklist as an act of anti-McCarthyism solidarity. 

Mr Pipes then dutifully published another list with the provocative title: “Solidarity With the Apologists.” “Apologists” was an explicit reference to a term bandied about during the witch hunts of the 1950s, in which academics, Hollywood filmmakers and other intellectuals were accused of being “apologists” for the Kremlin and the “communist menace” in general. Then Mr Pipes removed the original blacklist and the solidarity list from his website. He knew he had gone too far and had to retreat from this excess.

However, to set the record straight, Daniel Pipes as Colin Wright wrote in Situation Analysis, Spring 2004, believes that those professors who disagree with him should essentially be arrested or expelled from America. Writing for the New York Post, Pipes’s columns were entitled, “The Terrorist Next Door,” (August 12, 2003), “Profs Who Hate America,” (November 12, 2002) and “Terrorist Profs,” (February 24, 2003). Such uncontrolled rodomontade exceeds anything from any of those listed on Cinnamon’s latest list.

For the record, I never take this stuff personally. Cinnamon and I have exchanged several pleasant e-mail including my regard for her Haight-Ashburyesque name. Yet in the public sphere we continue to express our divergent views with gusto. Well I guess that is what Barack wants us to do: go for it but with civility.

It is most disturbing that a nuclear power can destroy intentionally an educational system of an impoverished people and in particular its institutions of higher learning with virtually little protest from “western” academic leaders.

Cardinal Renato Martino

John Pilger in an article refers specifically to this curious silence as Israel destroys what Cardinal Martino, head of the Vatican Council on Justice and Peace, has referred to Gaza as , “a big concentration camp.” I find it most disturbing that in the United States criticism of Israel has become extremely difficult and in particular in academia. One needs to address issues of persecution and destruction of vital educational properties beyond military necessity in a forthright manner. The ethnic composition of an aggressor nation or its victims is inadequate cause to withhold criticism of military excesses: adherence to the principles of proportionality, justice, respect for non-combatants and international humanitarian law should be demanded of all nations.

Pilger:

“Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than “intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries”?

Islamic University Gaza apparently under attack

As an academic, I can think of few “targets” more delicate and worthy of sparing from aerial attack than educational institutions. In the latest strategic bombing of densely populated Gaza, Israel has deliiberately attacked Islamic University on late Sunday, December 28, 2008. This outrage cannot be justified by military necessity regardless of disinformation and unproven claims that it was primarily a haven for weapons deployment.

Attacking universities is similar to the strategic bombing campaign of the Second World War in which German cities were targeted without mercy. While it appears that the majority of casualties in these aerial raids of rage and hate are not civilian, some sixty non-combatants have been killed. The purposeful destruction of a university, not to mention the general violation of proportionality from the air, should be construed as a war crime. While a nation has the right of self-defence to suppress rocket attacks into its territory, it does not have the right to destroy civilian infrastructure and other vital components that support civil society.

A university represents knowledge, the search for truth and in this case the potential elevation of an occupied people. The Bush administration frequently justified its invasion of Afghanistan and its growing deployment of forces there as a countermeasure to prevent the Taliban from restricting the education of women. Yet there is apparently no concern about the destruction of a university which is one of the few avenues of potential progress in a region that is blockaded and utterly impoverished by Israel.

I would hope that university presidents, the American Association of University Professors and unions such as the National Education Association would condemn the bombing of educational institutions in this manner. Where will these students be relocated should be asked? Where will professors teach should be asked? Can a military nuclear power be allowed to use such violent measures to suppress the educational aspirations of an impoverished, helpless population without any criticism?

As we saw in the Lebanon-Israel war in 2006, few or zero casualties in Israel is met by force far beyond proportionality. An appropriate response should be measured by casualties, by targets selected and by length of campaign. Israel has used far more force and caused infinitely more human and material destruction than it received. I am not optimistic that the Obama administration will reassess American policy in the region as the war against Islam continues to create needless suffering and potentially a nuclear exchange at some point.

A.A.U.P.  ILL carefully researched the Mehrene Larudee tenure case and sent this letter to the national office of the American Association of University Professors. They responded with a decision not to convoke a Committee A investigation of DePaul University’s denial of tenure to Mehrene Larudee.

Professor Larudee was denied tenure, along with the courageous scholar and humanitarian Doctor Norman Finkelstein, at DePaul University in 2007. There were a series of due process violations that were egregiously inconsistent with national standards of transparency and review. Also it appeared to many that Dr Larudee was denied tenure due to a vengeful retribution for her support of Dr Finkelstein’s academic freedom and application for promotion and tenure.  Dr Larudee’s appointment as chair of the International Studies Department had been approved and was abruptly aborted just days before assuming that position when she was denied tenure in an academic auto-da-fé .

Professor Mehrene Larudee

It is essential that national organisations devoted to academic freedom and due process in promotion and tenure cases assert themselves in a manner that protects the persecuted and not exercise undue caution when careers and explicit A.A.U.P. policies and documents are being violated indiscriminately. If A.A.U.P. is to reverse its slide into both financial and policy decline, it should investigate cases particularly when one of its largest and most active state conferences presents a recommendation. An investigation does not preclude a finding in favour of a university’s decision; the absence of an investigation altogether is suggestive of an inconsistent pro-faculty advocacy and a lack of sensitivity to the academic freedom and academic due process crises at DePaul University which gripped the nation last year and has yet to receive formal A.A.U.P. investigatory intervention. 

Professor Kirstein is Vice President of the American Association of University Professors, Illinois Conference. If this post, or any excerpt, is carried by a third party, kindly cite  or link its source:

———————————————-

Dr. Ernie Benjamin, General Secretary
AAUP  Suite 500
1012 14th St., NW
Washington, D.C. 20005

 11/4/08

Dear General Secretary Benjamin:

The Illinois Conference of the American Association of University Professors would like to comment further on recent correspondence between a conference Committee A member, you, and Robert Kreiser. The full Council has given this matter much thought. We have been round and round as to how best to handle the situation. We feel strongly that the treatment of Professor Mehrene Larudee has been inconsistent with  DePaul’s own policies, and raises troublesome questions about both due process and academic freedom.   As you will remember from our past correspondence with Mr. Kreiser, the Illinois State AAUP Council requested to have AAUP National initiate a Committee A investigation on behalf of Professor Mehrene Larudee to address her June 2007 tenure denial. It is our understanding that it has been concluded that further action on Larudee’s case is not appropriate because your office “did not find sufficient grounds under [its] policies for [it] to reopen the matter.”

Because we feel strongly that the matter is so egregious and charged we are asking you to review this letter and reconsider your conclusion that DePaul’s University Board on Promotion and Tenure (UBPT) is not required to provide the candidate or anyone with an explanation in those cases where it exercises an independent judgment, and in the process ignores or overrules the decision of the lower levels of review (department, college personnel committee, and dean). It appears to us that the AAUP National Office is overlooking a serious discrepancy in due process in Professor Larudee’s case, a discrepancy which diminishes faculty governance, and ultimately threatens academic freedom. We are here focusing on “departmental review.”

As we read the applicable documents the necessity of preserving the primacy of departmental review is clearly articulated on p. 3 of the Evaluation section of DePaul’s faculty handbook:

Decisions subsequent to that made at the initial level shall consider the method and care of  application of the approved standards by the lower level unit(s), including matters of stringency, consistency, and fairness, in addition to any unusual implications the decision may have at the college/school or university level. Only in cases where lower level decisions are judged to be deficient in significant respects shall upper level units make their own application of the substantive criteria of the candidate’s scholarly or artistic area. {Emphasis added.}

Section V of DePaul University’s Faculty Handbook (”Evaluation of Faculty”) affirms the primacy of the faculty in the home unit (i.e., department, program, college) with respect to developing guidelines and criteria for faculty peer review. As this section explains:

The determination that an individual meets these criteria is made primarily on the basis of guidelines promulgated by the candidate’s department or – in the absence of departmental structures – by the college or school, which state what is to be expected of faculty with regard to the above areas. These guidelines are to be informed by criteria specific to that unit’s professional discipline, field or interdisciplinary area. The academic unit employs these guidelines only after they have been approved as being consistent with the general university criteria stated in this Faculty Handbook (following section). The University Board on Faculty Promotion and Tenure, consisting of representatives from the colleges or schools appointed by the Faculty Council, shall be responsible for making these determinations (3).

Indeed, primary review responsibilities reside with the departmental unit of the candidate. When a higher-level review committee chooses to exercise its independent judgment in a tenure and promotion case, departing from the clear views of a candidate’s department, college personnel committee, and Dean without explanation, then a serious threat is posed to academic freedom and due process. If this higher-level committee is not held accountable for its decision-making and does not provide a written and clear rationale for its decision not to follow the recommendations of the lower levels, a university administration can use this committee as a “gatekeeping” chamber through which to create a pretext for the termination of dissenting scholars or scholars pursuing controversial lines of inquiry.

Furthermore, according to p. 2 of the LA&S Taskforce Report on Academic Freedom and Shared Governance, a candidate’s department is supposed to have “primary authority to develop guidelines and further explicate these criteria that meet university approval.” It must not be National’s position that the UBPT can simply arbitrarily cast aside affirmative recommendations of lower levels of review without explaining how these lower-level assessments were “deficient in significant respects.” The UBPT could conceivably be influenced by the administration to reject the candidacies of those faculty members it does not like, irrespective of their credentials and accomplishments, without having to explain how the primary levels of review were “deficient in significant respects.” Disciplinary expertise and the ability to assess this expertise reside with the candidate’s department with one’s professional peers.

If this is not a guiding assumption of the tenure and promotion process, the concept of shared governance itself is in real jeopardy. It seems utterly inconsistent with basic practices of transparency and due process when a faculty member is not informed of how the lower levels of review were “deficient in significant respects”; essentially denying the candidate an explanation about why she did not meet the requisite standards for tenure and promotion. Indeed, the DePaul LA&S Taskforce on Academic Freedom and Shared Governance states that:

[T]hese upper-level review committees (at the college and university levels) should be required to submit formal reports which indicate the bases for agreement or disagreement with the recommendations of the home unit(s). These reports will also provide the foundation for any rebuttal on the part of the candidate, the home unit, or mid-level review committee (when appropriate) (9).

Indeed, if the candidate is not provided with the UBPT’s rationale for rejecting the recommendations of lower levels of review, she is not being afforded the opportunity to rebut the UBPT’s reasoning in an appeal situation. You will remember that DePaul University initially denied Professor Larudee the opportunity of an appeal in the summer of 2007, but then reversed this position after National got involved.

Professor Larudee received unanimous lower-level support for her tenure and promotion and was shortly to assume the chair of the International Studies Program. A significant event, that may explain DePaul University’s sudden withdrawal of support for Dr. Larudee’s tenure application, was Dr. Larudee’s courageous advocacy for the granting of tenure and promotion to Dr. Norman Finkelstein. After receiving strong departmental and college committee support, Dr. Finkelstein subsequently was not recommended for tenure or promotion by College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean Charles Suchar due to his alleged deficiency in “Vincentian Personalism” and a style of scholarly rhetoric “inconsistent with DePaul’s institutional mission.” While recognizing that DePaul and Dr. Finkelstein settled their dispute in 2007, there was a sharp contrast between Dean Suchar’s letter of March 17, 2007, which supported Professor Larudee for tenure, and President Reverend Dennis Holtschneider’s June 8, 2007 denial of tenure letter. Between the writing of the two letters, Professor Mehrene Larudee publicly defended Dr. Finkelstein’s academic freedom and challenged the administration to grant it. We believe this situation is also probative in addition to the due process failings of the UBPT.

The State Council of the Illinois Conference has serious concerns about the lack of due process afforded Dr. Mehrene Larudee in her tenure and promotion process in 2007, and requests that AAUP reassess its decision not to conduct a Committee A investigation. We feel that this situation both procedurally and in the context of what was going on at the University at the time illustrates the kind of context in which tenure and promotion decisions are most likely to be inconsistent with academic freedom. We all know how easy it can be to rationalize away or disguise the real reasons for decisions. We have carefully studied this matter and we feel that closing the book on it without a thorough and complete investigation is to let stand what we believe to be an egregious violation of fair treatment of a faculty member. We hope your further consideration of this will result in further investigation.

Respectfully,

Jerry Kendall

President Illinois Conference

The College of DuPage has once again demonstrated a perverse notion of academic freedom. The Chicagoland community college which has had a tumultuous period of presidents coming and going and board members litigating against each other is greatly influenced by David Horowitz’s, Academic Bill of Rights. The board chair, who is suing prior members for alleged defamation concerning charges of sexual harassment, is attempting to influence what is taught in the classroom and which guests can be invited to speak on campus. One should be deeply concerned about the proposed actions by the College of DuPage Board of Trustees.

It appears to be an explicit violation of the principles of shared governance and academic freedom. It is obvious that efforts to restrict both instructional and student choices are contrary to the basic idea of what an institution of higher learning should stand for: namely the search for truth.

The American Association of University Professors has addressed the grave consequences of adopting the A.B.O.R. in terms of academic freedom, governmental intrusion into higher education and shared governance.

Scare Poster as capitalism eviscerates America’s economy and plunges 45,700,000 without health insurance and at least 6.5% unemployed. Everyone knows it is over 7% when you count those who no longer try to find work as billionaire hedge-fund managers escape criminal prosecution.

One of the reasons why Gwen Gale—it is probably a mere cyber name– has censored my participation in editing on Wikipedia and in particular the “academic freedom” entry is a charge that I am an ideologue who wishes to brainwash my students into adopting a communist ideological worldview. This is her exact statement:

“I’ve thought he might more than likely be talking about an academic freedom to teach Marxism, which is to say, making even private schools follow his notions on this under sway of the law.”

I had mentioned this only briefly in an earlier post but let’s examine this in more detail. She is stating that I am an advocate for academic freedom for ONLY ideological reasons. Namely, to inculcate a Marxist viewpoint among my students and bizarrely to induce “private schools” to adhere to a communist viewpoint. Of course I do teach “Marxism.” It is a course called, “Capitalism, Socialism and Social Justice,” which is jointly offered in both the Department of History and Political Science and the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice. It is a course that obviously encompasses not only classical Marxism but also the democratic socialism of Europe and of course capitalism as well. The course compares and contrasts competing ideological visions.

I suspect, however, Ms Gale, who is an administrator and censor at Wikipedia, was not referring to this course but was engaging in an effort to marginalise me as a leftist seeking to abuse academic freedom for purposes of exploitation and indoctrination of my students. Academic freedom in the United States does not allow proselytisation or indoctrination of students. This is expressly prohibited in American Association of University Professor documents such as “Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students.” A professor may express her opinions; she may construe teaching as a moral act; she may be a disseminator of values and principles but must permit student opinions and disagreements at all times: “students should be free to take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course.”

During the McCarthy era in the 1950s, 1000s of professors and secondary school teachers were fired or forced to resign because of allegations of being communist. This Red Scare as it were was a dismal period in American history during the imperialist strivings of America during the Cold War with Russia. Innocent Americans who dared to think and advocate for world peace, ending the arms race, reconciliation with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, modifying the greed and rapacity of capitalism and simply articulating an internationalist perspective were hounded from the university, the Hollywood studio, the corporation and even from the stage such as Pete Seeger and The Almanac Singers and Bob Dylan from the Ed Sullivan Show.

Ms Gale may have been merely defencive as she did not expect another victim of her censorship to be this determined and able to challenge her egregious, unprofessional actions. However, she needs to be reminded that there is a history of persecution in the United States that has resurfaced after 9/11. David Horowitz published: The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. Daniel Pipes’s Campus Watch blacklisted Middle East specialists who advocated justice for Palestine. Accuracy in Media published a list of liberals. Professors such as Norman Finkelstein, Mehrene Larudee, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Terri Ginsberg, Nicholas De Genova and many others have been denied tenure, promotion, continued rehiring or have been international targets of opprobium due to their political and scholarly interests.

I urge Gwen Gale to be more judicious in temperament or more respectful of others and avoid possibly derogatory statements that could have significant consequences.

No to censorship. No to blind charges of propagandising students. No to ad hominems. No to silencing dissent.

The word “vandal” is meant as a cyberspace term to indicate indiscriminate deleting of material from various webpages and as a censor in her efforts to ideologically control content on what is supposed to be a value-neutral website. I will continue to unmask the facade of neutrality as professors and others hopefully reassess the value of Wikipedia in both content and administration. This individual banished me from Wikipedia and from contributing this blog to their error-ridden bibliography and shoddy entry on “academic freedom.”

I would be less outraged at this arrogance were it by a specialist as opposed to an ideologue who repeatedly insults me with names as if she were immune from criticism: “Radical,” “Polemicist,” “Marxist” propagandist. You know the usual ad hominems from a reactionary who hides behind her labyrinthine maze of Wikipedia occultism. By the way I offered her an opportunity offline to e-mail me and to conduct a civil discourse over this and did not get a response. So the struggle continues.

This is what Gwen Gale wrote on her blog “Talk” page about academic freedom. I think it displays a rather elementary comprehension of what academic freedom means. I do not expect her to be a specialist but challenge her credentials in banning me from contributing to the academic freedom entry on Wikipedia. That is their loss, not mine. This blog I assure you gets many more hits daily than the academic freedom entry on Wikipedia but I admit this is not a competition but a struggle for free speech and the end of censorship. Her commentary on academic freedom:

“Says he’s a “tenured, full professor at St Xavier University” but he seems to have muddled Wikipedia, which is a private encyclopedia website with sourcing and behaviour rules grown through consensus and supported by its private owners (the WmF), with what he thinks is the “Wikipedia Academic Freedom Site.” I don’t know what he means by academic freedom. In a free market, folks should be able to teach and learn what they please, which also means each private school in a free market would be able to choose wholly on their own whether to offer their teachers and students whatever they thought “academic freedom” might be, swayed only by their own goals, means and whatever market tides might flow upon them. As for state funded schools, any notion of academic freedom is but a lie: The lack sometimes helpful, but often utterly unhelpful and misleading. Does he know his IP was blocked only for edit warring (over a link which didn’t meet WP:EL and nothing else? I’d think he must have read the block notice. Or is he rather stirring things up with a bit of handy polemic propaganda? :) Gwen Gale (talk) 14:09, 10 November 2008 (UTC)”

First of all Wikipedia is not private if it allows access on the Internet to 100,000s of contributors. It is not an intranet vehicle but public in any legal sense of the term. A private restaurant that allows the public to eat cannot discriminate on the basis of private ownership. Wikipedia solicits public input and one cannot shirk its ethical responsibility to be fair and open regardless of its private ownership. Yes it certainly has the right to restrict content if it is inappropriate, irrelevant, unprofessional or libelous but not absolute control given its public nature. The issue of being private has no standing here; it does not require a login password and domain for its users and visitors.

In the United States, academic freedom is NOT restricted to private colleges and universities but applies to state-funded schools as well. The American Association of University Professors’ 1915 and 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure make very few distinctions on the nature of the university in which academic freedom should prevail. Yes there is a provision that with faith-based universities or colleges, some attenuation of academic freedom may be allowed if CLEARLY SPELLED OUT at the time of one’s appointment. Yet in 1970 AAUP downplayed this allowance and requires academic freedom across the academy.

Ms Gale wrote: a “private school in a free market would be able to choose wholly on their own whether to offer their teachers and students whatever they thought “academic freedom” might be, swayed only by their own goals, means and whatever market tides might flow upon them.” This would utterly destroy the concept of academic freedom which is to prevent administrations from arbitrary interference in the teaching, scholarship and extramural [public] utterances of a professor. Academic freedom is not parochial; it is national in scope and application.

Tenure, which is not present in British universities for example, is construed as the sine qua non for academic freedom. If one does not have tenure, one can be fired as an at will employee. With tenure one can only be fired for cause: incompetence, non-performance of duties, moral turpitude and bona fide financial exigency. Gwen Gale misconstrues the essence of academic freedom which is the right of professors to teach in their own name; the right of professors to conduct research and publish their findings without fear of retribution; the right of professors to engage in extramural [public] utterances and activities without censorship or SUSPENSION, or dismissal unless it clearly indicates a lack of capacity to fulfill one’s professional duties.

Gwen Gail again writes: “As for state funded schools, any notion of academic freedom is but a lie:” In the United States this would be a catastrophe and the concept could not exist. A University of Illinois professor or a University of Missouri professor is entitled to the same academic freedom as a professor at Washington University in St. Louis or Saint Louis University or Grinnell College. While it is true some state legislatures are eager to attenuate this concept through funding reductions and sporadic attempts to implement David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights, (ABOR), academic freedom is undergirded by tenure and applies to professors at both private and public universities.

In Keyishian v. Board of Regents and Sweezy v. New Hampshire, the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed the principle of academic freedom. This is not a casual concept but one developed almost a century ago by AAUP and given constitutional muster by the court.

Academic Freedom is Never Free Nor is Free Speech!

On this date November 11, 2002 I was suspended for having responded to an e-mail from Air Force Cadet Robert Kurpiel. For many it was an egregious violation of my academic freedom. For others it was just retribution in silencing a harsh critic of American imperialism. The Internet contains thousands of items on this case and I never for a moment regretted its occurrence. I knew then as I know now that I was subject to a public lynching for my political beliefs. Yes my e-mail was too harsh in areas and I apologised before this became a national incident. The Air Force Academy acted honourably throughout this auto da fe and apologised to me for its capricous distribution of the e-mail throughout the world.

My category on my blog, A: Kirstein Academic Freedom Case chronicles this extraordinary event when I was thrust unwillingly and hurtled unexpectedly into the national conversation on academic freedom. I have used these past six years to defend professors and to spread the word of resistance against arbitrary and oppressive tactics to silence, marginalise and even blacklist progressive faculty who construe teaching as a moral act and militarism and racism as worthy of resistance and denunciation.

Recently Wikipedia has engaged in reprehensible and indefensible behaviour in censoring my blog link to their entry on academic freedom. Gwen Gail, probably a fake name by the way, an administrator at Wikipedia has prohibited me from posting a mere link to my blog. I have extensively covered this in two previous blog posts but more needs to be stated on this anniversary of my academic freedom case. While Wikipedia cannot deny academic freedom to anyone, since only university governing boards, administrations, faculty and state legislatures can do that, it is playing a similar role in its orchestrated efforts to purge leftist or progressive blogs from an entry on “academic freedom.”

Ms Gail wrote in a so-called “talk page” but it is really an elitist technocratic blog for Wiki officials: “Or is he rather stirring things up with a bit of handy polemic propaganda? :) Gwen Gale (talk) 14:09, 10 November 2008 (UTC)”

This is a charge without foundation. I have been accurately stating the facts of my censorship. She claimed my blog was too “radical.” Her word. My efforts to defend free thinking and free inquiry are dismissed as “polemic propaganda.” Censors rarely concede error and almost never admit to censorship. She has repeatedly claimed I was censored not for my views but for “edit warring.” Let me explain to my audience what she is stating. I refused to be silenced and marginalised and kept posting my blog link despite someone–I did not know who it was–removing it. I was defending my rights as an American citizen living in a democracy to inform the Wikipedia public about my blog which has contributed 100s of posts on academic freedom as can be seen in the Categories in the upper right corner.

A censor such as Ms Gail retaliated against my struggle for free speech and puncturing the walls of censorship by barring me from Wikipedia altogether for several days. I had no choice but to use my blog to respond; I even received a lengthy e-mail tome from apparently her supervisor defending, of course, her actions. Censors usually have it on authority to do just that.

Ms Gail, despite her baseless claims of ideological neutrality, seems unable to control her reactionary bias even while simultaneously claiming to be beyond the ideological fray. In a typical ad hominem, unprofessional and OUTRAGEOUS statement that is reminiscent of McCarthyism she writes on the Internet that I support academic freedom only to spread communist ideology among my students. Here is the exact quotation of this person’s rather incoherent if not unfathomable statement on academic freedom:

“Oh, I think it’s likely he’s a tenured prof and yes, I’ve thought he might more than likely be talking about an academic freedom to teach Marxism, which is to say, making even private schools follow his notions on this under sway of the law. Not that it has any pith at all here, he was blocked for edit warring.”

I have carefully documented in each of the three posts that Ms Gail harbours antipathy toward progressives and arbitrarily decides in her position as administrator, which views mirror her own and receive permission to edit or post items on Wikipedia. As my suspension and numerous other cases such as Dr Norman Finkelstein’s revealed, whether it is Wikipedia, DePaul University or St Xavier University in 2002–not the current administration–the struggle for justice, free speech and academic freedom continues. I will without fear or trepidation resist anyone or any source that attempts to stymie and limit the free flow of information.

On this Veterans Day I remain as committed as I did six years ago to keep the struggle alive and defend democratic ideals without which we shall descend into the darkness of conformity, racism, homophobia and Orwellian autocracy.

A Note to My Students: Wikipedia, henceforth, will be prohibited as a source for research in any of my classes in history or political science. It cannot be construed as reliable, scholarly and unbiased. I do not feel comfortable in its sourcing of information and question its blind pursuit of the truth. Students are free to examine Wikipedia but not to utilise it as a source in historical research or methodology. If a student believes, however, that a Wikipedia entry is vital for a particular citation, kindly share it with me prior to submission.

A thank you to a loyal source who supplied me with this information concerning Cheryl’s post. I have subsequently learned her last name from a third party e-mail-which I presume is accurate– but since her son is serving in time of war, I will be prudent and use only her first name which appeared in the initial blog post on the AFA [United States Air Force Academy] website. I assume she is using her real name as well. While this stuff is blood sport for me, I am sensitive to people’s concerns and vulnerabilities.

It’s great to be back in the Air Force target selection again. Cheryl is now aware of my contretemps with the academy and posted this item on the USAFA Community website. Cheryl, is from Mississippi–REMEMBER JAMES MEREDITH– and has a son who graduated from the academy and is now stationed at Barksdale, AFB in Louisiana. She should be complimented for accuracy in quoting me and my reaction to the e-mail. Not too many have been as careful as Cheryl. Generally speaking, the academy acted honourably in this case and frankly did not support my suspension or reprimand. Captain Borders in particular was quite aware that academic freedom, free speech, dissent– even when provocative– and infuriating speech are protected and that some who serve in the military conceive it as a mission of their service.

I will continue to speak out against censorship, barbaric war, inhumane militarism and American imperialism as long as I can. To suspend faculty for engaging in conversation with individuals who are not their students or even affiliated with their institution is suggestive of coercive efforts to restrict speech and punish the unpopular. Work for peace. Reduce the defence budget. Feed the people. Provide health care for ALL Americans. Remove veterans from rat infested hospitals and provide them with appropriate care. End the nuclear arms race and stop the mass murder in Iraq and Afghanistan!!

Cheryl’s post unedited. I added a link in addition to hers but did not alter the text:

In 2002, a USAFA Cadet sent out emails to Professors at Universities around the world asking them to send students to USAFA to participate in an Academy Assembly event. One of the Professors that received the cadet’s email was a professor of history at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, Illinois.

In response to the cadet’s email, Kirstein’s response – which was passed all around USAFA and then to USAFA parents all over the world – started a firestorm that crashed the phone and internet systems at St. Xavier University. I have never seen the parents of cadets unite so solidly.

This is an example of when parent involvement worked for the good of the cadets. Subsequently Professor Kirstein was reprimanded and suspended from his job.

This is current news because as you will see at the end of this post, Professor Kirstein has put himself back in the news.

Below is the jest of his email reply to the young cadet who requested his presence at the Assembly – with his comments as of today after each statement he made to the cadet 6 years ago.

From Prof. Kirstein to Cadet Robert Kurpiel: (Bold are his comments in his original email reply……….Following are his comments as of today.[Actually, Cheryl retrieved this from a blog post on the fourth anniversary of the e-mail, October 31, 2006, but are still valid today. She might wish to see my YouTube video at New York University that covers this incident in more detail.]

1) You are a disgrace to this country and I am furious you would even think I would support you and your aggressive baby killing tactics of collateral damage.

1) I should have not called him a “disgrace.” My fury at being solicited is reasonable and just. My accusation of “aggressive baby killing tactics of collateral damage” was the most controversial statement of my career and I believe was the fulcrum that led to my suspension. I stand by that charge and have defended it with lectures on college campuses throughout the United States. I believe U.S. military tactics are obscene, frequently engage in wanton destruction beyond military necessity and their destruction of innocents, such as babies, are dismissed with the monstrously understated and dehumanising term of “collateral damage.” The military uses such patois to shroud and deny their own actions and the horrors perpetrated during war. Over 600,000 Iraqis have died since the March 19, 2003 invasion and many of these casualties have been non-combatants including children killed in a ruthless and barbaric manner by American military personnel.

2) Help you recruit? Who, top guns to rain death and destruction upon nonwhite peoples throughout the world?

2) The cadet was not asking me to recruit directly students or applicants to the academy but certainly wanted me to engage political science students to attend an “Academy Assembly” at the Colorado Springs institution. “Top Guns” are navy pilots such as the folks at the infamous sex orgy Tailhook convention a few years ago but I used that term in a generic manner to refer to the slick, macho culture, Tom Cruise, superpersons who pilot machines and deploy in a cowardly and feckless manner missiles and bombs on unsuspecting “targets” below. I do not think it honourable to train someone to fly an aeroplane or helicopter to kill people. It is barbaric and inhumane to train humans to apply technology in this manner.

3) Are you serious sir? Resign your commission and serve your country with honour.

3) I recognized when I was writing the e-mail that cadets were not yet commissioned officers and that was an obvious error. Only upon graduation are they commissioned as lieutenants in the air force. The statement “serve your country with honour” was robust and harsh but I believe that killing is dishonourable, that military service is not the most appropriate form of patriotic service and that wars, particularly America’s wars, do “dishonour” a nation and those who wage it. For those who believe military service is honourable, and I concede the other side of the argument is worthy of debate, they should realistically assess the carnage and devastation that emanates from America’s war crimes. I am entitled to my opinion recognizing that military personnel may be guided by a sense of duty, but the act of killing and training to kill is so destructive of civilisation that we must stop the unquestioned glorification of military service.

4) No war, no air force cowards who bomb countries without AAA, without possibility of retaliation.

4) I stand by that and I have a right as a military veteran, United States Army Reserves, and as an American to voice that opinion. Now they use pilotless “Predators,” that are remotely controlled by some officer thousands of miles away in the United States, to bomb “high-value targets” etc. Is a suicide bomber, who knows he or she will die, any less honourable than Americans in a aeroplane that flies beyond anti-aircraft range and drops its ordinance, probably in an indiscriminate manner, on humans below? I do not think it courageous for pilots to engage in these actions, although personally they may have attributes that are not cowardly or pusillanimous.

5) You are worse than the snipers.

5) This was in reference to the D.C. snipers John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo who terrorized the D.C. area for some three weeks in October 2002. They killed ten people and one recently admitted to additional killings. My statement in terms of numbers was accurate. So many people are killed in war that the comparison is valid. Also as we have seen in Iraq, marines and army personnel have killed innocent Iraqis, invaded their homes, raped and murdered women, tortured to death Iraqis in prisons. No not all American military personnel behave in this manner but I do stand by this statement in terms of quantity and specific actions in which hundreds of thousands of non-combatants have been killed in Iraq.

6) You are imperialists who are turning the whole damn world against us.

6) I am proud of that observation and how accurate it was in light of the war that was to come. We are the most reviled and least admired nation on Earth right now. Many polls verify this decline in prestige from Europe to Asia. [This was before the 2008 election. PNK]

8) I should not have implied that the cadet personally was “unworthy.” I meant that my participating in a recruiting exercise for the Air Force Academy at a time when war with Iraq was becoming increasingly likely, was unworthy of my time and effort. I cannot and will not retract that sentiment. The St Xavier University chapter of the American Association of University Professors issued a report about a year later defending my rights. It appeared on George Mason University’s History News Network. This was a refereed article in Situation Analysis in the United Kingdom that summarised and placed the case in historical perspective.

The Professor’s comments today
(He’s put himself back in the news because he’s protesting Wikipedia censoring him.)
He says: Recently Wikipedia has engaged in reprehensible and indefensible behaviour in censoring my blog link to their entry on academic freedom. Gwen Gail, an administrator at Wikipedia has prohibited me from posting a mere link to my blog. If you are interested in reading more about this Professor you can Google him or even send him a little message if you so choose. E-mail kirstein@sxu.edu [Why don't you Cheryl? It's your idea!]

_________________
Cheryl

Over the weekend, I tried repeatedly to include my blog in the bibliographic component of the Wikipedia entry on “Academic Freedom.” In addition, I was about to correct about seventeen errors in analysis and update its bibliography which uses derivative sources that are not recognised as seminal to the field of analysis. I thought I would be doing Wikipedia’s public a service but someone named Gwen Gail began to instantly remove my insertion of my blog entry. Without identifying herself as an editor or even an employee of this “non-profit” company, she then banned my ability to edit. She then in a fury goes to my page–which was originally entered by another person a few years ago– and makes all these harassing and bullying corrections and criticisms.

I found this blog entry in the myopic and arcane world of Wikipedia technopolitics, and noted several of her colleagues disagreed with her clear and blatant ideologically motivated reasons for censoring me.

Kirstein blog

Hey. I saw you blocked that IP, and it looks like the author of the blog – Kirstein himself – called you out on a blog post. Don’t know if this could lead to any sort of trouble, but I thought you might want a heads-up on that. — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 20:05, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

For some reason I get an error when I click on that. Gwen Gale (talk) 20:14, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

The whole blog seems unavailable, but Google (no cache available) has “Peter N. Kirstein » Blog Archive » Censored on Wikipedia Academic …9 Nov 2008 … I have tried to merely include this blog in the bibliography of “Academic Freedom” on Wikipedia and some CENSOR removes it because it is too…” dougweller (talk) 21:29, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

“…far astray from Wikipedia’s policies on external links”? :) Gwen Gale (talk) 21:33, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Hm, that’s odd. It’s the top post on the main blog, for what it’s worth. I’ll quote it here for you.

THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM IS TO ALLOW FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN TEACHING, RESEARCH, AND IN EXTRAMURAL UTTERANCES AND HERE I AM CENSORED AND SILENCED BY A PERSON WHO DARES TO VIOLATE MY ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN A DE FACTO IF NOT DE JURE MANNER!!

I have tried to merely include this blog in the bibliography of “Academic Freedom” on Wikipedia and a Gwen Gale self-appointed CENSOR removes it because it is too “radical” and a “private” blog. Insteaad of behaving in a civil manner, this “owner” of Wikipedia has blocked me from further editing. Such cyberpower is abusive and worthy of condemnation but I will not be silenced by this Ms Gale who dares to censor me. I have this blog, I have my website, I have many vehicles of expressing my views!! Who are you Ms Gale to determine who is politically correct and meets your ideological litmus test of approval before they can put a link on Wikipedia? This is America! What do you know about academic freedom? Are you a university professor or otherwise an expert on the subject?? I would never censor you but defend your rights of speech. I am willing to conduct in an adult manner a civil and polite exchange DIRECTLY with you. This is my e-mail kirstein@sxu.edu.

Goodness, many of the entries are “private” if there is such a categorisation on the Internet! On Saturday, November 9, 2008 and Sunday November 10, 2008 I professionally linked this blog under the bibiliographic category “Web Resources and Support Organisations.” Someone twice removed it for ideological reasons–a kind of sub rosa vandalism–within minutes! This person clearly cannot claim ownership of that site and in the absence of vandalism, vulgarity, libel, ad hominem remarks or abusive commentary, had no legitimate right to remove it. I am a specialist and published author on academic freedom and will not allow such egregious interference with my first amendment rights.

It then goes on to list a handful of his credentials. — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 21:45, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

What’s his PoV anyway? I only blocked him for edit warring over trying to link a blog. Gwen Gale (talk) 21:47, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I’m not clear on the whole story; I got involved ’cause there was a WP:3RR open for the addition of the blog link. — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 21:57, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

And meanwhile he thinks we care about whatever PoV he’s trying to flog. For all I know, I may agree with him. Gwen Gale (tak) 22:00, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

He’s all about academic freedom. See Peter N. Kirstein. This could get interesting. In fact, it could get much too interesting. dougweller (talk) 22:03, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I can see his blog today. He says:

Repeatedly Censored For Being “Radical” by Gwen Gale on Wikipedia Academic Freedom Site… HERE I AM CENSORED AND SILENCED BY A PERSON WHO DARES TO VIOLATE MY ACADEMIC FREEDOM… !!

Says he’s a “tenured, full professor at St Xavier University” but he seems to have muddled Wikipedia, which is a private encyclopedia website with sourcing and behaviour rules grown through consensus and supported by its private owners (the WmF), with what he thinks is the “Wikipedia Academic Freedom Site.” I don’t know what he means by academic freedom. In a free market, folks should be able to teach and learn what they please, which also means each private school in a free market would be able to choose wholly on their own whether to offer their teachers and students whatever they thought “academic freedom” might be, swayed only by their own goals, means and whatever market tides might flow upon them. As for state funded schools, any notion of academic freedom is but a lie: The lack sometimes helpful, but often utterly unhelpful and misleading. Does he know his IP was blocked only for edit warring (over a link which didn’t meet WP:EL) and nothing else? I’d think he must have read the block notice. Or is he rather stirring things up with a bit of handy polemic propaganda? :) Gwen Gale (talk) 14:09, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Apparently others have had similar problems with Ms Gale’s censorship and persecution of differing perspectives from her own. To be judicious, I do not know the facts of the following incident and cannot make an independent judgment. Nevertheless, there appears to be an inescapable pattern of attempting to thwart points of view that differ from her own. This is intolerable for the Internet and the dissemination of knowledge and I believe her supervisor–if there is one– should investigate and assess her job performance. I would judge it as unprofessional and unworthy of continued service in that position. In any event, I Googled her and found this recent entry of October 13, 2008:

THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM IS TO ALLOW FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN TEACHING, RESEARCH, AND IN EXTRAMURAL UTTERANCES AND HERE I AM CENSORED AND SILENCED BY A PERSON WHO DARES TO VIOLATE MY ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN A DE FACTO IF NOT DE JURE MANNER!!

Source: http://www.cyberbarf.com/GonArt%20Folder/Censored.jpg

I have tried to merely include this blog in the bibliography of “Academic Freedom” on Wikipedia and a Gwen Gale –self-appointed CENSOR– removes it because it is too “radical” and a “private” blog. Instead of behaving in a civil manner, this “owner” of Wikipedia has blocked me from further editing. Such cyberpower is abusive and worthy of condemnation but I will not be silenced by this Ms Gale who dares to censor me. I have this blog, I have my website, I have many vehicles of expressing my views!! Who are you Ms Gale to determine who is politically correct and meets your ideological litmus test of approval before they can put a link on Wikipedia? This is America! What do you know about academic freedom? Are you a university professor or otherwise an expert on the subject?? I would never censor you but defend your rights of speech. I am willing to conduct in an adult manner a civil and polite exchange DIRECTLY with you. This is my e-mail kirstein@sxu.edu.

Goodness, many of the entries are “private” if there is such a categorisation on the Internet! On Saturday, November 8, 2008 and Sunday November 9, 2008 I professionally linked this blog under the bibiliographic category “Web Resources and Support Organisations.” Three times Ms Gale removed it for stated ideological reasons–a kind of sub rosa vandalism–within minutes! This person clearly cannot claim ownership of that site and in the absence of vandalism, vulgarity, libel, ad hominem remarks or abusive commentary, had no legitimate right to remove it. I am a specialist and published author on academic freedom and will not allow such egregious interference with my first amendment rights.

Several of the entries under “Web Resources and Support Organisations” even LINK my blog: College Freedom, DePaul Academic Freedom Conferences and FIRE was the prinicpal organisation that defended me when I was suspended for antiwar e-mail. My credentials having my blog included on AN ACADEMIC FREEDOM PUBLIC WEBSITE are substantial.

I am a tenured, full professor at St Xavier University.

Vice President AAUP Illinois Conference. Member of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, Ill Conference

Served on National AAUP Committee on Membership.

Past president St Xavier University AAUP chapter and Ex Officio member of its Executive Committee

Involved in national academic freedom case.

Lecture nationally on academic freedom including such institutions as New York University, American University, DePaul University, Valparaiso University, etc.

Published article in AAUP Academe on teaching Iraq War and academic freedom.

Blog was principal online disseminator and defender of persecuted Professor Norman Finkelstein.

Peter N. Kirstein will speak on “The New McCarthyism: Academic Freedom and Shared Governance During Time of War,” at Lewis University in Romeoville, Ill. on Wednesday, Oct. 22 at 3 p.m. The event will be in the Learning Resource Center and is sponsored by the Lewis University chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

The remarks will analyse the decline of academic freedom since the battle over New York and Washington, D.C.  on September 11, 2001 including the inquisition against Norman Finkelstein and Terri Ginsberg. The author’s own struggle to defend his tenure and progressive worldview amidst a suspension will be discussed. Issues germane to Lewis University in the areas of academic freedom and shared governance will consume the second half of the remarks.

Shared governance refers to decision making in higher education that incorporates governing boards, administration and faculty input. Faculty are considered officers of a university or college and are to be involved in most areas that affect university life. Some administrations construe shared governance as a threat to their power and influence; others view the professorate as a vital resource for innovation and information.

Certainly some decisions do not lend themselves to shared governance in which either the administration or professorate has unilateral power. The faculty is not normally involved in investment portfolio management of an endowment for example or the appointment of members to the Board of Trustees. Conversely, the administration is not normally involved in curricular decisions concerning the introduction of  new course or in approving a faculty unit’s decision to invite an outside speaker. Yet most areas lend themselves to shared governance: selecting the institution’s president, curricular decisions with regard to new programmes, budgeting, library management, strategic planning and student affairs that are related to education.

Peter N. Kirstein will speak on “The New McCarthyism: Academic Freedom and Shared Governance During Time of War,” at Lewis University in Romeoville, Ill. on Wednesday, Oct. 22 at 3 p.m. The event will be in the Learning Resource Center and is sponsored by the Lewis University chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

The remarks will analyse the decline of academic freedom since the battle over New York and Washington, D.C.  on September 11, 2001 including the inquisition against Norman Finkelstein and Terri Ginsberg. The author’s own struggle to defend his tenure and progressive worldview amidst a suspension will be discussed. Issues germane to Lewis University in the areas of academic freedom and shared governance will consume the second half of the remarks.

Shared governance refers to decision making in higher education that incorporates governing boards, administration and faculty input. Faculty are considered officers of a university or college and are to be involved in most areas that affect university life. Some administrations construe shared governance as a threat to their power and influence; others view the professorate as a vital resource for innovation and information.

Certainly some decisions do not lend themselves to shared governance in which either the administration or professorate has unilateral power. The faculty is not normally involved in investment portfolio management of an endowment for example or the appointment of members to the Board of Trustees. Conversely, the administration is not normally involved in curricular decisions concerning the introduction of  new course or in approving a faculty unit’s decision to invite an outside speaker. Yet most areas lend themselves to shared governance: selecting the institution’s president, curricular decisions with regard to new programmes, budgeting, library management, strategic planning and student affairs that are related to education.

TAKE ACTION AGAINST YET ANOTHER ATTACK ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM

As you know, since 9/11, the right has ramped up its attack on academics who dare to dissent from the U.S. occupation of Iraq and its policy in the Middle East more generally. Neo-McCarthyite groups like the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Students for Academic Freedom and the David Project have published lists of “disloyal” faculty and scurrilous reports on allegedly “anti-American” courses dealing with U.S. imperialism, Islam and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Respected scholars who study and write about such subjects -such as Norman Finkelstein– have been denied tenure solely on the basis of their politics. Others, like Ward Churchill, have had tenure summarily stripped from them.

In similar instances, applications for tenure have been seriously threatened (Nadia Abu El-Haj: Joseph Massad) and books and their publishers have been targeted for censorship (i.e. Joel Kovel’s book “Overcoming Zionism” and University of Michigan Press).  Now, the assault on academic freedom has effected yet another critical scholar: Terri Ginsberg, a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from NYU and an authority on Israeli and Palestinian film.

Last fall, Terri was hired to a one year, non-tenure track position in Film Studies at North Carolina State University (with the possibility of renewal). As part of her teaching responsibilities, she offered advanced courses on film and media  treatment of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and on the political aesthetics of Holocaust film (the subject of her recent book); she was also charged with helping to program a Middle Eastern film series.

Unfortunately, as Terri details in a grievance she filed with the NCSU Faculty in March 2008,  the director of the film studies program and the director of the Middle East studies program at NCSU made a number of administrative decisions in the course of the past year that flagrantly violated Terri’s academic freedom.

To begin with, they limited her involvement in the film series which she had been hired to curate, and criticized the introduction she gave at a screening of the Palestinian film “Ticket to Jerusalem” as biased and overly political. Moreover, the director of the film studies program refused to purchase many of the materials Terri had requested for her Palestine/Israel film and media course and submitted her evaluation of Terri’s teaching prematurely. All of this culminated in her contract not being renewed for the upcoming academic year.

The grievance Terri filed with the NCSU Faculty alleged violations of her First Amendment and equal opportunity  rights under the University Code. Despite a recommendation from the NCSU Faculty Chair that her case be given a full hearing, NCSU Chancellor James L. Oblinger summarily dismissed her petition on the grounds that it was filed “too late” and that Terri was no longer a university employee. To make matters worse, the AAUP– who had been helping Terri with her case– informed her in the wake of Oblinger’s decision that they would no longer provide her with assistance. (For more information about the facts of Terri’s case, read the following article:
http://media.www.technicianonline.com/media/storage/paper848/new

/2008/07/17/News/Professor.Claims.Unprotected.Speech-3391733.shtml)

In response to this outrage, people from around the world have been inundating NCSU with letters demanding that the Chancellor and the Board of Trustees allow Terri’s grievance to go forward. An online petition has been started that requests that NCSU consider Terri’s case and asks the AAUP to give her the support she deserves.

Please take a few minutes to help Terri in this fight. First, add your name to the petition of support drafted by Academics for Justice (AcademicsForJustice.org):
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Protect-Academic-Freedom

Second, send e-mails and make phone calls to D. McQueen Campbell, chair of the NSCU Board of Trustees, andD. McQueen Campbell, Chair NCSU Board of Trustees
tele: 919-515-2195

fax:  919-831-3545
trustees@ncsu.edu

Dr. Larry A. Nielsen, NCSU Provost &
Executive Vice Chancellor
larry_nielsen@ncsu.edu
tele: 919-515-2195
fax:  919-515-5921

this announcement was derived from 3rd party.

“As a way of creating political support for his policy, the government of George W. Bush turned to New McCarthyism. Peter N. Kirstein, in his essay “Academic Freedom and the New McCarthyism,” explains. “New McCarthyism emerged from a sense of frustration and panic that America’s enemies had not been subjugated and that the empire could strike back. Since the largely unsuccessful wars against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan on October 2001, and the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the United States has been in the throes of a militant-nationalistic crusade fueled by war.”  For entire piece see Christopher Coyle blog post.

http://jeezit.blogspot.com/2008/07/ideological-censorship.html

This courageous former professor is finally granted some relief from the American gulag. Previoysly tenured at the University of South Florida, he has been the victim of ideological attack by an arbitrary and reckless academic-judicial axis of academic freedom suppression and vindictive prosecution. Thanks to the intrepid, prolific scholar Norman Finkelstein’s website for this item. For an earlier post see.

Dr. Sami Al-Arian Should not be reincarcerated but allowed to leave the U.S. as agreed upon in a plea agreement.

 07.10.2008 | JonathanTurley.org
By Jonathan Turley
Lead Counsel to Dr. Sami Al-Arian

In a set back for the government, Dr. Sami Al-Arian was granted bail by Judge Leonie M. Brinkema today. Over the objections of the government and the pre-trial services, Judge Brinkema agreed that Dr. Al-Arian was not a flight risk and no danger to the community. The government has suggested that it may now block release by having Immigration officials hold Dr. Al-Arian for deportation — despite the fact that it is trying to hold him for years under a criminal sentence rather than deport him.

At the hearing, I was joined by my colleague P.J. Meitl from the law firm of Bryan Cave. The government was represented by Gordon Kromberg, who was joined at counsel table by Steve Ward of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Judge Brinkema specifically asked him to identify Ward and immediately noted that his office is part of the plea agreement with Dr. Al-Arian. Kromberg admitted that he was. This would be important later during sharp exchanges with Kromberg over Dr. Al-Arian’s cooperation. Kromberg admitted that the alleged contempt by Dr. Al-Arian was his refusal to answer questions from the Florida trial, which was closed with the plea agreement. In this admission, Kromberg established that Dr. Al-Arian is not being charged with failing to answer questions about the IIIT investigation — which were addressed fully in his affidavits. Rather, the government is trying to revisit the Florida trial that it lost when a jury acquitted Dr. Al-Arian of various counts (and came within two votes of acquitting him on all counts).

Judge Brinkema made a number of significant statements in the hearing.

First, she warned the government that she was getting “strange signals” for this case and that the government should not be found to have harassed efforts for another governments to accept Dr. Al-Arian under the plea agreement.

Second, she stated that the plea agreement continued to apply to the case and that the government is required to deport him with expedition.

Third, she said that any resumption of custody by ICE would trigger the deportation provision.

Fourth, Judge Brinkema specifically asked for confirmation that Dr. Al-Arian had already made detailed statements to the government and repeatedly offered to take a polygraph examination to prove that he was not withholding information.

On the question of the government’s failure to deport Dr. Al-Arian, we were astonished by Mr. Kromberg’s insistence that the government did not know of any travel document issued by the Egyptian government. I objected that multiple copies were submitted to the government weeks ago and that Mr. Kromberg was personally informed of the travel documents before the indictment. Despite this record, Mr. Kromberg suggested that Dr. Al-Arian was “a man without a country” and thus could not be deported at this time.

In one of the most curious moments, the government insisted that Dr. Al-Arian had waived any claim under the statute for deportation within the 90 day period. I immediately objected and said that no such agreement was made. We agreed not to invoke the plea agreement for part of the period of negotiation. We never agreed to waive all statutory arguments of removal. The government, however, is arguing that (unlike the plea agreement) the court should just read such an understanding into prior emails between counsel. We will be submitting these emails to the court to clearly show that no such waiver occurred and the time for deportation has expired.

The government also said that Dr. Al-Arian had refused to meet face-to-face with investigators. We will be submitting material today to the court to show that Dr. Al-Arian repeatedly agreed to meet face-to-face with investigators and only refused to revisit the Florida trial. On the questions related to IIIT, Dr. Al-Arian not only submitted detailed answers but agreed to both meet with investigators and to take a polygraph examination to prove that he was not withholding information.

Next week, we will be submitted pre-trial motions as well as seeking Dr. Al-Arian’s release from ICE custody.

We are deeply grateful to Judge Brinkema for her ruling today as well as her words of concern over the “strange signals” in the case. Indeed, there is much strange about this case such as the government claiming to be deporting someone who it is trying to hold for years in a criminal indictment. Things are likely to become stranger still as the government continues its long campaign to hold Dr. Al-Arian by any means or method. We remain hopeful, however, that Dr. Al-Arian will be vindicated and that the government will be forced to comply with its commitment to allow him to leave the country.

The Dr Norman Finkelstein tenure battle is most demonstrative of the lack of academic freedom and the power of external lobbies to bully and intimidate universities into taking actions that are contrary to the pursuit of truth and knowledge.

Stewart Ain, “A Pariah in Exile,” The Jewish Week, July 4, 2008

He lost an epic tenure battle, then got barred from Israel. Now, Norman Finkelstein is back in Brooklyn, with a provocation or two up his sleeve.

It has come to this for Norman Finkelstein: Back home in the Brooklyn of his youth, living alone in his deceased father’s rent-stabilized apartment on Ocean Parkway, just a few blocks from where the white-hot controversial professor grew up.

No more loyal students, no more lectures to prepare, no more radio debates with his arch-enemy, Alan Dershowitz, no more national spotlight; Finkelstein is the man no one wants, and perhaps for good reason.

A year ago, DePaul University, where he taught political science for six years, denied Finkelstein tenure in one of the most bruising tenure battles in recent memory. The story made national headlines, fueled by Dershowitz’s crusade against Finkelstein’s scholarship.

Finkelstein’s supporters painted the Harvard law professor as an outside agitator encroaching on an internal tenure process; some of his students went on a hunger strike in his support. No major university will touch him now. “Who wants to go through what DePaul went through with a national hysteria,” Finkelstein says, shrugging. “To be told I was a Holocaust denier and a terrorist supporter — would you want me on your faculty?”

And Israel shut its doors on him in May, barring him from entering the country; it never gave him a reason, but news reports attributed it to his strong and highly vocal anti-Israel views, and for associating with elements hostile to the Jewish State. (Finkelstein says he met with leaders of the terrorist group Hezbollah during a trip to Beirut in January.) After 18 hours in detention at Ben-Gurion Airport, he was taken onto a plane and whisked out of the country.

It’s not hard to see why Finkelstein is anathema in most Jewish circles, simply beyond the pale. He has struck out — with a vengeance — at the twin pillars of postwar Jewish life: the Holocaust (which he calls “the Holocaust industry”) and Israel. The Jewish community, he argues, has exploited the Holocaust for financial gain, sullying the memory of the Six Million.

And he has cavorted with Israel’s enemies, meeting with and praising Hezbollah. During the height of Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon, as Hezbollah was raining rockets down on northern Israel and Israel was bombing Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut and targets elsewhere in the country, Finkelstein took the stage at a rally in Brooklyn and intoned, “We are all Hezbollah.”

So the Pariah of Ocean Parkway is at the low point in his life, his academic career in shambles. (The only offer of a job has come from a two-year college he declined to identify that offered a paltry salary for many hours of work.) Here he sits, in his father’s old apartment, surrounded by framed family photographs. The photos, along with glowing pictures and notes from DePaul students that sit on his piano, may be his only comfort as he tries to pick up the pieces of his career.

Finkelstein may be down on his luck, but the provocateur still seems to have some fight in him. He spends hours at the computer on his combative, over-the-top Web site — a video of him debating Dershowitz in a radio studio is interspersed with clips of Bruce Lee-like martial arts warriors fighting to the death.

Finkelstein says he’s content with things, that he wants to avoid further controversy. “I’ve had 15 minutes of fame and then a half-hour and then 10 hours; I don’t need anymore. … I’m not worried about being a pariah,” he says. Yet the title of the new book he’s working on — “A Farewell to Israel: The Coming Break-up of American Zionism” — suggests that controversy may yet find him again, that Finkelstein may be bowed but not broken.

On a muggy late spring day, Finkelstein is walking the old neighborhood around Ocean Parkway and Avenue W. He grew up here in what was an upper-middle-class neighborhood in the late-‘50s and early ‘60s, his parents survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto. He may have absorbed a body blow from DePaul, but at 54 he is lean and trim in a blue T-shirt and khaki shorts, his salt-and-pepper hair tousled. He maintains a disciplined exercise regimen, jogging and swimming regularly.

He spent his first eight years in Flatbush and then moved to Mill Basin with his parents and two brothers until he was 17.

“My parents were devout atheists,” Finkelstein says. (They also had  Communist leanings, according to Haaretz, as did many Polish Jews of their generation.) “You couldn’t discuss religion in my house even though my mother’s father was very Orthodox. She said he was like a rabbi. And my father’s, too.

“My parents were completely Jewish; that’s why they did not feel they needed to prove they were Jewish,” he says.

It was perhaps because of that that Finkelstein, who says he too is an atheist, said he never had a bar mitzvah.

“When I was 13, a bar mitzvah was like a coming-out party and to not have one was shameful,” he recalls. “It was terrible. People would ask me if I was having a bar mitzvah and I said I was having it in Israel. … Not to have a bar mitzvah was a psychologically terrible ordeal, but it gave me character and taught me how to resist peer pressure.”

Both of his brothers — Henry worked for the city and Richard was a computer consultant — retired when they turned 50. “I used to joke that I am still waiting for my first job,” he says with smile.

His brothers are both married and Finkelstein has one nephew. “I don’t have any regrets not marrying,” he says as he walked by the bookshelves that line the entranceway to his apartment.

Among the books were several about Karl Marx, another about the Bolshevik Revolution called, “Ten Days that Shook the World” by John Reed, books about Hitler, and “Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel’s National Security and Foreign Policy.”

Finkelstein’s career, though it began with a doctorate in politics at Princeton University, has been checkered. His thesis sought to expose as a shoddy piece of research Joan Peters’ best-selling book, “From Time Immemorial,” which debunked the notion of a Palestinian population overwhelmed by Jewish immigrants in the Holy Land. His thesis, in turn, was criticized by many as politically driven, and was supported by few, including Noam Chomsky, the outspoken critic of Israel’s right to exist.

Finkelstein has had trouble holding a job, bouncing from Rutgers University to NYU to Brooklyn College and Hunter College.

Despite what he said were solid evaluations at DePaul — in formal public statements DePaul said Finkelstein is an outstanding teacher and a prolific scholar — Finkelstein says he saw the writing on the wall when he first accepted the position. It’s why, he says, he held onto his father’s apartment for the six years he was in Chicago so that he would not find himself out of work and out of a home.

“I had the best teaching record at DePaul University,” he insists, explaining that the evaluation is based upon student assessments and his writing. He even sailed through the early tenure committees, before the campaign against him was launched by Dershowitz. (In his book “Beyond Chutzpah,” Finkelstein had attacked Dershowitz’s “The Case for Israel” as a fraud.)

“Now I can’t even get an adjunct appointment for one semester,” he says matter-of-factly. “I lectured in the past year at 40 universities and I would ask the faculty there about a position and was told it was out of the question.”

Finkelstein rises from his living room chair and points to the picture of his mother on the wall above the piano, as if to take his mind off his dismal job prospects.

“My mother was in the Warsaw Ghetto from 1939 until 1943,” he says, strongly denying that his mother was a Nazi collaborator — a charge leveled by some of his detractors. “She was also in Majdanek and in two slave labor camps and every member of her family was exterminated – her two sisters, a brother and mother and father.”

A job as a high school teacher is also out of the question, Finkelstein says.

“The way they do background checks is to Google your name. With me, they would get 30,000 Web sites, one-third of them saying I am a Holocaust denier, a supporter of terrorism, a crackpot and a lunatic. If 30,000 Web sites are saying that, the assumption is that where there is smoke, there must be fire. Would you take the time to look through 30,000 Web sites?”

“I save my complaints for my friends,” he says when asked his reaction to such Web sites.

“That’s why we have friends in the world — to chew their ears off.”
Peter Novick isn’t one of those friends. The author of “The Holocaust in American Life” has been critical of Finkelstein’s credibility and scholarship, saying that “a lot of [his writing] was pure invention” and that not all of his footnotes are accurate.

Novick said that in his own book he explored how “much of American Jewry has centered on the Holocaust … for Finkelstein it’s a racket, with self-aggrandizing Jewish elites who use it to boost their own power; it is nasty and over-the-top stuff.”

He said he feels sorry that Finkelstein has been unable to secure another teaching job, but Novick said Finkelstein knowingly refused to do what it takes to get tenure: publish academically respectable material in academic journals.

“He was much more engaged in doing political rather than academic work, and that is not how you get a regular academic job,” Novick explains. “I’m not saying it in a way to blame him. He made his choice. … He raises abrasiveness to a matter of principle.”

“On balance,” Novick continues, “would it be a good thing if he had a job? Yes. The idea of this guy in his 50s who has done this all his life now being cut off at the knees is sad.”

He may not have a job, but Finkelstein’s new book, yet to have a publisher, is certain to stir more controversy. Its premise is that American Jews who “embraced Israel [after the Six-Day War] in 1967 — seeing it as a liberal state — now are embarrassed by its use of cluster bombs [in Lebanon]. It’s no longer possible to justify support for Israel on conventional and elementary liberal principles — it’s impossible to justify the occupation.”

A number of surveys suggest that American Jews, especially 20- and 30-year olds, have grown increasingly distant from Israel, but not necessarily for the reasons Finkelstein offers.

“It’s claimed that Israel is searching for peace, yet it says to attack Iran, Syria and Iraq,” Finkelstein continues. “So it’s an embarrassment. Gradually, American Jewry will be bidding farewell to Israel, except in existential cases. And the under-40 generation is growing more and more indifferent” to Israel.

On a drive around his old neighborhood, the discussion turned to his book “The Holocaust Industry,” which claims Israel is an immoral power with a horrific human rights record that seeks to evoke sympathy for its position because of the Holocaust. Finkelstein spoke like a man whom time has vindicated.

“I don’t know if I’ve pushed the envelope,” he said of his claims about Jewish groups extorting money from European countries for Holocaust reparations. “[Famed Holocaust historian Raul] Hilberg supported me, so I’m not sure how much I’m pushing the envelope. Before I charged Jewish groups with a shakedown racket, Hilberg did interviews with the Swiss and German press and said that for the first time in history American Jews are making use of the blackmail weapon. So they were the ones who pushed the envelope by using the Holocaust as a blackmail weapon.”

As he reflected on the fate of some of the main figures in the effort to extract reparations for Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein smiled at the irony of recent events.

Israel Singer, the former secretary general of the World Jewish Congress, was fired after it “turned out he had a secret Swiss bank account he was funneling money to — unbeknownst to the World Jewish Congress — for what he called his pension,” says Finkelstein.

“Burt Neuborne, the lead counsel in the Swiss case, went around saying he was doing the work pro bono for his daughter who was studying to be a rabbi,” he continues. “But it turns out he got $5 million from the German settlement and was asking for $6 million in the Swiss case. Even the New York Times wrote an editorial denouncing him. And Mel Weiss [another lawyer in the case] was indicted [in an unrelated case] and pleaded guilty.”

“They’re all crooks,” Finkelstein says with obvious satisfaction. “The only one not in trouble is me. I’m unemployed, but at least I haven’t been indicted.”

Now, settled into his Brooklyn life, Finkelstein is preparing for what may be his biggest fight, albeit one he doesn’t relish. He plans to go to the Israeli Consulate in New York in September to seek an assurance that he will be admitted in December. Such assurance, he said, would allow all concerned to “avoid the spectacle of me applying under the Law of Return [which gives every Jew the automatic right to acquire Israeli citizenship]. … It’s hard to see which side will find that more ridiculous.

“I don’t incite riots,” he continued. “I’m just going to see a friend in the occupied Palestinian territories. I’m not there to see Israel. I do not need for every facet of my life to be politicized. If Israeli authorities would just grant me a visa, I’ll move on.”

Finkelstein said he hopes to visit a Palestinian, Musa Abu Hashhash, who lives with his wife and children near Hebron. They first met in 1988 when Finkelstein went to Israel with a delegation from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee and Finkelstein dedicated one of his books to the man, who works for B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group.  He stressed that his visit to Israel would be a “private” affair and that he had “no interest in turning this into a political issue. … I don’t think they can deny me, and I don’t want to turn it into a test case for the Israeli High Court.”

As things stand now, however, Norman Finkelstein, the grand provocateur, waits in limbo for a shot at returning to the Promised Land, a land he has made a career of reviling.�