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[igotthisguitar]

Beached
The Coney Island exile of a scholar who would be Noam Chomsky, but isn�t.
By Ben Harris Published Dec 10, 2007


(Photo: Jeremy Liebman)

At 54, Norman Finkelstein is pretty much back where he started.

This summer, the leftist scholar�who made a name for himself in 2000 with his book The Holocaust Industry, in which he called Jewish leaders a �... repellent gang of plutocrats, hoodlums, and hucksters� intent on extorting war reparations from European governments�lost his job as assistant professor of political science at DePaul University. Fortunately, he kept the lease on his late father�s threadbare rent-stabilized apartment, on Ocean Parkway, and there he�s retreated.

�It�s like death,� Finkelstein says. �You keep saying you�re going to die, but you never really come to grips with it. And I can see I�m not going to get another job. I haven�t yet fully absorbed it.�

His days are now spent in solitary scholarly pursuits; his bookshelves buckle under the weight of tomes by Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky. Notes of support from his students sit on a piano; there�s a photo of him and Noam Chomsky (�my closest friend�) bare-chested on the beach at Cape Cod.

He was a Maoist revolutionary in his youth. By his own account, his academic career was bedeviled from the start by his politics: It took him thirteen years to wrest his doctorate from Princeton, since no faculty member would agree to advise him on his thesis, an analysis of Zionism. When he finally did earn the degree, none would write him a recommendation. He went on to take a series of adjunct posts�at Brooklyn College, Hunter, and NYU�rarely earning more than $20,000 a year.

At DePaul, where he arrived six years ago, his situation improved. But the success of The Holocaust Industry, which was translated into over two dozen languages and was a best seller in Germany, raised his profile, and the critics mobilized. Harvard�s Alan Dershowitz waged a fierce campaign against him, preparing a dossier of Finkelstein�s �clearest and most egregious instances of dishonesty.� Still, his department, and the college, recommended him for tenure. But the university�s promotion-and-tenure board voted 4-3 against him, and DePaul�s president refused to overturn the decision.

Afterward, Finkelstein says, he lost seventeen pounds. �People saw me wasting away,� he says. A student group held a hunger strike; Chomsky and others defended him. One of his colleagues made him a mix CD with tracks like �I Will Survive� and �What�s Goin� On?� �I�m an old fan of the Negro spirituals,� Finkelstein says. �I was going around singing to myself, �Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there?� That�s how I felt. I was being crucified by the end.�

The son of survivors of the Warsaw ghetto and Nazi death camps, Finkelstein was raised in Borough Park and later Mill Basin, where he attended high school a few years behind Chuck Schumer. His parents became atheists after the war.

His new building remains heavily Jewish. A friend of Finkelstein�s father once approached him in the lobby and urged him to tone it down. �Norman,� he told him, �you�re getting older, and all the old-age homes are owned by Jews. If you keep this up, you�re not going to have anywhere to go.�

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/41838/

[stevemcgarrett]

Ah, yes, another self-loathing Jew ala Bobby Fischer.

[On the other hand]

[igotthisguitar]

[Big_Bird]

[stevemcgarrett]

Big Bird:

I'm not familiar with the particulars of his case but some of his comments go well beyond the pale and cannot be dismissed as merely anti-Zionist. There is a persistent "breed" of intellectual Jewry that is self-loathing just as there is a strong strain of Anti-Semitism in the Anglo-Russo-Franco criticism of Israeli policy. That doesn't mean to say that anyone who's not pro-Israel is a bigot but you don't have to scratch the surface much to find a long history of it in those particular locales.

As for academic freedom in general, well, I just hope you're not one of those British snobs who still believes academia in England is without peer. Most suppression of academic discourse in the Western academy occurs in the classrooms of the Far Left (like this guy) by limiting required reading for course to a particular ideological mindset. But then you won't hear The Guardian or Mother Jones ever lament this widespread reality.

[in_seoul_2003]

[mistermasan]

i read that book some years back. interesting read.

[Mosley]

The phenomenon of the "self-loathing" Jew has been around for quite a while.

One primer on the subject can be found in Paul Johnson's excellent A HISTORY OF THE JEWS.

[yawarakaijin]

To me, the term self loathing jew seems to have incendiary connotations. Why is it that the term self loathing christian, self loathing muslim or buddhist hasn't appeared in our lexicon?

I'm not going to pass judgement on or analyse those who feel it necessary to use the term (in more than one thread) but I personally find it unnecessary.

[igotthisguitar]

[Mosley]

Check out some CREDIBLE sources, like the one I listed above, and then get back to me, Grand Mufti....

[igotthisguitar]

Credible sources?

Grand Mufti? Huh?

[thepeel]

[Mosley]

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/muftihit.html