hould Norman Finkelstein have been granted tenure at DePaul University?  I hold unequivocally that he should have been.  He is a most provocative scholar of international fame; and the evidence suggests that he is also a superb instructor.  However, I am quite distributed by what I have read by so many of those who defend him.  A pristine example of what I have in mind can be found at the blog entitled Dar Al-Hayat.  The essay in question is written by Jihad el-Khazen and is entitled “The [DePaul] University President is a Coward.  However, if I were Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, the President of DePaul University, my thought would be that the defenders of Finkelstein are doing him far more harm than good.  In what follows, I shall comment upon the apparent strategy of Finkelstein's supporters.  But first a word about the significance of his work from a scholarly perspective. 

Now, those who defend Finkelstein essentially make the following two claims: (a) Everything that Finkelstein has said in his criticisms of Israel is true.  (b) Everything that Finkelstein has said in his defense of Palestinians is true.  This is not just high praise.  It is utterly incredulous praise.  No one is that good, no matter how creative the person might be. 

From Plato to Kant to Einstein, people have had substantive criticisms to raise against the views put forward by these undeniable geniuses. 

On every conceivable account, John Rawls changed the face of moral and political theory with his acclaimed book A Theory of Justice (1971).  Yet also sorts of ingenuous criticisms have been made against Rawls’s argument.  Outside of philosophy, Erving Goffman comes to mind for his landmark work in sociology and C. Van Woodward comes to mind for his landmark work in black history and Robert L. Trivers comes to mind for his landmark work in sociobiology.  Yet, no one thinks that any of these people got everything right in the field. 

When it comes to a matter as controversial as the Israel-Palestinian conflict, nothing on the face of this earth would be more stunning than if one side were right in every conceivable way, and the other side were wrong in every conceivable way.  I cannot emphasize this enough: No side in this controversial matter is 100% right or 100% wrong.

Now, it is simply an indisputable truth that one can learn much from a person with whom one disagrees mightily.  Indeed, one’s intellectual debt of gratitude toward the person can be enormous.  So it is not as if everyone and anyone has to think that Finkelstein got everything right in order to make the claim that his work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has changed the terms of the debate, or that it has brought about a conceptual shift in how one should look at the conflict. 

But to go on and on and on about how it is that Finkelstein has only uttered truths in his criticisms of Israel and that those who defend Israel have only uttered lies is tantamount to nothing but vapid praise—praise so incredulous that it has credibility only with those who are ideologues regarding the issue. 

Therein lies the reason why I maintain that if I were Rev. Holtschneider, my thought would be that Finkelstein’s supporters are doing him more harm than good.  And the proof of this essentially lies in what they are asking Rev. Holtschneider to believe, namely that Finkelstein is right in every single respect in his critique of Israel and Alan Dershowitz is wrong in every single respect in his defense of Israel.  Well, how plausible is that?  Thus, if I were the President of DePaul University, I would quite naturally think that these people must take me to be a fool if that is what they are asking me to believe.  Accordingly, so my reasoning would continue, I have quite solid grounds to dismiss out of hand their support of Finkelstein. 

Even the highest praise fails if it is incredulous praise; and the claim that a person is right about every single thing is just that: woefully incredulous.  If the tenure letters written on Finkelstein’s behalf were of this genre, then his supporters unwittingly gave Rev. Holtschneider a way out in his decision to overturn the recommendation to grant Finkelstein tenure. 

I am beginning to get an inkling of an insight into what has gone wrong in Finkelstein’s career.  He has, in fact, polarized folks in ways that have done him more harm than good.  One has to be an ideologue to accept as every true every critical remark that he has made about Israel and the Holocaust.  Being a child of parents who survived the Holocaust may very well give him a unique moral status.  It does not, however, make all that he says true.  Nor, again, does it mean that he may criticize others in the most vituperative and venomous manner poassible, as he has in fact done, and yet expect his criticisms to be heard. 

Unfortunately, it would seem that Finkelstein has been too besotted with his standing as a child of Holocaust survivors to see this; and those hostile to Israel have been absolutely drunk with delight that he, a child of Holocaust survivors, should take the stances that he takes.  Thus, Finkelstein has allowed himself to become the darling of those who see Israel as the present day equivalent of Nazi Germany or, even worse, those who think Israel should be wiped off the map. 

Quite simply, this is an alignment, which Finkelstein seems to have fostered, that gets in the way of the critical truths that he has to make, regarding either Israel or the Holocaust mentality, being heard by those who do not think that the world would be better off without Israel.  I am not a university president, but if I were and Finkelstein were coming up for tenure, I must confess, in view of these considerations, that I might think twice about making the final decision to award him tenure.  There is something absolutely despicable about persons letting themselves be used in nefarious ways by others, even if such persons are Jews and the children of Holocaust survivors. 

As I have already said, and I shall say it again: Finkelstein deserves tenure.  And it is abominable, in so many respects, that he does not already have it.  But this requires looking beyond the facts.  For it is simply false to the point of being beyond the pale of reason that every critical remark Finkelstein has made of Israel and every supportive remark he has made of Palestinians is true.  And the fact that his supporters say this so blithely—as if they were merely noting that water is wet—reveals just how lacking in credibility his supporters are. 

For the record: I would think it just as implausible to hold that Israel is right about everything and that Palestinians are wrong about everything.  This is already implied by what I have said.  But someone will not make the inference.  Indeed, someone will insist that I am insincere here. 

At its best and most profound, Finkelstein's work is not just about Jews and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Rather, it is about the proper weight, regardless of the group of individuals in question, to be given to suffering across time.  To the extent that Finkelstein fails to grasp and to underscore and to keep in full view this significance regarding his work, he may be his own worse enemy.