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Sheldon Richman - 6/17/2007

Wow. Denial of tenure seems suspicious in a case such as this.

Bill Woolsey - 6/16/2007

The key point to me is that he had a majority vote in his department and a unanimous vote on the college tenure committee.

I support them, not the administrator.

I

Mark Brady - 6/12/2007

I understand what you're saying although I don't find him loathsome. That's not my take on hearing him speak at Stanford and on reading chunks of his website here over the past year or so.

Steven Horwitz - 6/12/2007

I'm not going to debate whether he deserves tenure. None of us can do that without seeing the materials the various committees saw. So I'm not arguing he shouldn't have been tenured. What I did say was that I can't summon much outrage about him being denied because I find him to be pretty loathsome as a person.

It's exactly the same way I felt about the whole incident with Hoppe and his gay remarks in the classroom. He might well have been the victim, but I really couldn't summon too much outrage for exactly the same reasons.

Mark Brady - 6/12/2007

I note that you do not choose to respond to any of the three reasons why I consider it a shame that Finkelstein has been denied tenure. And where is your evidence that Norman Finkelstein "has made a career of insulting, distorting, and outright lying about his interlocutors"? He can be acerbic but he does not engage in distortions and fabrications.

Steven Horwitz - 6/11/2007

Having heard Mr. Finkelstein speak on my campus, I will just say that it's hard for me to muster much outrage at all for a man who has made a career of insulting, distorting, and outright lying about his interlocutors. Regardless of the content, and regardless of whether such behavior is ground for denying tenure, I simply cannot muster even the smallest shard of sympathy or outrage for a man who violates the canons of civil discourse on a regular basis. (And please don't tell me how bad Dershowitz is - two wrong, etc.)

Mark Brady - 6/11/2007

That he was denied tenure when from most accounts he deserved it. The shameful role played by Alan Dershowitz, who must be one of the worst sleezes around. And the disingenuous letter from the president of DePaul University.

Aeon J. Skoble - 6/11/2007

BTW, I'm not trolling: I'm asking you to clarify what is shameful -- e.g., the denial per se, the procedural chain, the public controversy potentially playing a role, or what?

Aeon J. Skoble - 6/11/2007

What's the shameful part?