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The Norman Finkelstein I heard speak at Stanford in January presented a very measured argument for the withdrawal of Israel to its pre-1967 boundaries. His informed and eloquent talk was very well received. He engaged the audience with his honesty and wit.
I invite our readers to consider the testimony of the historian Raul Hilberg, one of the best-known and most distinguished of Holocaust historians. His three-volume, 1,273-page The Destruction of the European Jews is regarded as the seminal study of the Nazi Final Solution.
Go here and scroll down to Hilberg's remarks about Finkelstein in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy NOW!
"Raul Hilberg: Well, let me say at the outset, I would not, unasked, offer advice to the university in which he now serves. Having been in a university for thirty-five years myself and engaged in its politics, I know that outside interferences are most unwelcome. I will say, however, that I am impressed by the analytical abilities of Finkelstein. He is, when all is said and done, a highly trained political scientist who was given a PhD degree by a highly prestigious university. This should not be overlooked. Granted, this, by itself, may not establish him as a scholar.
"However, leaving aside the question of style -- and here, I agree that it's not my style either -- the substance of the matter is most important here, particularly because Finkelstein, when he published this book, was alone. It takes an enormous amount of academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him. And so, I think that given this acuity of vision and analytical power, demonstrating that the Swiss banks did not owe the money, that even though survivors were beneficiaries of the funds that were distributed, they came, when all is said and done, from places that were not obligated to pay that money. That takes a great amount of courage in and of itself. So I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost."
And here's another occasion (again scroll down) when Hilberg spoke up for Finkelstein.
"Hilberg: Well Finkelstein is now maligned all over the place. There were obviously lobbies who tried to dislodge him from his position. Finkelstein is a political scientist. I believe he has a PhD degree from Princeton and, whatever you may think of Princeton, this is a pretty strong preparation to be a professional political scientist. He wrote to me a couple of times. He was the first one to take Goldhagen seriously. He attacked Goldhagen in a very long essay which I could never have written because I would have never had the patience."
Finkelstein is a Holocaust revisionist in the way Raul Hilberg is a Holocaust revisionist. That label alone tells us little. It all depends on what precisely is being revised. I recall that Hilberg has lowered the accepted estimate of how many Jews were murdered at Auschwitz. I trust no reasonable person would cast aspersions on him for that. Unfortunately, some people (I'm not saying Aeon is one of them) who describe others as "Holocaust revisionists" want readers to read "Holocaust deniers." Those are some of the people Finkelstein has criticized in his work.
Steven Horwitz -
6/17/2007
Tenure is a way of rewarding the institution-specific investments that are required for productive work at most schools where teaching and service are the bulk of faculty's time. Institution-specific investments (getting to know students and colleagues and how the school's culture works) make faculty less marketable to other schools, reducing our ability to harness competition to get raises. In return for accepting that loss, tenure assures us job security. There's nothing antithetical to the free market there whatsoever. It's one particular kind of private contract.
Aeon J. Skoble -
6/17/2007
"Tenure might continue to exist in free market schools"
Tenure evolved in private universities. The only reason state schools have it is to compete with private schools. It is, as Bill explained, a market-evolved institution. You're right that salesmen don't need tenure because no once cares who they vote for. Sadly, that's not true in the academy, where un-PC views can get one in hot water, but more germane is my point upthread that the people who would get to fire an academic are not the ones who "own" the "firm" or have an interest in its "product." That analogy is totally inapt.
William J. Stepp -
6/16/2007
I certainly understand that the decision not to give him tenure means they fired him. Do you accept DePaul's right to deny him tenure and to fire him? In a free market, it could cite any reason it wanted, pc or not. And, as Skoble has suggested, the libertarian position is that government shouldn't be involved in promoting a "employment at will" approach to university employmwnr (or any other kind) or else some complicated scheme requiring procedures to prove a "cause" for firing.
What about court cases in which the government's courts have overturned denial of tenure decisions? Those are certainly instances where the government has stuck its thumb into a private contractual matter. (Private courts would be another matter, but we haven't advanced to anarchy yet. Instead we are advancing to barbarism, as Veale put it.)
I assume employment at will is more libertarian, because that prevails in business and the professions. No one cares what a salesman's politics are as long as he produces. Even if he doesn't, no one cares who he votes for, what rallies he goes to, and what magazines he reads. There's no such thing as tenure there.
Tenure might continue to exist in free market schools, but other arrangements mights gain market share.
Bill Woolsey -
6/16/2007
Stepp, you do understand that this means he is being fired.
"not getting tenure" = fired.
That is the way the system works.
It isn't that you keep on working and if you get tenure then it becomes more difficult to fire someone. Rather, it is that either you get tenure or else you have one more year to get a new job.
And, as Skoble has suggested, the libertarian position is that government shouldn't be involved in promoting a "employment at will" approach to university employmwnr (or any other kind) or else some complicated scheme requiring procedures to prove a "cause" for firing.
Government shouldn't mandate "tenure" for any kind of employment (which is what is done for most employment in many countries,) nor should it require "employment at will.
Why the assumption that "employment at will" is more libertarian than some other system?
One would expect that people who are employed "at will" would receive more compensation, but have less employment security. People who have contractual protections against being fired would receive less compensation.
Contrary to my prediction, I worked at a college that didn't have the "7 years and tenure or out" standard. You could work there forever on an annual contract. Tenue took an act of God (well, really an offer of employment elsewhere and they wanted to keep you.) Compensation wasn't very good there either.
The President fired the secretary of the Faculty Steering Committee (Sort of like Chairman of the Faculty Senate.) The lock was changed on his door one evening. He didn't have tenure.
I left that place.
I think most universities have tenure because they need it to recruit good faculty. Or rather, they don't want to pay the extra money needed to recruit faculty without the industry standard.
By the way...
What kind of extra productivity would universities get out of professors without tenure? Better learning outcomes for students? Better reputation? Higher tuition collections?
I can see what few universities would go with the higher pay, no tenure option.
Mark Brady -
6/15/2007
A quick check in ArticleFirst reveals that Norman Finkelstein has several articles in refereed journals. His book Beyond Chutzpah (2005) was published by the University of California Press and peer reviewed before publication. His departmental committee voted 9 to 3 in support of granting him tenure, and a five-member college-level personnel committee then voted unanimously in favor of tenure.
Norman Finkelstein is NOT a "holocaust revisionist", as the expression is usually understood (to mean the denial of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and others by the Nazis. He is no more a "holocaust revisionist" than is Aeon Skoble or Alan Dershowitz.
Aeon J. Skoble -
6/15/2007
I'm not exercised at all! Like Steve, I'm under the impression (which might, I concede, turn out to be incorrect) that he has no peer-reviewed scholarship and is a holocaust revisionist. I was responding to the overall attack on tenure upthread. Defending the institution of tenure doesn't mean I think everyone should have it.
William J. Stepp -
6/14/2007
The deans are the agents of the trustee-principals and serve at their behest. The latter can overrule them, at least in principle; that they don't in a particular instance simply reflects their trust in the judgement of their agents.
This happens in businesses every day. Hired managers in closely held firms fire employees (and in publicly-owned firms). In the overwhelming majority of these cases, the owner trusts the manager and won't overrule him. He retains the right to do so though and to sack the manager.
To get back to Finkelstein, I don't see why libertarians are exorcised over DePaul's decision. DePaul claims it made the decision uninfluenced by outsiders. It certainly had the right to deny him tenure for any lawful reason.
If Finkelstein has the right stuff, he'll bounce back and land somewhere else, maybe to go on to bigger and better things.
Aeon J. Skoble -
6/14/2007
Tenure is just as consistent with a libertarian theory of contract as not having tenure. If the university thinks it's in its best interest to have professors with tenure, perhaps for the reasons I discuss upthread, then they will offer employment contracts with tenure. That's why this: "an institution has a right to hire and fire someone for whatever criteria floats its boat" isn't applicable: the people doing the firing, e.g. deans, aren't the ones with proporietary interest in the long term, the trustees. Anyway, tenure isn't lifetime job protection tout court: most tenure contracts stipulate myriad ways one can be dismissed. But being un-PC, or annoying some powerful colleague, aren't among them.
William J. Stepp -
6/13/2007
There's a book called Faulty Towers by Ryan C. Amacher and Roger E. Meiners (I haven't read it) that apparently argues the case against tenure. In the pre-tenure era (before 1915) few if any professors were dismissed for their political beliefs and activism.
Only in recent years has the problem of political correctness entered the tenure debate, due to growing government involvement in higher education.
Tenure does not guarantee a lifetime job to professors.
It's just a kind of due process applied to the decision to keep a professor or to cut him lose.
I agree that dismissing a scholar because his research is un-pc is antithetical to the ideals of higher learning, etc. Apparently DePaul thinks it has good grounds for denying NF tenure, which were not affected by outside pressure from his defenders and detractors.
I gather that Amacher and Meiners argue that the pc angle is important mainly due to increased involvement of government in education. I also assume they think an institution has a right to hire and fire someone for whatever criteria floats its boat. That's what I believe too. It's consistent with a libertarian view of contract.
No doubt some decisions to fire people are poorly made, both in academia and elsewhere. Tough cookies.
Bill Woolsey -
6/13/2007
I think there is some value in having academics prove that they can do pedestrian, uncontroversial scholarly work before receiving tenure. Then, after proving themselves in that way, they are free to do something that they consider better. It is possible, (perhaps even likely) that this "better" stuff will be objectively worthless. But, perhaps it will turn out to be wonderful. And, it is true that if it turns out great, it would have been better if that person and not wasted time with the more pedestrian work. But that is just the cost of the benefit of having a rule that screens out cranks.
It is after someone has tenure that they can promote the truth as they see it. I wasn't aware that there is an obligation to tenure cranks.
(Of course, I realize that many of us here, including myself, have done research in nonmainstream areas. But I always understood that I was taking a risk. OF course, the risk is small at a teaching institution like The Citadel.)
Aeon J. Skoble -
6/13/2007
I'm not talking about freedom from the state, I'm talking about freedom from the need to tailor one's research to suit the PC sensibilities of others. Research is supposed to be valued at a university, and in many cases a formal job requirement, but research has no value if not done honestly. The idea that the university could dismiss a scholar, because someone in the administration finds the scholar's results un-PC, is antithetical to very point of having researchers on staff in the first place. The analogy of salesmen who can't close the sale isn't analogous here. In a commercial setting, it's evident and demonstrable whether a salesman is bringing in sales. In an academic setting, people in administration may simply dislike what the scholar says, or not understand it. Or, some vocal group of other scholars may dislike it. In either case, the scholar would actually be getting dismissed for having performed _well_. Tenure mitigates this to a large extent. Can the process be abused? Yes. But I've yet to hear of a better alternative.
William J. Stepp -
6/13/2007
There's no such thing as academic freedom. Freedom doesn't come with an adjective in libertarianism.
Anyone, including owners of schools, should be free to exercise their property rights as they see fit; depoliticizing schools, and above all de-tax funding them, is the place to start. Once this is done, why would academic freedom be any more of an issue than press freedom would be if Kings and Presidents were locked up and placed where they belong, and soldiers put back into their barracks?
Mark Brady -
6/13/2007
Would it be accurate to say that the first edition of Hilberg's book (1961) was seminal and the third edition (2003) was definitive?
Aeon J. Skoble -
6/13/2007
What's your proposed better alternative for protecting academic freedom? Do you think the best interests of the university are served by scholars pursuing their research with integrity, or by scholars who only pursue and refine PC orthodoxies?
William J. Stepp -
6/12/2007
I can't say I'm sad to see someone denied tenure, which is a horrible institution. It doesn't exist in business and the professions (accounting, etc.).
A ball player who hits .213 is sent back to the minors; a salesman who closes three accounts is told to get a real job, etc.
Yes, lawyers, etc. can make partner, but not after seven years; and they can still be shown the door for something less egregious than having illicit relations with the dean's daughter.
I read an account a few years ago about a professor at Columbia who also didn't think much of tenure. He had a deal where his compensation was tied to his productivity, not to the tensile strength of the iron in his butt.
Would that the entire professoriat did this.
The Wikipedia article on tenure discusses its downside.
Steven Horwitz -
6/12/2007
From what I know, NF had ZERO publications in refereed journals in political science. Yes he had books, but at an institution such as DePaul, I simply can't imagine being tenured without any scholarly articles.
NF's CV is no longer available on DePaul's PSC website, so I can't provide the supporting evidence (and he doesn't post a CV on his own website). However, numerous secondary sources commenting about the case have made this point and have linked to the now removed CV.
Lester Hunt -
6/12/2007
It looks like every time I pressed the "back" button to this page, it resubmitted the same comment. Weird!
Lester Hunt -
6/12/2007
Me too. I know Hilberg's work and have used it in my own research. I would tend to describe his work as "definitive" rather than, as Mark does, "seminal."
Lester Hunt -
6/12/2007
Me too. I know Hilberg's work and have used it in my own research. I would tend to describe his work as "definitive" rather than, as Mark does, "seminal."
Lester Hunt -
6/12/2007
Me too. I know Hilberg's work and have used it in my own research. I would tend to describe his work as "definitive" rather than, as Mark does, "seminal."
Lester Hunt -
6/12/2007
Me too. I know Hilberg's work and have used it in my own research. I would tend to describe his work as "definitive" rather than, as Mark does, "seminal."
Sheldon Richman -
6/12/2007
That is impressive. I've never heard Finkelstein speak, and I've read only a little of his work; but what I read impressed me. I would take Hilberg's praise seriously.
