Norman Finkelstein

Germanophob Professor Norman Finkelstein had an epiphany in old age and criticizes wokeness and the lack of free speech rights.

Norman Gary Finkelstein (b. 8 December 1953 in New York City, New York) is an American Jewish political scientist, activist, professor, and author.

Life

The Holocaust Industry

Finkelstein has written of his parents' alleged experiences during World War II. His mother, Maryla Husyt Finkelstein, daughter of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish father, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, and, according to Finkelstein, survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Majdanek concentration camp. Finkelstein grew up in New York City. He completed his undergraduate studies at Binghamton University in New York in 1974, after which he studied at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He went on to earn his Master's degree in political science from Princeton University in 1980, and later his PhD in political studies, also from Princeton. Finkelstein wrote his doctoral thesis on Zionism, and it was through this work that he first attracted controversy. Before gaining academic employment, Finkelstein was a part-time social worker with teenage dropouts in New York. He then taught successively at Rutgers University, New York University, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College and, until recently, taught at DePaul University in Chicago.

He is controversial for criticisms of the Holocaust industry, notably in the 2000 book The Holocaust Industry, and for criticisms of Israel. After a controversy involving criticisms of Israel, in 2007 the DePaul University denied him tenure and placed him on administrative leave, followed by Finkelstein announcing his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms. In 2008, he was banned from entering Israel for 10 years. Finkelstein has been reported to in The Holocaust Industry have made statements such as "If everyone who claims to be a [Holocaust] survivor actually is one, my mother used to exclaim, “who[m] did Hitler kill?”". However, he has explicitly rejected being a "Holocaust denier", citing Raul Hilberg's views on the Holocaust.

Lectures

Controversial author and political scientist Norman Finkelstein will deliver three timely lectures at UMass on October 17th and 18th on topics ranging from attacks on academic freedom to the politics of so-called “woke culture” to the ongoing struggle for Palestinian human rights. Finkelstein, an electrifying public speaker and the author of 13 influential books, is a distinguished Middle East scholar renowned for his analysis of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is best known for the controversy surrounding his tenure case at DePaul University, where he was denied tenure due to a vicious campaign of defamation led by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. The case remains one of the most significant in American educational history involving academic freedom. Now an independent scholar, Finkelstein has continued to write about pressing social and political issues. His latest book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom, is a withering critique of contemporary campus politics, and especially what Finkelstein calls “woke culture.” While there have been many right-wing attacks on “wokeness,” Finkelstein’s analysis comes squarely from the left, examining academic freedom and the suppression of campus speech through the lens of class politics and the possibilities of meaningful progressive social change.

External links

• Norman Finkelstein's website
• David Irving: Documents on Norman Finkelstein's controversies
• Codoh: Norman Finkelstein
• Norm Finkelstein on identity politics and woke culture

Videos

• Norman Finkelstein’s lifelong rebellion and new war on woke, YouTube