Thursday, September 06, 2007

The Next Piece of Housekeeping for DePaul

1.

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=B24F5BF9-A8CF-4951-80F5-F9E4B99F7039
The Next Piece of Housekeeping for DePaul?
By Steven Plaut
FrontPageMagazine.com | 9/6/2007

Well, DePaul fired Norman Finkelstein for pseudo-scholarship and bigotry
and also canned Finkelstein's ally Mehrene Larudee, who failed to get
tenure as an economist, having tried to get it mainly on the basis of her
Marxist screeds.

But if anyone thinks that DePaul is out of the woods and has put a stop to
radical faculty misrepresenting their ideological propagandizing as
research and trying to get tenure for political propagandizing and
indoctrination, think again.

A case in hand is Matthew Abraham, who teaches English at DePaul and is a
very active apologist on behalf of Norman Finkelstein. Abraham has a long
article in the pro-jihadist website Counterpunch this week repeating all
the myths the left has concocted about the (third or is it fourth?)
university firing of Professor Finkelstein.

Abraham describes Finkelstein as "the most heroic critic of U.S. and
Israeli policy in Palestine ever to set foot in the U.S. academy."
DePaul's having finally stood up for real standards of scholarship is
described by Abraham thus: "By capitulating to the threats, antics, and
pressures of Alan Dershowitz, the Israel Lobby, and its numerous
affiliates, DePaul has compromised something so integral to an educational
institution's mission, that once so compromised, it is impossible to
regain."

He then makes baseless charges against his own school: "DePaul University
is more vulnerable than ever to the next assault upon its integrity and
autonomy-no matter how many millions of dollars have poured into its
coffers because of the Finkelstein tenure denial, we are vulnerable." He
adds: "Will those faculty associated with, and standing in support of
Finkelstein, be the next targets of DePaul's administration? If so, I
would certainly be a likely target."

Well, we would like to take Abraham up on the challenge and urge DePaul to
take a close look at this fella's academic record, which can be seen here.
Abraham holds a PhD in English from Purdue, where he wrote a dissertation
about "The Rhetoric of Resistance," in other words a propaganda tract for
the "revolutionary" left. Before that he completed an MA thesis in
Arkansas that was a sycophantic celebration of the Maoist "philosopher"
Michel Foucault.

Three of the five journal articles he has published are similar paeans to
the Israel-hating Edward Said. At least one of them promotes Palestinian
terrorism (which he calls "resistance"). Lest there be confusion, it is
Said's politics that attracts him to Abraham not his literary criticism
(which is also heavy on the dogma side). In other words, his entire corpus
of "scholarly" work consists of exercises in "revolutionary" politics.
Besides his journal articles, he has written some other predictable
political screeds (e.g., about "racism"), including a number of ecstatic
reviews of Norman Finkelstein's anti-Semitic oeuvre (e.g. ). Naturally,
Abraham just loves Finkelstein's poisonous rantings and can't praise them
enough.

One of Abraham's reviews is sufficiently hostile to Jews that it has been
posted on a Holocaust Denial web site. A sample of Abraham's own rants
"America's Zionist Jews" can be found here. All this from someone who
professes to be a professor of English Literature.

If DePaul is serious about raising its academic standards, a good place to
start would be the Department of English.


2, Jihad at Human Rights Watch:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1188392544861&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull


3. The ultra-liberal JTA whitewashes the resignation of Neo-Nazi Norman
Finkelstein:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1188392549792&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Even Haaretz ran a more objective article than JTA:
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/901583.html

4. Leftists for Terrorism:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/123593


5. An Osloid journalist wakes up:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3446068,00.html






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