Neo-Nazi Professors would have Gotten Tenure at Ben Gurion University

It is not often that I agree with anti-Israel radical lecturer at Ben Gurion University Neve Gordon. But this is an exception.

He was speaking at a little Nuremberg rally in Chicago to express support for Neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein, who was recently denied tenure at DePaul University. Finkelstein was denied tenure not because of his anti-Jewish agitprop but rather because of his complete absence of any academic publications. Instead, Finkelstein turns out Bash-Israel and Bash-the-Jews "books," published because of their commercial potential.

On Oct 12, 2007, a group of jihadniks and anti-Israel "academics" held a rally to protest the firing of Finkelstein. Neve Gordon spoke there, declaring that if Finkelstein had been a faculty member at Ben Gurion University, he WOULD have gotten tenure. I agree - he would have. David Irving may have also, as well as Robert Faurisson and Leonard Jeffries and Ward Churchill.

Gordon is correct for a change, but not for the reasons he has in mind. Gordon is one of the people trying to convince everyone that a nefarious Zionist bogeyman ("The Israel Lobby" cabal) suppresses freedom of speech and academic freedom in the US, which is why it is so hard to find Israel hating leftists among the faculty there. Ben Gurion University's president herself Rivka Carmi has repeatedly defended the presence of anti-Israel extremists on her payroll. When it comes to anti-Israel extremist faculty, BGU no longer even maintains the pretense of enforcing serious academic standards. About Neve Gordon himself, Professor Alan Dershowitz wrote: "It is my opinion that Neve Gordon has gotten into bed with neo-Nazis, Holocaust justice deniers, and anti-Semites. He is a despicable example of a self-hating Jew and a self-hating Israeli."

In reality, Finkelstein would have gotten tenure at Ben Gurion University because Ben Gurion University has trashed academic standards and expectations of real scholarship from faculty members in certain departments, mainly some in the social sciences. This is why Bash-Israel propagandizing is "accepted" by Ben Gurion University as "scholarly research." Hence a vulgar anti-Israel propagandizer would have no problem being hired and promoted at Ben Gurion University. And he would be in good company there with all the other anti-Israel leftist extremist hatemongers on its campus.

Whereas DePaul University, a Catholic school, displayed courage and devotion to scholarly excellence when it fired Norman Finkelstein, Ben Gurion University has long displayed cowardice and willingness to trash academic standards in order to promote faculty radicalism.