posted August 14, 2006 03:00 PM              

For those of you who can't be bothered to read such a long article, let me sum it up for you. Basically, this college stands behind Palistinian students rights to "tell their side of the story", with one-sided liturature and pontification -

But, anybody who gives them an opposing opinion is completely out of line, and will not be tolerated.

Freedom of speech, but only if you're mouthing the words of the Palistinian grape vine.

DePaul’s Jihad against academic freedom
April 18th, 2005

quote:

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DePaul University in Chicago is one of the fastest growing universities in the country. It has become the largest Catholic-affiliated university in America. Muslim and Arab students are one of the segments of DePaul’s student population that has seen the greatest increase in numbers in recent years. Although no figures are available, these students are an important source of revenue for the University, and many may well pay full tuition, making their attendance particularly lucrative.

Perhaps in recognition of this market segment, the University hired Norman Finkelstein to teach in its Political Science Department. This acquisition of “talent” took place after Finkelstein had lost his job at two different colleges in New York, following controversy over his support of holocaust denier David Irving and his bitterly abusive attacks on the state of Israel.

DePaul, like many other colleges and universities, may have also received significant funding for new academic chairs and programs from various Arab countries. When a college can find a Jew who loathes Israel like Finkelstein, supports holocaust deniers, and is the go-to-guy on lots of viciously anti-Semitic websites, Arab money is almost sure to follow.

To top it all off, DePaul is currently exhibiting a Palestinian art exhibit, cosponsored by twelve academic departments of the university, which might suggest to any fair minded observer, that for Palestinians, art is defined only by hatred of Israel and Jews.

This is the backdrop for an almost astonishing violation of the academic freedom of Thomas Klocek which has been perpetrated by the University. For 14 years a part time adjunct professor in DePaul’s School of New Learning, Klocek has been a popular professor, with large enrollments, and excellent student reviews for his teaching.

But Klocek has lost his teaching position and school-paid health insurance benefits, and faces a bleak future due to his chronic health problems. He is guilty of a thought-crime, challenging the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel mindset which has come to dominate the DePaul campus

Klocek’s challenge to this new campus orthodoxy occurred in a cafeteria during a student activities fair last September. For 15-20 minutes, Klocek, who is Catholic, not Jewish, confronted a group of 8 students manning two tables for the groups Students for Justice in Palestine, and United Muslims Moving Ahead. Klocek says he argued that the materials the groups were disseminating were one-sided. On this, he is indisputably correct. Neither group pretends to provide balanced information on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. That of course, is perfectly understandable and acceptable. These are advocacy groups.

Klocek says the discussion was heated at times, and he admits to raising his voice. He says he told the students that Palestinians were Arabs who lived in the West Bank and Gaza – that they had no unique national historical identity. He challenged one student’s assertion that Israel was behaving like the Nazis. He stated that while most Muslims were not terrorists, pretty much all terrorists these days were Muslim. This statement had originally been made by the manager of an Arab news channel, and had recently been quoted in the Chicago Sun Times. It has the incidental merit of being true.

Clearly, the students were not used to such a challenge. DePaul in fact has gone out of its way in recent years to make the campus dialogue “safe” for Muslim and Arab students. The University administration warned the campus community after the September 11th attacks that offensive speech hostile to Muslims would not be tolerated.

But speech hostile to Jews, or Israelis, or for that matter, the great mass of Americans grieving and offended by the 9/11 attacks, was perfectly legitimate. While New York and Washington were digging up their 3,000 dead, Muslims students at DePaul were using the post 9/11 environment to publicly attack America and Israel for their crimes and policies at campus forums, paid for with student fees. The campus has welcomed representatives of the Palestinian terror group Islamic Jihad to campus. The scurrilous propaganda “documentary” Jenin Jenin has been shown on campus.

I have a bit of personal experience with DePaul’s concept of academic discussion and balance. I was invited a few years back to participate in a debate that was a final class project for a course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There were six debate participants, three on each side. That much seemed fair enough. However the class material that had been distributed to students before the debate had been provided by pro-Palestinian groups including Students for Justice in Palestine. The suggested reading list could have been prepared by Norman Finkelstein himself. Two of the three debate moderators were aggressively hostile to the pro-Israel speakers (the third played it down the middle). The audience constantly interrupted the pro-Israel speakers.

I have participated in several such debates, and the atmosphere at this one was more physically threatening than any other in which I took part. Two of my family members who attended said they were concerned about my safety at times during the debate, as some audience members (almost all of whom were Palestinian supporters) shook their fingers and approached the podium, with the audience loudly cheering and hooting. It was, for a good part of the time, a free-for-all. Such is a final class project at DePaul these days.

During his cafeteria confrontation with the students, Klocek did not identify himself as a professor at the school. He did not know any of the students, and had not had any of them in a class. After realizing that the argument needed to end, Klocek started to walk off. One student then asked if he taught at DePaul, and if so, what classes. The students followed Klocek, eager to continue arguing with him. He signaled he was done with the debate by thumbing his chin, meant to indicate, he says, enough already. The Muslim students later claimed this gesture was obscene.

For his behavior in this brief debate with the students, Klocek, a popular long-time DePaul professor, has lost his job, his health benefits, and has been smeared and humiliated by the University administration.

It has gotten so bad that Klocek has even been told not to pray at the campus chapel, which he formerly did regularly during his DePaul teaching stint. Such is the retribution of a Catholic University for a professor who has taken the risk of challenging the established mindset at DePaul on the subject of Israel and the Palestinians.

It would be too easy to compare Klocek’s alleged misbehavior – engaging in a short debate in a cafeteria with students who were not in any of his classes and who did not even know he was affiliated with DePaul – with the recent well-publicized events at Columbia University. At Columbia, one professor was alleged to have ordered a pro-Israel student out of his classroom, and to have accused a former Israeli soldier of being a murderer at a public lecture. Another professor ridiculed a Jewish student for her eye color, using this as justification to deny any real Semitic link.

Critics of Columbia also have charged that the Middle East Studies Department had become little more than an advocacy forum for Israel-bashing professors. When the charges of faculty misconduct from the Columbia students were considered by a faculty panel, the faculty members appointed by the university were individuals who had demonstrated in the past that they were Palestinian sympathizers. Not surprisingly, with only one small exception, the students’ complaints were rejected. So Columbia University has formally indicated that far more egregious conduct in the classroom is quite important to academic freedom.

What is surprising at DePaul is that groups which might normally come to the defense of a beleaguered professor unjustly removed from his position have been nowhere in sight. The ACLU has been silent. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has also not yet gotten involved. Perhaps for these groups, the “crime” of defending Israel may trump a professor’s right to free speech.

The University wasted little time after hearing of the students’ complaints about Klocek. The students first met with their advisors and then with a series of University administration members. They said that he had insulted them and their religion and (imagine this!) acted as if he was right and they were wrong. DePaul accepted the charges in toto and without holding a hearing (to which Klocek was entitled) quickly suspended the Professor.

The Muslim students also sent out an email to a large population at DePaul declaring a fatwa on Klocek for insulting Islam. With the recent history of the murder of Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands, and the secret life of Salmon Rushdie for more than a decade since the Iranian fatwa directed against him, one might have expected DePaul to have viewed this email as possibly threatening to Professor Klocek, and as potentially criminal behavior.

But that would be to misunderstand the political environment and cowardice at DePaul. Threaten the life of a pro-Israel professor, and it is apparently no concern to DePaul’s administration. But argue with a group of pro-Palestinian students, and you create great offense, and hurt.

The public comments by the DePaul administration prove their self-interested narrow vision of academic freedom: the freedom to preach the party line only. Amazingly the President of DePaul, Father Dennis Holtschneider, argues that the proof that DePaul values academic freedom is that they protect Norman Finkelstein’s ability to make his case against holocaust survivors and Israel, regardless of its unpopularity (and regardless of course of its untruth!). For DePaul the defense against charges that it is limiting the ability of pro-Israel speakers to make their case is that they allow anti-Israel speakers to make theirs!

DePaul has argued that they object to Klocek’s behavior, not to his speech nor to his views. This is nonsense. Susanne Dumbleton, Dean of the School of New Learning, Klocek’s boss, made the following priceless remark about the Klocek case :

“No one should ever use the role of teacher to demean the ideas of others or insist on the absoluteness of an opinion, much less press erroneous assertions.”

So what Klocek argued was erroneous (meaning of course that the pro-Israel position is wrong). But at the same time, no opinion should ever be argued as right or wrong (the absoluteness of an opinion). And no teacher should ever tell a student that he is wrong about anything. Make these three contradictory statements in one sentence, and you too qualify to be a dean at DePaul.

When she met with him, Dumbleton also told Klocek that the students were hurt and crushed by his behavior. She effectively accused Klocek of being a religious bigot and a racist with this comment:

“No student anywhere should ever have to be concerned that they will be verbally attacked for their religious beliefs or ethnicity.”

Dumbleton’s comment picked up on the theme of a student emailer who said the incident was a “racist encounter.” Accusing somebody who disagrees with you of being a racist is a very common technique, especially by those who lack history or facts to make their case. Apparently none of the students were so badly injured by Klocek that they missed classes due to their distress.

Dumbleton also accused Klocek of using his power as a professor, and therefore his power over the students, to force them to accept his views as true. But until the students asked, Klocek revealed nothing about his campus teaching role, and had no power relationship (professor with his students) to use against any of the student complainers. DePaul, in defending its actions, went so far as to argue that since Klocek was older than the students, that in and of itself, established a power relationship. Evidently older people are to be cautioned against disagreeing with their juniors, on the danger of wielding power. At DePaul, evidently the student inmates run the asylum, based on the principle of Bizzaro-world seniority.

As for forcing the students to accept his views as true, if that were indeed the case, then Klocek presumably should have stuck around until he forced the students to accept his views, rather than walk off realizing the discussion was not changing anybody’s minds (neither his nor theirs). Klocek clearly accepted that failure to ever agree. What the students seemed to resent, in his view, is that somebody on campus did not accept their views.

Dean Dumbelton said in an interview with the campus paper that she was

“deeply saddened by the loss of intellectual empowerment that the students suffered.”

She later wrote a letter to the same paper that the

“students’ perspective was dishonored, and their freedom demeaned. Individuals were deeply insulted.”

She said she had met with the students and apologized to them for the insult and disrespect they endured.

“I regret the assault on their dignity, their beliefs, their individual selves.”

Remember that these alleged abuses and injuries were all suffered as a result of one 15-minute conversation with Professor Klocek in the cafeteria. One wonders how the University might describe a rape or murder victim. Could such an offense to a victim be any greater than that supposedly suffered by the Muslim students who were forced to discuss their propaganda with somebody who did not agree with them?

As the humorist Dave Barry would say, I am not making any of this up. This is the house of horrors that DePaul has become, and this is how the university administration defends its outrageous behavior. It is why Professor Klocek plans to sue the university.

In the black-is-white, white-is-black world that is DePaul, he has been left with no other option. When you stand for Israel at DePaul, you will not be left standing much longer.

---

Richard Baehr
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4428&search=richard

posted August 14, 2006 05:14 PM            

Students are being brainwashed by leftists, anti-America haters and terrorist supporters.
When students refuse to be brain washed, when they fight back for their rights to free speech, equal rights and free association, some are brought up on charges, their leftist professors give them failing grades or they are expelled.

The same can be said for professors who refuse to toe the leftist line. They are harrassed, brought up on bogus charges and dismissed.

The tide is turning. Instead of just going away as in years past, these students and professors are suing the hell out of the Universities. Most cases don't get to court because the University backs down and when they do get to court, the University loses.

This is another article in the same vein..about DePaul, the Jew hating professor and the professor who was dismissed for attempting to have a rational discussion with Israeli bashing/hating so called Palestanian students.

DePaul U Confronts Amerikan "Empire"
By Steven Plaut
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 3, 2006

Q: How do you know when America has crossed the line into an oppressive, occupational empire?

A: When DePaul University begins studying it.

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at DePaul and its Dean, one Chuck Suchar (a sociologist), have officially announced a “College Theme Series” entitled “Confronting Empire” for the 2005-6 academic year. This is a DePaul faculty initiative involving the participation of various departments and programs throughout the college. The organizers call themselves the “Empire Committee,” sounding like something out of Star Wars. Naturally, the evil empire under examination is the United States.

The “Empire Committee” has invited a Who’s Who of radical anti-Americanism to campus for the series. The roster includes pro-terror communist Tariq Ali, who thinks that 9/11 was caused by American fundamentalism; Bill Goodman from the so-called “Center for Constitutional Rights,” which devotes most of its time to defending the terrorists in Gitmo; and Seungsook Moon from the Department of Sociology at Vassar, who will speak on “Politics of Gender and Sexuality in the Global U.S. Military Empire.” The DePaul “Anti-Empirists” are also featuring an evening of “anti-nationalist” poetry and readings, and an evening of “theater” featuring the play “Guantanamo,” based upon the writings of Gitmo terrorist detainees.

According to the Dean, DePaul hopes through the “Theme Series” to achieve the following objectives:

to engage in a College wide (and broader) conversation about the current state of and developing trends in the global order, not only for the purpose of advancing a theme of great interest to faculty and students but also to significantly enhance the community of intellect and engagement in the University;
to promote a wide range of views and participants in this conversation about empire and opposition in its contemporary and historical dimensions utilizing the increasingly global interests of our faculty and students;
to question the nature of the American role and the role of other nations and interests in the emerging order and consider the forms of appropriate action, engagement and scholarship in light of that assessment.

In other words, it is to be a one-sided campaign of on-campus brainwashing designed to turn DePaul students into Manchurian candidates of radical political correctness. According to one dissident DePaul professor with whom we spoke:

It still amazes me that someone can call a series “Confronting Empire” and believe that it has any pretense of objectivity…The special horror of DePaul is that it is so completely unashamed of its substitution of advocacy for education. I have spent a good deal of time in the last ten years trying to convince my colleagues that they needed to remember that we are a school and not a Marxist sect, a pacifist group, the latest identity fad or what have you. But this is what happens when you have people who are mediocre intellects who think their “correct” political views more than makes up for their intellectual deficiencies. It’s very depressing.

DePaul's pseudo-academic loopiness is of course not restricted to its jihad against the Amerikkkan “Empire.” DePaul has been at the forefront of the movement to ban military recruiters from campus. DePaul sponsors a group called Cuba Coalition/Junta de Accion Latina, a front for the Communist Party. On August 5, 2004, DePaul sponsored a “Conference on Globalization,” organized by assorted extremist organizations. The “International Studies Program” at DePaul regularly sponsors conferences devoted to Marxism and America-bashing. You would have to look very hard through its departmental webpage to find any course not filled with political indoctrination.

Among those at DePaul building a career on rants against the American “empire” is one Deena Weinstein, Professor of Sociology at DePaul University. Her “specialization” is the sociology of heavy metal rock music. She also is a promoter of Pulp Marxism. She ranted:

The call to empire has come up only because world capitalism has met with opposition from Islamic revolution on the right and the counter-globalization movement on the left. America is at best a would-be empire that is being contested on all sides and could have its pretensions rudely dashed by a deep recession, failures in post-war “nation building,” a pandemic and/or new coalitions of rising military powers. American empire is a very problematic work in progress.

Her course in the sociology department is “SOC 282- ROCK JOURNALISM.” According to the DePaul website, “This course explores the wide variety of rock writings, from album and concert reviews to interviews with musicians. The functions served by the rock press will also be considered as part of the hype machine of the rock industry, as critical information for an audience whose knowledge of rock does not come from formal education.”

Aminah Beverly McCloud, the Director of the Islamic World Studies Program (IWSP) at DePaul, is an apologist for and follower of Louis Farrakhan. Her courses feature anti-American propaganda texts. She was a signatory to a document denouncing the Patriot Act and imploring U.S. authorities to grant Tariq Ramadan permission to enter the country.

Another professor who teaches in the Islamic World Studies Program is Khaled Keshk, who resorts to using biased texts that blithely portray Palestinian terrorism as a justified reaction to Israeli atrocities. Readings in his course on Israel are taken from the late notorious anti-Semite Israel Shahak (who claimed “The Jews worship Satan”).

The DePaul Religious Studies department is full of PC indoctrination courses in “liberation theology,” feminism, and “post-modernism.” Political Science offers “Contemporary Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Politics.” Extremism permeates the entire campus. The DePaul campus library features a large special collection, purchased with campus funds, called the “Venceremos Brigade Research Collection.” It is a mass of pro-Castro propaganda, including many of Fidel Castro's mind-numbing speeches. The list of materials in this collection alone stretches more than 29 pages.

Another large collection at the library consists of masses of political propaganda produced by Daniel Berrigan, who was once (with his brother) on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. (Berrigan was a close comrade of Howard Zinn. J. Edgar Hoover went so far as to publicly call Berrigan a “traitor.”) DePaul was one of the campuses mentioned by name at a conference sponsored by the American Congress for Truth as guilty of classroom indoctrination in hate.

A few months ago, a speaker of honor hosted at DePaul was none other than Ward Churchill, speaking with open endorsement and support from the DePaul administration. In fact, the administration prohibited the holding of a protest against the Churchill visit by DePaul students. Jonathan Cohen, a math professor at DePaul, described the event in an article for “American Thinker.” Among other notable moments at that event:

The talk turned to his (Churchill's) favorite bottom line for evil, Adolph Eichmann. He pointed out that even in Israel they were never able to convict him of personally killing anyone...He was a desk murderer. For Churchill the people who were bond traders in the Twin Towers were not innocent because they participated in the corporate system that is responsible for the vast majority of slaughter in the world. Presumably they were desk killers too....

Then the Vice President for Student Affairs, Jim Doyle, got up and made a few comments...Looking over the audience he recounted observing the body language of the audience and noted that it was obvious that some people approved of what Churchill was saying while others did not. Turning his attention to those of us who had not stood or applauded the talk, he admonished us in a scolding manner that we needed to consider seriously the things that Churchill was saying, especially about human rights. Somehow, equating anything Churchill said as advancing the cause of human rights seemed ridiculous, since Churchill had effectively justified the killings at the World Trade Center.

While such wackiness has come to symbolize DePaul's politicized campus and low academic standards, nothing attests so clearly to the fact that DePaul should not be regarded as a bona fide academic institution than the employment of Norman Finkelstein as an assistant professor of political science. Finkelstein is a pseudo-scholar with an empty academic publication record. His entire career has been devoted to turning out propaganda screeds in the form of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel books and web rants. His books have been dismissed as collections of fraudulent pseudo-research and thinly-disguised Jew-baiting propaganda by nearly every serious historian who has reviewed them. In addition, Alan Dershowitz from Harvard has devoted considerable energies in exposing Finkelstein as a fraud.

DePaul likes to justify Finkelstein's presence on its faculty as proof of its devotion to academic freedom, protected even for extremist crackpots just as long as they are doing serious academic work. (Never mind that the firing of Thomas Klocek makes a mockery out of such a claim.) But the truth of the matter is that Finkelstein was NOT hired and retained by DePaul because of any “academic research” that he does. Finkelstein does not do any academic research at all. There can be no doubt that Finkelstein was hired precisely because he is an extremist and anti-Semite with no serious academic credentials, one tied to neo-Nazi and far-leftist anti-American hate groups. In short, Finkelstein’s retention at DePaul shows that DePaul has junked all attempts at pretending to maintain academic standards, in its quest to battle the American “empire” and its Israeli ally.

DePaul University hired Finkelstein a few years back to teach courses on the Middle East. A course he teaches in Political Science consists almost entirely of anti-Israel political propaganda written by Bash-Israel radicals and Marxists. (In another course, writings by Noam Chomsky form much of the required readings.) Finkelstein was recruited by DePaul after he had been fired from several colleges in New York, following controversy over his support of holocaust denier David Irving and his abusive attacks against individual Holocaust survivors. While it is possible to find a few other people as openly anti-Semitic as Finkelstein in North American academia, in most cases they have bona fide academic records or were hired before the campus chiefs became aware of their extremist hate activities. Neither was the case with DePaul and Finkelstein.

By the way, when Finkelstein was fired from those New York colleges, it was not because of his political views. He was fired because he has an empty academic publications record. Although a graduate of Princeton (much to the embarrassment of all other graduates of Princeton), Finkelstein has never published any academic research and never engaged in any scholarly inquiry. Not a single paper of Finkelstein's has been published in a refereed academic journal. Instead, he devotes himself full time to his anti-Semitic propaganda. His curriculum vitae may be viewed here.

The closest Finkelstein ever got to a journal publication was with a couple of propaganda pieces in New Politics, a “socialist” non-academic magazine of far-leftist agitprop, sponsored by – among others – Noam Chomsky. This “journal” states that it “stands in opposition to all forms of imperialism, and is uncompromising in its defense of feminism and affirmative action.” Neutral, scholarly, and objective?

Finkelstein also turns out articles for Palestinian propaganda “journals,” which are less objective yet.

Alan Dershowitz has issued a series of devastating denunciations of Finkelstein, the most recent in response to Finkelstein's newest anti-Jewish book, Beyond Chutzpah : On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. The title is a backhanded slap at Alan Dershowitz’s Chutzpah. Finkelstein’s basic theme there and in his other writings is that just because someone hates Jews and wants to see Jews killed by terrorists and other murderers is no reason to accuse that person of being an anti-Semite. Finkelstein's screeds appear on every Holocaust Denial and neo-Nazi web site on earth. Neo-Nazis adore him, proclaiming him the heroic Jew who proves that there was never a Holocaust. He also appears regularly on anti-Israel and anti-Jewish websites from the Left, like Counterpunch.

Dershowitz wrote the following about Finkelstein:

Finkelstein has said that he “can’t imagine why Israel’s apologists would be offended by a comparison with the Gestapo”[1] and asserted that Israel’s human rights record is “interchangeable with Iraq’s” when it was ruled by Saddam Hussein. He has said that most alleged Holocaust survivors - including Elie Wiesel - have fabricated their past, are “bogus,” and that those seeking reparations (from Germany) are “cheats” and “greedy.” Because of my support of Israel, he has compared me to “Adolf Eichman [sic],” and accused me of expressing “Nazi moral judgments.” When challenged to defend his frequent comparison between Jews and Nazis, he has responded, “Nazis never like to hear they’re being Nazis.” He is a popular speaker among German neo-Nazis; one, Ingrid Rimland, whose husband, the notorious Ernst Zundel, wrote The Hitler We Loved And Why, even referred to him admiringly as the “Jewish David Irving” (“Jüdischer David Irving”) - a reference to the British Holocaust denier and Hitler admirer. The comparison is apt because Finkelstein has reportedly praised the Holocaust-denying Irving as “a good historian!” and as having “made an indispensable” contribution to our knowledge of World War II.

Commentary Magazine’s editor Gabriel Schoenfeld has labeled Finkelstein’s views as “crackpot ideas, some of them mirrored almost verbatim in the propaganda put out by neo-Nazis around the world.” Finkelstein has been endorsed by anti-Semites of all stripes.

The Anti-Defamation League considers Finkelstein to be a Holocaust Denier and a neo-Nazi. The Washington Post described him as “a writer celebrated by neo-Nazi groups for his Holocaust revisionism and comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany.” Leon Wieseltier from the New Republic wrote, “He's poison, a disgusting self-hating Jew, something you find under a rock.” Omer Bartov, a noted historian at Brown University, compared Finkelstein's book to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The eminent historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has dismissed Finkelstein as an anti-Semitic crackpot, as a pseudo-scholar, and as an apologist for the Hamas terrorists. While Finkelstein likes to defend his own anti-Semitic ravings by claiming his parents are themselves Holocaust survivors, Dershowitz recently revealed that Finkelstein’s mother was in fact a collaborator with German Nazis during the war.

Finkelstein has been dismissed as a fraud and an anti-Semite by nearly every serious historian on the planet, even by some far-leftists inside Israel like Professor Benny Morris. Finkelstein's sources, according to Morris, are “dubious,” and Finkelstein “fails to marshal sources or materials from elsewhere.” The NY Times’ reviewer described Finkelstein as “juvenile,” “arrogant,” and “stupid” (Aug. 6, 2000).

While born to Jewish parents, Finkelstein routinely compares Israelis with Nazis. He is an open cheerleader for the Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists. He appeared on the official Hezbollah television station al-Manar, because, he said, “If I’m willing to appear on CNN – the main propaganda organ for America’s terrorist wars – why shouldn’t I appear on al-Manar?” Earlier this year DePaul students heard a speech by Finkelstein, in which he stated unequivocally that the 1948 Arab/Israeli war was an “ethnic cleansing” of the “Palestinians” by the newly created Jewish state. The fact that the destruction of Israel and the eviction of the Jews was the publicly proclaimed goal of the surrounding Arab armies and states that attacked Israel was never mentioned. Jewish community leaders have been increasingly forthright in speaking out against the situation in DePaul, especially regarding Finkelstein.

Finkelstein is coming up for tenure at DePaul within the next few months. The fact that DePaul would even dream of considering him for a permanent academic position there raises serious questions concerning academic standards at DePaul.

DePaul has some bizarre notions about free speech. Its President, Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, publicly defends the employment of Finkelstein as a professor, and defends the operation on campus of a Bash-Israel propaganda show dressed up as an art exhibit. Holtschneider has also publicly celebrated the performance on this Catholic university campus of the “Vagina Monologues.” While pretending that it hired Finkelstein because of his “academic credentials,” which turn out to be non-existent, DePaul administrators revealed their real agenda of on-campus political indoctrination and extremism in the now-famous Thomas Klocek Affair.

Thomas Klocek was an instructor at DePaul who was fired when he was found guilty of expressing support for Israel in a chat outside the classroom. (The proliferation of in-classroom indoctrination by the Left at DePaul has already been noted.) Klocek's courses have ranged from Critical Thinking, to College Writing, to Languages and Cultures of the World. By all accounts, he was a popular teacher and his classes were always full. After 14 years of continuous employment at the Chicago-based college, Klocek was suspended without due process last September, and then stayed suspended - without pay - after that. Klocek was guilty of nothing more than expressing pro-Israel views in the face of extremist Palestinian propagandists on DePaul's campus, including students and non-students proliferating the usual lies and canards about Israel and Rachel Corrie.

Despite having an unblemished record during that span, DePaul summarily dismissed Klocek from his duties after the school claimed that he had “insulted” and “demeaned” several Muslim students at a campus fair for extracurricular groups. Klocek had publicly expressed his belief that “strictly speaking, right now there is no such place as Palestine on the map. The Palestinian people were simply Arabs who lived in the West Bank and Gaza.” For our part, we seem to recall that Galileo was also persecuted by Church institutions for daring to tell the truth. (Klocek, by the way, is Roman Catholic).

The university contends that Klocek's case “is not a case of academic freedom, but a situation of inappropriate behavior outside the classroom by a university employee,” according to Denise Mattson, the university spokesperson. Sure, while another DePaul professor has made a career out of insulting Holocaust survivors, promoting and cheering Holocaust deniers, and serving as the darling of neo-Nazi web sites. The “behavior” of Norman Finkelstein, the most openly anti-Semitic Jew on the planet, does not disturb these same DePaul Inquisitors.

DePaul has a large Muslim student population, as noted by the American Thinker. Klocek’s crime was to answer back to outrageous statements being made on campus by a radical Moslem. Klocek responded that there was a “qualitative difference between the Israel Army targeting known terrorists who have killed their own people...and suicide bombers targeting beaches, cafes, and even Seder dinners, killing indiscriminately Israelis, both Jew and Arab alike.” The suspended professor himself gives an excellent summary of the “Klocek Incident” here.

Since that time, Klocek’s firing has become the foremost symbol of the attempt by DePaul to limit free speech on campus and restrict it only to anti-American and anti-Semitic radicals. Klocek's plight has become a cause celebre for those seeking to defend free speech and pluralism on American college campuses. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has repeatedly denounced DePaul's behavior in the Klocek Affair. FIRE has given DePaul University a speech code rating of “Red,” the worst rating possible. (You can read more about this institution's speech code ratings on this page.) Even some leftists have come out to protest the Klocek firing.

Meanwhile, DePaul University is getting sued by Thomas Klocek. Probably the best weblog that follows and documents the political shenanigans at DePaul is Marathon Pundit at http://marathonpundit.blogspot.com/. (Check for updates on the suit.)

posted August 14, 2006 06:18 PM              

Where are the passionate defenders of free speech???

posted August 14, 2006 06:32 PM            

Where'd they all go?"

They're all out protesting the "police state" Bush has installed in America.

Is it too much to ask leftists to comment on institutional denial of rights as practiced by the left?

posted August 14, 2006 06:40 PM            

Your title has it all.. Freedom of speech, but only if you agree with us...

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The democratic world believes that it is not the terrorists that are to blame, but us. Us, the westerners.
WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And the sooner you eliminate this misconception from your minds, the better.
We are NOT to blame. It is the freaking terrorists and the freaking terrorists only!!!! They are the bad guys. They do not understand concepts like peace, democracy, and respect for human life. They are, pure and simPle, EVIL!!!!! Behind all their political manipulations, if you carefully look at the actions of these MONSTERS, they are EVIL!!

http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000489.htm

posted August 14, 2006 09:21 PM            

The organization which is in the forefront of making it hot for them is FIRE.

Monday, Aug. 14, 2006 5:32 p.m. EDT
SUNY Reverses Stand on Dissenting Prof.

The State University of New York at Fredonia has promoted embattled professor Stephen Kershnar to full professor – a position it had denied him for publicly disagreeing with the school’s conduct policies and affirmative action practices.

"This is a tremendous victory not only for Stephen Kershnar, but also for professors at institutions across America,” stated Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which brought Kershnar’s situation to the public’s attention.

"Such unconstitutional attempts to dominate and control professors’ right to dissent must not be tolerated at our nation’s colleges and universities.”

As NewsMax reported earlier, Kershnar, an associate professor of philosophy, was nominated for promotion to full professor in January 2006, with strong support from his colleagues, department head, and top administrators.

Kershnar writes a bi-weekly column for the local newspaper, in which he has questioned Fredonia’s affirmative action practices and examined the lack of conservatives in higher education.

Specifically, he criticized Fredonia’s efforts to increase diversity by lowering standards for hiring and admissions.

In 2005, Kershnar publicly condemned a new rule targeting students who fail to report violations of the student conduct code. He was quoted in the Buffalo News saying the new policy would "turn the student population into a group of snitches.”

SUNY Fredonia President Dennis L. Hefner issued a letter to the university community defending the conduct policy against "media misrepresentations.” Kershnar e-mailed the Fredonia faculty e-mail list on the following day to say that he had criticized –not misrepresented – the policy.

On April 27, Hefner sent Kershnar a letter denying his promotion. Hefner explained that although Kershnar’s "teaching has been described as excellent,” he would not be promoted because of his "deliberate and repeated misrepresentations of campus policies and procedures … to the media,” which Hefner claimed "impugned the reputation of SUNY Fredonia.”

When Kershnar offered to submit his writings to prior review for a year, Hefner suggested instead that Kershnar sign a contract requiring him to get "unanimous consent” from a university committee for all writing regarding the university.

Kershnar refused and contacted FIRE.

On July 7, FIRE wrote a letter to Hefner criticizing his actions. Hefner responded in a letter dated July 20 upholding the denial of promotion to Kershnar.

FIRE brought the events at SUNY Fredonia to public awareness on July 24. Within days, SUNY Fredonia administrators informed Kershnar that they would reevaluate his promotion.

And in a dramatic turn of events, Kershnar received a certified letter on August 11 informing him that his promotion was approved.

"There are no conditions whatsoever attached to his promotion, and he will begin the fall semester as a full professor,” according to a release from FIRE.

Said Lukianoff: "We are very pleased that SUNY Fredonia has seen the error of its ways.

"SUNY Fredonia was violating the First Amendment, its own contractual promises, and the canons of academic freedom. We hope that in the future universities will consider their duty to protect the marketplace of ideas before they set out to quash dissent.”

FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression, academic freedom, and rights of conscience at our nation’s colleges and universities.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/8/14/175506.shtml?s=ic

posted August 15, 2006 12:21 AM              

quote:

---

Do you ever get the distinct feeling that some people exploit the West's principles of tolerance and fairness for all? Seems this is especially true of those peoples who exhibit little to no measure of these principles in their own societal mind-sets.

---

Yes, I do that get that feeling often at GU, lioneye.

Checking through the source where you got this article, lioneye, lo and behold what did I turn up?

Links

Israpundit
One of the premier Israel advocacy weblogs

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Stand For Israel
A terrific blog from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews

Monday, October 10, 2005

GOPINION

Conservative news aggregator with a fresh editorial twist

ARCHIVES

How Low Can Democrat Stocks Go?
August 14th, 2006

Israel's Fog of Politics
August 14th, 2006

Another Such Victory
August 14th, 2006

Humanist Myopia: Blaming Bush
August 13th, 2006

A Dialogue with a Saudi Muslim (8)
August 12th, 2006

A Lesson on Terrorism from Harold the Saxon
August 12th, 2006

Anti-Semitism in the Guise of Political Protest
August 11th, 2006

A Bright Future for Cynthia McKinney
August 11th, 2006

Will Israel Bring Out the Hammer and Anvil?
August 11th, 2006

The BBC and Home-Grown Terrorists
August 11th, 2006

A Visit to Gitmo
August 10th, 2006

See You In Havana
August 10th, 2006

Hard Thoughts about the War
August 10th, 2006

Enron and Today's Oil and Gas Prices
August 9th, 2006

A Hinge of History
August 9th, 2006

The Habit of Betrayal
August 9th, 2006

Smell That Whiff of Panic?
August 8th, 2006

AP Writer Ignores Evidence of Iraq WMD
August 8th, 2006

Downsizing Credibility: Cleaning Up the Reuters Mess
August 8th, 2006

Islam's Useful Idiots
August 7th, 2006

Hope in a Time of War
August 7th, 2006

Institutional Failure at Reuters
August 7th, 2006

Reuters Admits Photo Fraud: Now What About Qana?
August 6th, 2006

I Love the Smell of Pulitzers in the Morning
August 6th, 2006

Moral Inversion at the New York Times
August 6th, 2006

A Dialogue with a Saudi Muslim (7)
August 5th, 2006

Dialogue on
August 5th, 2006

Morning in Vienna
August 5th, 2006

The Myth of the Suicide Bomber
August 4th, 2006

The Indian Nuclear Deal and Congress
August 4th, 2006

Now did you really expect to read any other kind of article regarding Muslims at this particular site?

posted August 15, 2006 12:11 PM              

Here, do you prefer this source of the same story? http://www.thefire.org/index.php/case/678.html

Or how about this one? http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1379619/posts

Just do a search for "Thomas Klocek", and I'm sure one of the results will be from a source you find credible.

I'm not a regular at that site, it just came up when I did a search for something. I accidently stumbled across Thomas Klocek's story and just had to share it here.

I did watch it, DD. It's true, the Israelis can be real bad-a$$es. How do you suppose they evolved to that? And, although I sypmathize with the plight of displaced Palestinians, I still don't get why 3 generations later, they're still living in refugee camps. This is unprecedented in history, generation after generation perpetuating the victim mentality, and laying claim to land in Israel that they've never even set foot on.

And if Israel wasn't constantly under attack from these eternal victims, they wouldn't feel it necessary to encroach into the lands adjunct their own borders to create safe "buffer zones".

posted August 15, 2006 03:17 PM              

quote:

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I did watch it, DD. It's true, the Israelis can be real bad-a$$es. How do you suppose they evolved to that?

---

I don't know. You would think they'd understand from their own suffering. Some do, but it looks like many others don't...they're probably the ones spared from Hitler's torture. Not all Jews suffered in or were part of the Holocaust or even in Germany. The Zionist lobby has been trying to create Israel since before the Holocaust, and they used the Holocaust as an excuse to do this to the Palestinians. That's what the cartoons the Iranians are showing are trying to depict.

quote:

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And, although I sypmathize with the plight of displaced Palestinians, I still don't get why 3 generations later, they're still living in refugee camps. This is unprecedented in history, generation after generation perpetuating the victim mentality, and laying claim to land in Israel that they've never even set foot on.

---

If you're displaced from your home you will be a victim. They are resisting occupation...they want their homes back. Most Palestinians have left, but the strong ones are still their resisting, fighting back for their rights and freedom.

quote:

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And if Israel wasn't constantly under attack from these eternal victims, they wouldn't feel it necessary to encroach into the lands adjunct their own borders to create safe "buffer zones".

---

The video says, that as soon as the Zionists came in they tried to conquer more land for Israel and that means destroying even more homes of and displacing the people of Palestine.

quote:

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Tell me, DD. What do you think about the Muslem world's goal to wipe Israel and her people off the map?

---

posted August 15, 2006 03:44 PM            

quote:

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You can't generalize all Muslims and the Muslim world like that. That is racist and ignorant.

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posted August 15, 2006 05:35 PM              

Ok, I meant what do you think about the fundamentalist Muslems of the Middle East's goal to wipe out Israel and her people?

posted August 15, 2006 05:59 PM              

quote:

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If you're displaced from your home you will be a victim.

---

Yes, but you shouldn't remain a victim your entire lifetime, and your children's lifetime, and their children's lifetime.....

Interesting factoid....

"Arab refugees were intentionally not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey."

What is wrong with Arab society that it turns it's back on it's own, except to join in on a quest for blood & vengence?

quote:

---

They are resisting occupation...they want their homes back. Most Palestinians have left, but the strong ones are still their resisting, fighting back for their rights and freedom.

---

Rights? Israel's Arabs have have more rights and freedoms than Arabs in Arab nations. Speaking of freedom...they are not being envslaved by anyone but themselves and their hatred for Israel - a hatred that has become their dynasty. And not a very healthy one at that.

posted August 15, 2006 06:25 PM              

lioneye, but you are ignorant...you claim you know how it is for Muslims and Muslim women.

You try to tell stories about women who are abused and attempt to pass it off as how that is for all women in the Muslim world, as if Im an idiot and as if Im not a Muslim woman and live in some little box like you do.

posted August 15, 2006 06:43 PM            

If you want to know what he was saying to the Iranian people in the first week of August, you can click on this link and play clip 1222.

posted August 15, 2006 06:54 PM              

They sure are blunt and say alot of things. Who have they killed and brought death to?

It's America that actually takes it into action. It's America that's brought on Death to Palestine, Death to Afghanistan, Death to Iraq, Death to Lebanon and pretty soon Death to Iran.

posted August 15, 2006 07:06 PM              

I don't think you actually know what the word ignorant means, because you're not using it in it's proper context.

What story did I tell about a Muslem woman? I think that was someone else. I guess they're ignorant too.

Look, DD - don't worry about it. I know you can't denouce anything a fellow Muslem says or does, nor can you in any way question your faith, or those who abuse it, because doing so could get you killed. Better keep those blinders on nice & tight, for your own safety.

posted August 15, 2006 07:12 PM              

All you want to do is get me on Bush's/Harper's side and if I don't make me into a terrorist or terrorist supporter.

I do know what the word ignorant means. It is defined as someone lacking knowledge and intelligence...someone like yourself.

You are a two faced liar. You try to draw me into your bs by creating a new username, carma-b and pretend to be someone else. Yet you say the same things under both usernames and try to lie about Muslims and label them all as backwards and terrorists or terrorist supporters, unless they follow the damned neo-cons and their bullsh1t

posted August 15, 2006 08:04 PM              

I wouldnt want someone like you on my side either.

You have no benefits to offer.

posted August 15, 2006 09:10 PM            

I don't recall anyone here claiming all Muslims are terrorists, terrorist supporters, terrorist facilitators or terrorist excusers.

However, when the general theme running through someone's posts is that the terrorists are morally equivalent to the United States, morally equivalent to the nation of Israel, that the terrorists were provoked to attack the United States...because the US was occupying Muslim countries...a lie BTW, the US has been "stealing" Muslim oil...a lie BTW, then we know we're in the midst of...at the very least...a terrorist excuser.

Now, if someone here has said all Muslims are terrorists, or terrorist supporters, terrorist facilitators or terrorist excusers then, I missed that and you can point out the person and link the thread so I can get my facts straight.

posted August 15, 2006 11:10 PM              

What lies have been told about Muslems? Tell me. I do not tell intentional lies, so if I've mispoke about something in particular, please correct me.

I don't care what you think of Bush or Harper or Blair or Olmert or Santa Clause for that matter...I'm not trying to win your vote. I don't know what I'm trying to do. Help you to help yourself, I guess... and maybe help others to see beyond the ongoing patterns of hatred that are rocking this world. The Palistinian/Israeli conflict is certainly not the only place that old hatred is festering out of control, for sure. But it's certainly a major one, and long overdue for resolution.