Controversial scholar should not speak here

As it did for most students, UCLA appealed to us for its broad range of intellectual opportunities, including those in our field of interest, the Middle East.

Choosing a major was not hard, as the Center for Near Eastern Studies enticed us with diverse examinations of the field from esteemed and accomplished scholars. As such, we were astonished and dismayed to hear that the CNES ““ along with the history, sociology, and geography departments and the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History ““ has invited Norman Finkelstein to speak today at Bunche Hall.

Finkelstein has been devoted to denouncing Jews for what he claims to be Holocaust exploitation and to bashing Jews and Israelis for their purported treatment of Palestinians. He was just denied tenure at DePaul University. Before teaching there, Finkelstein had left other universities: Rutgers University, New York University, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College.

In a letter to the DePaul University Board on Tenure and Promotion, Chuck Suchar, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, wrote that Finkelstein’s works “border on character assassination and … embody a strategy clearly aimed at destroying the reputation of many who oppose his views”.

If his own university has refused to recognize or give merit to him as an academic engaged in critical inquiry, then why have the CNES and the other co-sponsoring departments felt the need to do so? Why have these academic units subsidized and sponsored this polemicist whose book, “The Holocaust Industry,” was reviewed in the New York Times as “a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, “˜The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'”

Our experiences with these departments have only been those of scholarly and credible discourse ““ that is, until today. By inviting Finkelstein to lecture on “It’s Not Either/Or: The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” they demonstrate that they do not intend for objective, accurate scholarship.

Is it possible that the denial of tenure has made them mistakenly construe Finkelstein as a victim and have decided to invite a victim rather than a scholar? Finkelstein’s accounts of topics only tarnish the image of the departments providing him with his soapbox.

As students learning within these departments, we are offended and insulted as academics united in the name of intellectual thought.

Bogen is a second-year Middle Eastern and North African studies student. Winkler is a fifth-year Middle Eastern and North African studies student.