If embattled DePaul University professor Norman Finkelstein carries out his pledge to engage in civil disobedience at the start of the fall term Wednesday, it won't be his first confrontation with school administrators and campus police, according to internal university memos obtained by the Tribune...

...Oral and physical confrontations between Finkelstein and university officials began shortly after his tenure denial, according to a memo written by university Provost Helmut Epp.

The provost's memo, dated June 26, alleges that Finkelstein "angrily confronted" other faculty and staff and engaged them with "threatening and discourteous behavior" after being denied tenure.

On three such occasions, campus security officers were called to intervene, according to the provost's memo. When a dean attempted to escape a confrontation by ducking into an elevator, Finkelstein physically tried to keep the door from closing, according to the provost's account...

...Finkelstein's support among colleagues, once considerable, had been waning.

On July 10, according to one newly obtained memo, the political science department informed the provost that Finkelstein's actions "constitute unacceptable and unprofessional behavior." It recommended that Finkelstein be granted "non-residential leave" for the 2007-08 academic year by DePaul, a Catholic university founded by the Vincentian order. Traditionally in academia, a faculty member denied tenure is owed a final year in the classroom.

Earlier, the political science department had strongly supported Finkelstein's cause, voting in favor of his application for tenure. Even so, his departmental colleagues had noted Finkelstein's no-holds-barred writing style, saying that in his books, "careful and important scholarly arguments are often sprinkled with ad hominem attacks, invective and unsparing criticism."...

..."One of my heroes is Paul Robeson, who said, 'I will not retreat one-thousandth part of one inch,'" Finkelstein said. "And I won't either."

On July 8, 1943, at the largest pro-Soviet rally ever held in the United States, an event organized by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and chaired by Albert Einstein, Robeson met Solomon Mikhoels, the popular actor and director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater and the Yiddish poet Itzik Feffer. Mikhoels headed the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in what was then the Soviet Union; Feffer was his second. After the rally, Robeson and his wife Essie entertained Feffer and Mikhoels.

Six years later, in June 1949, during the 150th anniversary celebration of the birth of Alexander Pushkin, Robeson visited the Soviet Union to sing in concert. Concerned about the welfare of Jewish artists, Robeson insisted to Soviet officials that he meet with Feffer. Forced to communicate through hand gestures and notes because the room was bugged, Feffer indicated that Mikhoels had been murdered in 1948 by the secret police. Feffer also indicated that many other Jewish artists had been arrested. Robeson responded publicly during his concert in Tchaikovsky Hall on June 14 by paying tribute to his friends Feffer and Mikhoels. He then sang the Vilna Partisan song "Zog Nit Keynmol" in both Russian and Yiddish[citation needed]. Upon returning to the United States, however, Robeson denied the widespread persecution of Jews stating that he "met Jewish people all over the place... I heard no word about it.".

Robeson is, however often criticized for continuing to support the Soviet Union despite being aware of Soviet anti-Semitism. According to Joshua Rubenstein's book, Stalin's Secret Pogrom, Robeson justified his silence on the grounds that any public criticism of the USSR would reinforce the authority of anti-Soviet elements in the United States which, he believed, wanted a preemptive war against the Soviet Union.