Friday, April 10, 2009
Clark University canceled a campus talk scheduled for later this month by controversial Holocaust scholar Norman Finkelstein, saying his presence "would invite controversy and not dialogue or understanding," and would conflict with a similar event scheduled around the same time.
The Clark University Students for Palestinian Rights, a student-run group on the Worcester campus, had arranged for Finkelstein to speak on April 21, said Tom MacMillan, the group's president. School administrators, however, contend the topic and the timing conflict with a similar university-sponsored event.
In a letter to the university's campus newspaper, Clark's president, John Bassett, wrote: "The university remains committed to inviting a wide range of speakers to encourage diversity of opinions on controversial topics. My decision was predicated on its untimely and unfortunate scheduling."
Finkelstein's address would conflict with a similar conference hosted by the university's Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, scheduled for April 23-26, two days after Finkelstein's speech, Bassett said in his letter. That conference could draw Holocaust scholars who MacMillan said may disagree with Finkelstein...
May disagree? The Globe entitles the piece, "Clark drops Holocaust scholar," which is an odd choice of label for Finkelstein to say the least.
The Finkelstein phenomenon rolls on. Have you looked at the speaking schedule on his web site lately? The man travels more than the Grateful Dead in their prime. Lack of tenure seems to have given him a great deal of time for travel and the collection of speaking fees. Would anyone have heard of him if Finkelstein were a legitimate and serious scholar? There's a lot of notoriety to be had in being a loud-mouthed, politically-radical, bomb-throwing, terrorist-supporting, anti-semitic bozo.
All I hear from those that are afraid of real dialog are ad hominim attacks like Solomons devoid of any facts but full of unsubstantiated opinion that reeks of a closed mind and the obvious lie that Clark wants controversial dialog. Clark is scared of Finkelstein because his research is indisputable and they know it. This is the same fear of truth that Canada displayed with banning George Galloway. C'mon students don't let this go. Clark OWES you an open dialog regardless of timing. Clark is REAL frightened of what you will learn from Professor Finkelstein and that their Germans all bad versus jews all good indoctrination er seminar would be exposed to reality.
"And in this corner, representing the German side of the Holocaust equation, Normaaan Fiiiiinkelsteeein..."
Thus the trash that Finkelstein drags in.
The Joes of the world may as well entertain "real dialog" with Adolf H. himself, or entertain the notion, as this commenter aptly puts it, that Mein Kampf can viably be interpreted as a "complicated, metaphorical injunction to peace and tolerance."
And Joe, if you were sufficiently self-aware and more genuinely concerned with "ad hominem attacks" and by implication favored only rigorous forms of argumentation, you'd avoid your own facile characterizations and ad hominem displays and actually forward a rigorous empirically, historically and rationally based argument. That fact, which does require a bare minimum of self-awareness, eludes you.
Then again, I've just spent a dollar's worth of time on someone who doesn't deserve a cent's worth of consideration.
file under: myopic, contented ideologues