Columbia University has been chronicled in nationwide media for being both too far left and too far right when it comes to Middle East politics. First Israeli students were being silenced, then Palestinians, then Jews in general, then Arabs in general. The debate, which included a documentary film, scores of articles, several town hall meetings and even a few death threats, continues to rage to this day.
Enter DePaul University professor Norman Finkelstein, author of such controversial works as The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (Verso, 2003) and, most recently: Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (University of California Press, 2005). Finkelstein’s main points have more or less remained the same throughout his career: only after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War did the Holocaust become a central topic in American life, and since then it has only been used to justify Israel’s oppressive policies and generally extort the world for sympathy and billions of dollars in reparations.
On March 8, Finkelstein came to Columbia to deliver a more than two-hour-long lecture of his latest articulations of this situation: Israel is an occupying power and human rights abuser which must immediately return to the pre-1967 boundaries based on all notions of human rights and international law. Trotting out reams of facts, documents, rhetoric and a bit of autobiography, Finkelstein made the point again and again that the situation in Israel is uncontroversial. The facts, he stated, are clear: it is only the endless series of abuses of Jewish history that give the situation a veneer of complication.
In the days leading up to his talk, four op-eds and one front-page story appeared in the Columbia Spectator. The first, co-authored by the school’s token conservative columnist and the president of the College Democrats, aimed to show how Finkelstein was abhorred all across the political spectrum. The professor was then defended by the Muslim Students Association, who, along with several other groups, had brought him to campus. The group invited him ostensibly to stir up dialogue, but also because they felt their voices had been marginalized, and they hoped that Finkelstein, a Jew and the son of two Holocaust survivors, might open up a space or other religious and political voices in campus debate.
This is of course a worthwhile goal, and Finkelstein does indeed make some valid points. Unfortunately, however, his overall effect is to create pure division and very little dialogue. As he walked on stage to a packed auditorium of students, faculty and administrators, Finkelstein received a full five minutes of half standing ovation and half pitiless booing.
The most visible protest was that of around 40 predominately Jewish students who held up signs stating, “Finkelstein [Hearts] Hezbollah,” and passed out flyers that had out-of-context quotes from the professor – though controversial even in context – about the need to support militant resistance in the Arab World against Israel, specifically with regard to the Lebanese group Hezbollah (viewed in some parts of the world as freedom fighters and a legitimate political party and in others as terrorists).
Finkelstein might not deny the controversial nature of this point so strongly as he denies the fact that human rights and international law are themselves debatable. Despite all his concern for the detailed histories of the troubles in Israel and Palestine, Finkelstein treats these forms of law as absolute and perfect, despite the fact that, for example, many in the Third World view international law as part of a long history of colonial domination, or that human rights were also part of the justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
More importantly, who is it that Finkelstein has been speaking to in his lectures and books? Even his most sympathetic readers note his tendency for overblown rhetoric, and at a campus in the middle of a deeply polarized debate, it is hard to see how Finkelstein was supposed to stir up dialogue or open up a sympathetic space for the Muslim students who organized the event.
A campus as heated as Columbia needs speakers who will arouse the sentiments of both sides toward the goal of coming together, and take caution to not make them harden to each others’ opinions through appeals to false norms and overblown rhetoric. Unfortunately for the Columbia community, Norman Finkelstein does just that.
