Talk:Norman Finkelstein/Archive 2

message: The NYPost link is out of date... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 171.64.140.179 (talk) 01:33, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Out of date link

message: Outspoken Political Scientist Denied Tenure at DePaul - NY Times, 6/11/07 In a full-court press against Mr. Finkelstein, Mr. Dershowitz lobbied professors, alumni and the administration of DePaul, a Roman Catholic university in Chicago, to deny him tenure. Many faculty members at DePaul and elsewhere decried what they called Mr. Dershowitz’s heavy-handed tactics.  --George100 04:38, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Finkelstein denied tenure

message: why are these sections laid out like book jacket blurbs? these are totally unreadable. I'm resisting the impulse to just delete them as they offer little substance to the article and just bog down the reader. Any suggestions? Potashnik 20:16, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: edit another article? :) j/k Edit as you see fit and see what happens. Take it to the talk page as you have. Good luck. --Tom 20:23, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Okay - I made a tentative rewrite and tried to be as NPOV as I can be. I welcome any comments and suggestions. Potashnik 21:35, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Praise and Criticism sections 

message: Most of this material is already covered in a separate article. I suggest reducing this section to a minimum (ie a single paragraph by way of introduction) and leaving the Dershowitz-Finkelstein Affair heading as a redirect for those interested in following up on the subject. Delad 03:52, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree. Isarig 03:59, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I also agree.  --GHcool 02:18, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Correct me if I'm missing something.  From reading this article it appears that a dispute over of a most important historical issue had degenerated into a petty dispute over citations and work methods?  This pharasaical approach, while possibly endemic to academia and which periodically afflicts jounrnals like the New Yorker, should not be viewed as politically or intellectually serious.  We saw this with Doris Kearns Goodwin and her excellent work "No Ordinary Time" about FDR, which was an example of how petty nitpicking raised in bad faith by political opponents of Kearns-and more importantly FDR-under the banner of opposing intellectual dishonesty, represents legerdemain that is itself a greater example of political and intellectual dishonesty.  Why, because what's the real issue? the legacy of FDR or a petty textual analysis, focusing on the latter being a cheap and small minded way of avoiding the former through what are basically contrived personal ad-homonem attacks.  Ditto for, however you want to label it: the murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and the death of tens of millions more in the Second World War and the historical and political issues and legacy that flows therefrom to this day and beyond.  Thus while I am disappointed in both Finkelstein and Dershewitz, I feel that Finkelstein, if this article be believed, should have known better than to mire himself in such a callow exercise, setting himself up in the process to the detriment of a serious discussion of this important issue. Sadly, another example of the race to the bottom in our "fair and balanced" political culture. Tom Cod 02:19, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dershowitz Finkelstein affair 

message: please don't let our conflicts on one page spill into another.
the "criticism before academic work" was actually "Praise and Criticism of Finkelstein's scholarship". Jaakobou 20:01, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm being scrupulously careful. This entire article is/has been riven with BLP of all kinds, and this re-arrangement is simply more of the same kind of thing. The guy is a professional, with a lifetime of academic achievements. Putting criticisms of him first is ludicrous, the kind of thing we'd do to a noted criminal. PalestineRemembered 21:30, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Are you telling me that we have a special class of biographies, where BLP doesn't apply and attacks on him are more prominently displayed than his scholarly work? We're treating a professional academic (highly regarded by many in both his teaching and writing) the way we would treat a criminal. If this is really part of policy, then I think we need to know. PalestineRemembered 07:00, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: an intro to an article should include some type of basic summary into the essence of the following text. due to his entire notability revolving around a volume of criticism made both by finklstein and the people he cites approvingly/disapprovingly - there is clear room to add a note about this into the intro without you jumping to a conclusion that he's treated differently than others - the same has been done in the cases of Benny Morris and Yossi Melman. i.e. what is prominent about the figure is introduced also into the intro. Jaakobou 12:11, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We're now tightening up on BLP, removing "all dubious material". See diff, the second of two simultaneous entries.in section . "John, all dubious material should be removed; if that means removing much of this little spat between these two people, that's fine. The problem with these kinds of articles is that editors from one POV come and want to bash Dershowitz; then people from the opposite POV come and want to bash Finkelstein. The the 1st groups adds more material, then the second group adds more material, and in the end it's little more than tabloid journalism. No doubt these articles need a huge cleanup, from a BLP point of view; I've started with the most recently added bit. I'd welcome your help in getting rid of all dubious material. Jayjg (talk) 13:51, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Jaakobou keeps missing the point: whether criticism or praise: other peoples judgement should be placed after the primary description of the person and his-her works. I still haver not read a motivation to introduce a person or his-her work with words like `controversial`. Well described, and later in the article, we could even do without the word itself. Ãnd of cvourse, the edit + summary it is not a personal thing (as Jaakobou writtes in the first line here), but correctly to the point being quality of the article. -DePiep 17:41, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  note to palestineremebered 

message: Is the author of this article sure about the words underneath the photo of Finkelstein - "Norman Finkelstein giving a talk in Suffolk (England)". He hasn't done that many talks at universities, and I suspect if the photo is from Suffolk, it is probably Suffolk University in the USA, not somewhere in the county of Suffolk, in England.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.104.40.21 (talk • contribs).
:(I restored the previous comment after the writer deleted it; I believe it was an accident)
:Good catch. Upon checking out the photo information, the author is Miguel de Icaza who works at MIT in the same area. So it's almost certainly as you say. I will change the caption. Eleland 16:33, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suffolk 

message: By chance I've come about this article, , it's good enough to be put as weblink.
I think. You do, too?
:Austerlitz -- 88.72.22.12 11:58, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weblink 

message: I thank Groupthink for tidying up the messy punctuation and other things. I have restored one slight point his edit erased. As the text read it looked as though it were my own editorial POV to note that Hilberg was the 'doyen of Holocaust research(ers), and Groupthink rightly questions this. Actually, the use of 'doyen' with Hilberg is a commonplace in the technical literature. Since Finkelstein is charged with a very, I mean, very serious charge by many of his critics, which is echoed in the text, namely of being 'antisemitic' I thought and still think it only fair to note to the untutored reader that Hilberg is not just some guy out there among many, but rather the author of the fundamental text on the Holocaust, whom no one has ever accused of antisemitism, and whose opinion carries some weight. Wiki can well repeat what is, at all appearances, an extremely nasty piece of smearing, but, at the same time, it should duly note that many authoritative scholars dismiss these charges as nothing more than smear tactics. I don't write that into the text of course, but 'doyen' tells the reader to take note, and not just be enchanted by the comfortable dismissal of his work as antisemitic. It's a balancing act. For my source for the expression(der Doyen der Holocaustforschung), Sven Felix Kellerhoff, ‚Raul Hilberg und die Quellen des Holocaust’, Die Welt, 25. Januar 2003,  http://www.welt.de/print-welt/article351516/Raul_Hilberg_und_die_Quellen_des_Holocaust.html Regards Nishidani 14:27, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the clarification and the citation. Groupthink 17:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Doyen