Дершовиц пен Финкельштейн арасындағы дау-жанжал

Public feud between Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein

The Dershowitz–Finkelstein affair was a public controversy involving academics Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein and their scholarship on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2005. Shortly after the publication of the book The Case for Israel, by Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, Norman Finkelstein alleged that it was "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism and nonsense." Finkelstein further derided the book, remarking, "If Dershowitz's book were made of cloth, I wouldn't even use it as a schmatta  his book is such garbage." Finkelstein charged that Dershowitz had engaged in plagiarism in his use of Joan Peters' book From Time Immemorial. Dershowitz denied the charges. Former Harvard president Derek Bok, following a review requested by then Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan, stated that no plagiarism had occurred. In Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti Semitism and the Abuse of History, published by University of California Press on August 28, 2005, Finkelstein aimed to debunk The Case for Israel. Dershowitz had written letters to both The New Press and to the University of California Press to prevent its publication, claiming it contained massive libel and stating that the book should not be published. Dershowitz responded in his book The Case for Peace and alleged a campaign of vilification by Finkelstein against several pro Israel academics. In addition, Finkelstein wrote that he had found plagiarism where Dershowitz reproduced the exact errors found in Peters's citation of original sources. He said this was evidence that Dershowitz did not check the original sources he cited, a claim that Dershowitz adamantly denied. Finkelstein said he had located twenty instances within as many pages, in which Dershowitz used some of the same words from the same sources that Joan Peters had used, largely in the same order. In several paragraph long quotations, the two books have ellipses in the same positions. Finkelstein wrote that, in one instance, Dershowitz refers to the same page number as Peters, although he is citing a different edition of the same source, in which the words appear on a different page. Finkelstein stated: "It is left to readers to decide whether Dershowitz committed plagiarism as defined by Harvard University—'passing off a source's information, ideas, or words as your own by omitting to cite them.' According to a book review of Beyond Chutzpah, written by Professor Michael C. Desch in The American Conservative, "Finkelstein does not accuse Dershowitz of the wholesale lifting of someone else's words, but he does make a very strong case that Dershowitz has violated the spirit, if not the exact letter, of Harvard's prohibitions of the first three forms of plagiarism." During an interview of the two men by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, Finkelstein also said that Dershowitz may not have written, or even read, the book.

As Desch acknowledges in his book review of Beyond Chutzpah, "In the wake of a number of similar complaints against Dershowitz and two of his Harvard Law School colleagues Laurence Tribe and Charles Ogletree, former Harvard President Derek Bok conducted an investigation—the details of which were not made public—that vindicated Dershowitz" (32, col. 3). In April 2007 the De Paul University Liberal Arts and Sciences' Faculty Governance Council had voted unanimously to send a letter to Harvard University expressing "the council's dismay at Professor Dershowitz's interference in Finkelstein's tenure and promotion case." In early 2007, the DePaul University Political Science department voted 9 to 3, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee 5 to 0, in favor of giving Finkelstein tenure. The three opposing faculty members subsequently filed a minority report opposing tenure, supported by the Dean of the College, Chuck Suchar. Suchar stated he opposed tenure because Finkelstein's "personal and reputation demeaning attacks on Alan Dershowitz, Benny Morris, and the holocaust authors Eli Wiesel and Jerzy Kosinski" were inconsistent with DePaul's "Vincentian" values. In June 2007 a 4–3 vote by DePaul University's Board on Promotion and Tenure (a faculty board), affirmed by the university's president, the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, denied Finkelstein tenure. Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007–2008 academic year (the remainder of his contract with DePaul), his sole course having been cancelled. However, in announcing his decision, Holtschneider said the outside attention "was unwelcome and inappropriate and had no impact on either the process or the outcome of this case." On September 5, 2007, Finkelstein resigned after he and the university reached a settlement; they released a joint statement on the resolution of the conflict.

In The Holocaust Industry, Finkelstein questioned Elie Wiesel's claim to have read Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in Yiddish. According to Finkelstein, no translation of the work existed in Yiddish at the time. Dershowitz responded that this was not so: he alleged that one had been published in Warsaw in 1929, and said that he had seen a copy at the Harvard Library. During a clash with members of J Street at the 2010 American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, Dershowitz chastised J Street for pandering to anti Israel activists and asked, "Why are you so popular with Norman Finkelstein?" J Street rebuffed Dershowitz's claim.