Fisk on Fink: Robert Fisk joins the Norman Finkelstein tenure debate as DePaul's "perfect storm" gathers strength

Robert Fisk, the fact-challenged journalist who inspired the blogging term "fisking," who is also one of the few Western journalists to interview Osama bin Laden, and has the even more distinguished honor of having been invited to convert to Islam by the Sheikh himself, has joined in on the Norman G. Finkelstein tenure debate at Chicago's DePaul University.

Last week was a bad one at DePaul. As news reports today are dominated by another "Perfect Storm" clobbering New England, the Chicago Catholic college faces its own metaphorical one: The Thomas Klocek case, barring a settlement, is heading to trial, and DePaul's resident holocaust-minimizer, Norman G. Finkelstein, continues to fight for tenure at the school's Liberal Arts and Sciences department.

Finkelstein and Klocek are separate stories, but the urge not to tie them together is difficult: Finkelstein, a son of Holocaust survivors, minimizes the extent of the Shoah, and views Holocaust revelations as a racket to enrich Jews.

There we go again, Jews and money.

One time Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke admires Fink's work.

Klocek, a 15 year adjunct professor at DePaul and a Roman Catholic, was fired after engaging in discussion in which he defended Israel from spurious attacks from a few DePaul Muslim students. The students, with the help of CAIR, piled on the professor and hounded the man out of DePaul.

Robert Fisk's Independent column focuses on the simmering Alan Dershowitz-Norman Finkeltstein feud, and no surprise, Fisk, who has also had run-ins with Dershowitz, is very sympathetic to Finkelstein's situation.

Fisk did shed some well-needed light on the DePaul mantra of "Vincentian values." As a Catholic school, it would be natural of course to speak of "Catholic values" or "Christian values," but that might offend some students, such as the ones who forced Klocek at at DePaul. Vincentian values at DePaul are nothing more that secular-humanist feel-good values. There is nothing wrong with that, except that DePaul calls itself a Catholic school and takes pride in calling itself America's largest Catholic university. Just as there are RINOs, Republicans in Name Only, there are CINOs, Catholics in Name Only.

The dean of Finkelstein's college, Chuck Suchar, invoked "Vincentian values" in explaining his opposition to Finkelstein receiving tenure.

I loved too, that bit about "Vincentian values". That really does warrant a chortle or two. St Vincent de Paul - the real de Paul who lived from 1581 to 1660, not the de Paul of Chuck's soft imagination - was a no nonsense theologian who was captured by Muslim Turkish pirates and taken to Tunis as a slave. Here, however, he argued his religious values so well that he converted his owner to Christianity and earned his freedom. His charitable organizations - he also created a home for foundlings in Paris - became a legend which Chuck Suchar simply dishonors.

Meanwhile in Chicago, the dark clouds continue to roll in as DePaul's perfect storm gathers strength. And St. Vincent de Paul, picture above, can't be very happy about that.

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