Norman Finkelstein

Finkelstein was born in Brooklyn in 1953 to Holocaust survivors. He attended James Madison High School and then Binghamton, graduating with a degree in history in 1974; at Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry he earned a master’s degree in political science and, in 1988, a PhD in political studies, and he also studied at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris.⁠[1]

He has recounted that while writing his Princeton dissertation on the theory of Zionism he scrutinized the demographic study in Joan Peters’s From Time Immemorial and concluded that every piece of evidence for its central thesis was falsified; in September 1984 In These Times published a truncated version of his findings.⁠[2]

In 1995 he published Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.⁠[3]

A Nation on Trial, published by Henry Holt and Co., challenged Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s argument in Hitler’s Willing Executioners that ordinary Germans were driven by fanatical anti-Semitism to murder the Jews; the Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg wrote a blurb for the book.⁠[4]

The book was named a notable book for 1998 by the New York Times Sunday Book Review.⁠[3]

In 2000 Verso published his 150-page The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. The reviewer Ronnie Landau summarized the author as arguing that American Jewish elites exploited the Holocaust for power and gain; Landau himself called the book “an ideological rant, masquerading as scholarship” and judged the evidence for its accusations about reparations claims against Germany and Switzerland highly selective and dubious.⁠[5]

He taught at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College and New York University, and from 2001 to 2007 was an assistant professor at DePaul University in Chicago.⁠[6]

In August 2005 Publishers Weekly reviewed his 332-page Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, published by the University of California Press, describing it as growing out of his public feud with Alan Dershowitz over The Case for Israel; its first part examines what he sees as pro-Israel commentators’ use of anti-Semitism charges to deflect criticism of Israel, and its longer second part is a line-by-line debunking of The Case for Israel.⁠[7]

In June 2007 a DePaul University faculty panel voted 4–3 to deny him tenure, and President Dennis Holtschneider upheld the decision in a June 8 letter which pointed to his “deliberately hurtful” scholarship and his public clashes with other scholars; Dershowitz, who had urged DePaul to reject the bid, said it “should not have been a close case.”⁠[8]

Finkelstein said he had met the publishing and teaching standards for tenure and that DePaul’s decision rested on “transparently political grounds”; his political science department had voted in favor of tenure. The president said the outside attention had been unwelcome and inappropriate and had no impact on the process or the outcome.⁠[9]

DePaul had scheduled him to teach a final year in 2007–08, but in fall 2007 placed him on administrative leave and canceled his fall classes.⁠[6]

In September 2007 he reached a confidential settlement with the university and resigned. He said DePaul’s final statement acknowledged him as a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher and that he felt he had finally got his due; the university maintained that the tenure decision was not influenced by outside parties.⁠[10]

In May 2008 he was detained and questioned at Ben Gurion International Airport and sent back to Amsterdam. The Shin Bet security service said he was not permitted to enter Israel “because of suspicions involving hostile elements in Lebanon” and because he had not given interrogators a full accounting; he had recently met Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon.⁠[11]

Finkelstein said he had been banned for ten years, that he had answered all questions candidly, that he had always supported a two-state solution and was “not an enemy of Israel”; the Association for Civil Rights in Israel criticized the deportation.⁠[12]

After the release of American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein, a documentary about him directed by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier, the critic Joshua Rothkopf wrote that the film was less interested in the validity of his ideas than in the topsy-turvy life of a professional academic, featuring an endorsement from Noam ChomskyNoam ChomskyNoam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher and political activist who began teaching at MIT in 1955; his theory of generative grammar helped give rise to cognitive science, and since the 1960s he has been a prominent critic of US foreign policy and the mainstream media; he became a laureate professor at the University of Arizona in 2017.Open the full entry and a harsh slam from Alan Dershowitz.⁠[13]

In 2012 OR Books in New York published his Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End.⁠[14]

A review summarized his argument that growing international awareness of the Israeli occupation had produced a perceptible shift among American Jews away from close identification with Israel; he acknowledged that most of the research was done in the early 2000s and the writing largely finished by 2008.⁠[15]

Also in 2012 he came out against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, alienating many of his core followers.⁠[16]

As of July 2015 he had just completed a year teaching at Sakarya University in Turkey and was writing a book with Mouin Rabbani; he said he had been unemployed for seven years after DePaul.⁠[16]

In November 2017 Publishers Weekly reviewed his Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, saying it focused on Israeli operations including Cast Lead (2008–2009), Pillar of Defense (2012) and Protective Edge (2014) and was heavy with documentation from the reports of various bodies.⁠[17]

The reviewer Marcy Newman praised his close dissection of United Nations and human rights documents, saying the book shows how international law remains elusive for Palestinians.⁠[18]

In May 2021 he said he had never been able to teach again after DePaul and demanded an apology; DePaul responded that the two sides had entered a settlement agreement after the tenure decision and that it continued to abide by its terms and had fulfilled its obligations.⁠[19]

In July 2021 the University of California Press issued Gaza in paperback; the publisher says that, drawing on scores of human rights reports, he argues Israel’s actions were flagrant violations of international law and documents how human rights organizations failed Gaza.⁠[20]

He took part in the episode 418 Israel–Palestine debate.⁠[21]

He clashed repeatedly with Steven BonnellSteven BonnellSteven Bonnell is an American livestreamer and political commentator known online as Destiny who first became known for streaming StarCraft II, turned to political content around 2016, and is known for livestreamed debates with figures on the right and the left.Open the full entry during the show; in April 2024 he explained on Al Jazeera’s UpFront why he had agreed to take part.⁠[22]

In April 2024 he discussed Israel’s war in Gaza with Marc Lamont Hill on UpFront and responded to controversies surrounding him; the programme’s title quotes his view that the US could have stopped Israel on day one.⁠[23]

Personal website: Public link: https://www.normanfinkelstein.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[24]

X: Public account: https://x.com/normfinkelstein (opens in a new window)⁠[24]

DePaul University: Official website: https://www.depaul.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[6]

Sakarya University: Official website: https://sakarya.edu.tr/ (opens in a new window)⁠[16]