Finkelstein Supporter Was Also Denied Tenure

Another DePaul University professor was turned down for tenure at the same time as Norman G. Finkelstein, and she thinks her support for the controversial political scientist is what cost her the job, an article in The Chronicle reports:

“There is no good explanation for why I was denied tenure,” Mehrene E. Larudee, an assistant professor of international studies, said in an interview on Monday. “So one has to look elsewhere.”

A university spokeswoman told reporter Sierra Millman that Larudee’s defense of Finkelstein had nothing to do with it:

“I want to emphasize that our faculty-review process assures that every case is evaluated independently, on its own merits,” said Denise Mattson, a spokeswoman. “No cases are linked in any way.”

In a letter, DePaul’s president, the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, said “mixed teaching evaluations” and “a thin record of scholarship” were the reasons for rejecting her tenure bid, Millman writes.

Larudee — who was just 19 days away from becoming director of DePaul’s international-studies program when she got the bad news last Friday — had been “praised as ‘outstanding’ by the dean of her college and recommended unanimously by distingished faculty peers during the tenure process,” Millman notes.

Larudee says she’ll fight the decision.

Meanwhile, DePaul students have been staging a sit-in in protest of the denials.