Norman Finkelstein

Norman Finkelstein
Finkelstein talking at Suffolk University in 2005
Born	Norman Gary Finkelstein (1953-12-08) December 8, 1953 (age 63)
Citizenship	United States
Education	Binghamton University (B.A.) Princeton University (M.A.) Princeton University (Ph.D.)
Parent(s)	Mother: Maryla (née Husyt) and Zacharias Finkelstein
Website	normanfinkelstein.com

Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist, professor, and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust, an interest motivated by the experiences of his parents who were Jewish Holocaust survivors. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in political science at Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and DePaul University where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.

In 2007, after a highly publicized feud between Finkelstein and an academic opponent, Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein's tenure bid at DePaul was denied. Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007–2008 academic year, and on September 5, 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms. An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure, stated that outside influence played no role in the decision. In 2008, he was banned from entering Israel for 10 years.

Finkelstein taught at Sakarya University Middle East Institute in Turkey between 2014 and 2015.

Finkelstein has written of his Jewish parents' experiences during World War II. His mother, Maryla Husyt, grew up in Warsaw, survived the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek concentration camp, and two slave labor camps. Her first husband died in the war. She considered the day of her liberation as the most horrible day of her life, as she realized that she was alone, her parents and siblings gone. Norman's father, Zacharias Finkelstein, active in Hashomer Hatzair, was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp.