Norman G. Finkelstein currently teaches political theory at DePaul University in Chicago. He received his doctorate from Princeton University's politics department in 1988. At an appearance last month at Stanford University, he argued his much-disputed idea that Israel uses the Holocaust as a shield against criticism. "It's not perfect, but you could make a reasonable analogy between the fate of Native Americans in North America and the fate of Palestinians in the Zionist conquest of Palestine," he said to the Stanford crowd. "The problem is that Israel comes out on the wrong side of the analogy, so we don't compare it."

Some students felt his inflammatory speech detracted from constructive campus dialogue, The Stanford Daily reported.

Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, has authored five books on topics such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Holocaust and the misuse of anti-Semitism.



-Michael Grillo