Is Dershowitz's interference in Finkelstein's tenure unprecedented?

[fourier jr]

I wonder if anyone has heard of these two guys. Norman Finkelstein is the author of books such as 'The Holocaust Industry' & Alan Dershowitz is a Harvard law professor who you might say is Finkelstein's arch-nemesis (and also Noam Chomsky's incidentally). I don't think any of that is relevant right now though, except perhaps that the two guys can't stand each other. Finkelstein is up for promotion at DePaul university & has the unanimous (or near-unanimous) support of his department & faculty. However, Dershowitz has been campaigning to make sure that Finkelstein doesn't get tenure, as his colleagues in his dept & faculty seem to think he deserves. Dershowitz tried to sue Finkelstein for libelling him, wrote a letter to Schwartzenegger to see if he would block the publication of Finkelstein's latest book (published by U of Cal press) & has written letters to the Dean of arts & science at finkelstein's university to try to get them to oppose Finkelstein getting tenure. I have never heard of a professor at one university trying (not publicly, anyway) so hard to mess things up for another at a DIFFERENT university. does this happen a lot? Alan Dershowitz is supposed to be a very respected law prof (actually the youngest in American history when he was hired i believe) but judging by the way he's tried to interfere in the internal affairs of another university he's being extremely unprofessional if you ask me. I mean, it got to the point where the DePaul admin wrote to the Harvard admin to ask them to put a leash on Dershowitz. there's more background in the nytimes here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/arts/12tenu.html

 

[turbo]

Can you produce a post that has normal punctuation and capitalization? If not, you might get ignored. Just a suggestion.

 

[fourier jr]

Can you produce a post that has normal punctuation and capitalization? If not, you might get ignored. Just a suggestion.

fine then... done... & in case it wasn't obvious before if people want to discuss what exactly finkelstein/dershowitz wrote/write start a separate thread in politics(etc); this is about a prof messing with the internal affairs of another separate university.