The Pitt News T h e in de p e n d e n t st ude nt ne w spap e r of t he University of Pittsburgh
Go online for an interactive timeline on the Finkelstein coverage.
A farewell to Yogi Berra, a ballplayer and wordsmith
September 24, 2015 | Issue 29 | Volume 106
COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN: FINKELSTEIN’S FURY Controversial speaker on Israeli policy accuses Pitt administration of canceling his talk without full explanation by Mark Pesto | Senior Staff Writer What Pitt says was a miscommunication with a middleman has shrouded the University’s first-ever National Security Symposium in controversy. Norman Finkelstein, a popular but contentious expert on the Israel-Palestine conflict, was scheduled to speak today at the symposium, an event sponsored by the Graduate School of Public and International Studies. But last Wednesday, Sept. 16, Pitt told him he couldn’t attend. In the wake of his rescinded invitation, Finkelstein publicly accused Pitt’s administration of cowardice and academic dishonesty on his website, saying he had been told that administrators nixed his appearance because they disliked his scholarship. But Brian Sisco, a GSPIA graduate student in charge of the event, and Kenyon Bonner, interim vice provost and dean of students, both said the symposium’s graduate student organizers — not the administration — made the call to withdraw Finkelstein’s invitation, and Sisco said insufficient funding forced the cancellation. Yesterday, after declining to comment for almost a week, Luke Peterson, the symposium’s liaison between organizers and panelists — and the person who told Finkelstein the administration canceled his appearance — said he had been mistaken and supported Sisco’s and Bonner’s statements.
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Peterson, a visiting professor at Pitt and the event’s moderator, told Finkelstein in a phone message on Sept. 16, that University administration had “raised a number of issues regarding [his] appearance.” However, on Wednesday evening, Sept. 23, Peterson wrote in an email that his previous statement had been incorrect, saying instead that he had misunderstood the situation in his haste to relay the information to Finkelstein. Although numerous phone calls, emails and Facebook messages failed to reach Finkelstein on Wednesday evening for his response to Peterson’s statement, he previously speculated on his blog that Pitt would prevent Peterson from speaking about the cancellation unless he agreed to support Pitt’s story. Bonner, on the other hand, said Pitt did not ask Peterson to make any sort of statement. “It was my sincere attempt to do Professor Finkelstein a courtesy by informing him of a change to the program sooner rather than later,” Peterson wrote in his statement
Wednesday. “Un f or tu nately in rushing to speak with him I gave him a version of events that was rife with error.” What followed Peterson’s first call
September 24, 2015
to Finkelstein was a “he said, he said” volley of dizzying proportions. Before Peterson’s statement In April, the symposium’s planning committee, which is made up of GSPIA students, asked Peterson to relay their invitation to Finkelstein. Finkelstein, a harsh critic of Israeli policy, planned to speak about how the media covers the conflict as a part of an expert panel at the symposium. See Finkelstein on page 2
Courtesy of Wikipedia
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