<span class="floatleft"
The row over the refusal by prestigious Catholic DePaul University in Chicago to grant tenure to Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry, was stoked today by the news that one of his supporters also failed in her bid for tenure.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Mehrene E. Larudee, an assistant professor of international studies who had campaigned for Mr Finkelstein, was also denied tenure. "There is no good explanation for why I was denied tenure. So one has to look elsewhere," she told the paper.
Professor Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard lawyer currently planning action against the proposed boycott of Israel by British academics, lobbied the university to prevent Mr Finkelstein's tenure but the Rev Dennis H Holtsneider, the president of DePaul, has denied this "unwelcome attention" had any bearing on the decision.
In a letter he blamed Mr Finkelstein's ad hominem attacks on other scholars and at times "deliberately hurtful" writing.
Mr Finkelstein stands to lose his job but he has support out there among bloggers. University of Texas at Austin student Andrew Dobbs wants him to come there. Lila Rajavi thinks DePaul has "disgraced the notion of academic freedom".
In Britain too the temperature of the debate on Israel and anti-semitism is rising. Universities UK which represents the heads of British institutions, has condemned the academic boycott being debated by the University and College Union.
Tonight a debate in the House of Lords about anti-semitism on campus is due to hear powerful statements from Lord Moser, who escaped from Berlin in 1936 with his family to become one of the country's most distinguished academics, and Baroness Deech, who adjudicates on student complaints for all the UK universities. There will be a full report on this website on Wednesday.
