You're listening to Robert Wright's Non-Zero Podcast.

Hi, Norman.

Hi, how are you?

I'm doing okay.

Let me introduce this.

I'm Robert Wright, publisher of the Non-Zero Newsletter.

This is a Non-Zero podcast.

You are Norman Finkelstein, a political scientist who has just published a book called I'll

Burn That Bridge When I Get to It, Good Title, Subtitle is Erratical Thoughts on Identity, Politics,

Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom.

Now, this book is a critique of cancel culture.

You're not happy about what you call cancel culture,

but one distinctive thing about you is that whereas a lot of critics of cancel culture

had themselves felt they've been canceled because they've run a foul of what they might call a woke mob.

You were canceled because you ran a foul of an unwoke mob.

Is that one way to put it?

So you were teaching at DePaul University. I don't know

when exactly this was. You were, you know, the department voted to give you tenure. And I think then

the review committee above the department level even voted to give you tenure. But then you were

ultimately denied tenure for reasons you

consider illegitimate. So before we get into the book, do you want to tell us about what

happened there? I would want to begin by saying, I don't discuss it at length in the book. I have a few pages on the outcome of the

...