Heroic professor professes heroically

To Matthew Abraham, an assistant prof at DePaul, anyone disagreeing with the Establishment in the Finkelstein affair is a hero, including himself: "Standing Firm With Norman G. Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: A Defining Moment":

I am an untenured, assistant professor at DePaul University in Chicago, where Norman G. Finkelstein, the most heroic critic of U.S. and Israeli policy in Palestine ever to set foot in the U.S. academy, was denied tenure over nearly three months ago. I was, and am, deeply saddened that DePaul University, the institution where I have chosen to make a career, has so effectively undermined its social justice mission in a series of actions that have put us, as a faculty body, in grave peril. . . .

If faculty find themselves unable to rally around him, too busy with the usual duties that attend preparing for the beginning of the academic year, perhaps DePaul faculty should ask themselves why they are in this business of opening young minds to new ideas, when they are incapable of seeing that our campus is on the brink of devolving into something reminiscent of the Red Scare of the McCarthy Era. Will those faculty associated with, and standing in support of Finkelstein, be the next targets of DePaul’s administration? If so, I would certainly be a likely target. I am ready to accept that challenge.

I am ready to accept that challenge. Can you see him saying that aloud to himself as he wrote? These people are unbearable.