Norman Finkelstein Encourages Students To Start Another Encampment

The controversial figure spoke at UW-Madison in February

Norman Finkelstein speaking on campus

Controversial activist, academic, and self-proclaimed communist Norman Finkelstein decried the “billionaire Jewish supremacist class” and encouraged students to start another encampment in an event at UW-Madison in February.

Finkelstein participated in a moderated discussion at Memorial Union entitled “Free Speech and Free Gaza.” The event, which started an hour late, was set up as a question and answer session and was hosted by Code Pink Madison, Students for Justice in Palestine, World Beyond War, and Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine.

The first segment opened with the question, “Over the past fifteen months of genocide, what has shocked you the most, as someone who has studied this occupation for decades?” Finkelstein responded by providing the historical context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and said that the post-October 7th response was marked by a crossing “a new threshold of barbarism by Israel.”

Finkelstein said, “No rational person can reach any other conclusion than Israel is committing a genocide.”

At one point, Finkelstein called the New York Times "Israel's conduit to the American consciousness" and accused NYT of publishing false information to favor Israel. He said that the mainstream media’s supposed framing of the war as being started by Hamas was false.

Finkelstein said he did not necessarily condemn what Hamas did on October 7th and said it was a “morally challenging situation.” He also said that there was no evidence “of any rape on October 7th,” despite the existence of considerable proof.

The final part was the audience Q&A, but very few of the questions challenged Finkelstein’s positions.

He said he was sympathetic to the two-state solution rather than a single Palestinian state, clearly displeasing many in the crowd. He also expressed disdain for “woke culture,” calling it unacademic and “a recipe for disaster.”

Finkelstein blamed “the billionaire Jewish supremacist class” for the end of the encampments on college campuses in 2024. He said they “brought to bear their spectacular wealth to blackmail and take hostage college administration.” He claims that many of these billionaires withheld funding until the encampments were gone.

Finkelstein argued that no one felt unsafe because of the encampments and said, “students pretended to be uncomfortable because that's what they were told to pretend.” He also claimed that the only reason that Claudine Gay was fired from Harvard was because of these billionaires, neglecting to mention the plagiarism scandal at the center of her departure.

Towards the end of his talk, he said that free speech was under assault on college campuses because college administrators had uprooted the encampments. He told the audience to “do whatever it takes to win back that right.”

At the end of the event, Finkelstein called for further anti-Israel activism. He advised student leaders to create t-shirts that say “free speech, free Gaza” and to plan another encampment for later in the semester.