This letter was first posted on The Palestine Chronicle before Dr. Finklestein had settled with DePaul University.
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I read on your website that you may go on a hunger strike to fight for the principle of academic freedom. This is a worthy cause, Sir, but I implore you don’t do it. Academic freedom may be your immediate goal but the freedom you are fighting for is no longer academic, it is a universal freedom that is much larger than one post or one university.
Like it or not, Dr. Finklestein, you are no longer the sole owner of your person. You have embodied the fight of millions of people who hunger for the truth and for freedom, and you belong to all these people. You cannot go on a hunger strike and risk damaging your health without thinking of those who depend on you to nourish the dream that someday, they too will taste from the fruit you found so tasty you would sacrifice your health to have it again.
Before the internet, people used the method of the hunger strike to attract attention to their cause but you need not do that now because there is the internet, you have access to it and you make brilliant use of it.
In fact, your website is full of letters that have come from every corner of the Planet. The people who wrote these letters say how much they appreciate the stand you are taking with regard to the issues that touch their lives on a daily basis. These people want you alive, they want you well and they want you at the peak of your intellectual prowess.
By contrast, those who make life difficult for you want you unwell and weakened intellectually if not dead by your own doing. For those reasons and for many others, you must take care of your health to keep empowering the weak and the voiceless. Like a modern day Robin Hood you must go on sapping the strength from the mighty and the loud, and give it to those who struggle to stand on their feet, those who need to tell the World: "I am too and I have a story to tell -- hear me out."
I promise you, Dr. Finklestein, things will work out just fine in the end. I am of Arab descent and we, Arabs, are known for our patience. Believe me, Sir, when I say that patience does pay off even when things look so bleak that they seem completely hopeless. But things are not hopeless in your case because yours is a worldwide cause that has attracted support from everywhere.
What looks big to you today will be the object of your small laughter tomorrow. You are still young and this is a big world. Move on with your life, Mr. Finklestein, because you have much to live for with regards to yourself and to those who need your articulation of their dreams and aspirations with vigor and a forceful intellect.
Your job is not done yet because too many people still live without a voice to speak for them. Abandon them now and they will feel helpless once more and hopeless again. You have no right to do that, Sir, because you belong to them as much as you belong to yourself.
By all means, do what you feel is necessary to regain your post but first and foremost look after your health because without you, the cause for which you would sacrifice so much will have a diminished force behind it and your sacrifice will have been in vain.
Good luck, Professor, and keep us posted. It is nice to see someone like you win a fight like this. And I know you are winning because they are fighting you so hard. May they fight you harder still and may you win greater victories against the forces of darkness.