 Norman Gary Finkelstein ( born December 8 , 1953 ) is an American political scientist , activist , professor , and author . His primary fields of research are the Israeli – Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust , an interest motivated by the experiences of his parents who were Jewish Holocaust survivors . He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his <unk> in political science at Princeton University . He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College , Rutgers University , Hunter College , New York University , and DePaul University where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007 . 
