 In June 2007 , after two weeks of protests , some DePaul students staged a sit @-@ in and hunger strike in support of both professors denied tenure . The Illinois Conference of the American Association of University <unk> also sent a letter to the university 's president stating : " It is entirely illegitimate for a university to deny tenure to a professor out of fear that his published research ... might hurt a college 's reputation " and that the association has " explicitly rejected <unk> as an appropriate criterion for evaluating faculty members " . In a 2014 interview , professor Matthew Abraham , author of Out of <unk> : Academic Freedom and the Question of Palestine , described the Finkelstein tenure case as " one of the most significant academic freedom cases in the last fifty years " , claiming the case demonstrated " the substantial pressure outside parties can place on a mid @-@ tier religious institution when the perspectives advanced by a controversial scholar threaten dominant interests " . 
