Norman Gary Finkelstein (/ˈfɪŋkəlstiːn/; born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist, former professor, and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D. 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.
In 2007, after a highly publicized feud between Finkelstein and Alan Dershowitz, an academic opponent, Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul. He was placed on administrative leave for the 2007–08 academic year, and on September 5, 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on largely undisclosed terms. An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure and said that outside influence played no role in the decision. In 2008, he was denied entry to Israel and banned from entering the country for ten years.