You can see it in the descriptions that they attribute to the new country, take for instance some of the statements of George Washington. Who characterized the new country as an empire as "God's American Israel," and that their "mission" was to be a "trustee under God of the civilization of the world." You find abundant similar statements out of the founders of the republic.

Consider that all of the leaders were men of means, and that in the penning of the Constitution there was not one statement which accrued to the benefit and protection of the people - having to be forced in amendments by the people where initially not one "father" voted in favor of such protections for the people, it had to be forced on them. In fact, in the very deliberations found among those who wrote the constitution, the father of the said document, James Madison who spoke in the Federalist paper #10 of the "leveling impulses" that had to be discouraged among the people.

When White servitude is acknowledged as having existed in America, it is almost always termed as temporary "indentured servitude" or part of the convict trade, which, after the Revolution of 1776, centered on Australia instead of America. The "convicts" transported to America under the 1723 Waltham Act, perhaps numbered 100,000. The indentured servants who served a tidy little period of 4 to 7 years polishing the master's silver and china and then taking their place in colonial high society, were a minuscule fraction of the great unsung hundreds of thousands of White slaves who were worked to death in this country from the early l7th century onward.

Up to one-half of all the arrivals in the American colonies were Whites slaves and they were America's first slaves. These Whites were slaves for life, long before Blacks ever were. This slavery was even hereditary. White children born to White slaves were enslaved too. Whites were auctioned on the block with children sold and separated from their parents and wives sold and separated from their husbands.

The Establishment has created the misnomer of "indentured servitude" to explain away and minimize the fact of White slavery. But bound Whites in early America called themselves slaves. Nine-tenths of the White slavery in America was conducted without indentures of any kind but according to the so-called "custom of the country," as it was known, which was lifetime slavery administered by the White slave merchants themselves. So much for the grand early American life!

Each day, while conducting our fast in the Student Center, we have received support from the surrounding community, both close and distant. Individuals passing by, from strangers to more students, to DePaul faculty, to faculty from other Chicago universities, have all voluntarily acknowledged the injustice that has taken place at our school, deciding therefore to sit with us and to encourage our efforts of activism. The reason that this injustice has attracted so much attention and support is clear: the implications do not just touch DePaul but the entire academic community, for they display what a sad state of affairs can exist within the American university, that so-called bastion of open thought and ideas.

It is absolutely astonishing to have to acknowledge the troubling truth underneath the reality that such an eminent and courageous scholar like Norman Finkelstein can be refused tenure. Dr. Finkelstein's books are international bestsellers that have been translated into 46 foreign editions, more than the work of the entire faculty of DePaul's School of Liberal Arts and Sciences combined. His contributions to Middle Eastern studies are monumental both to our country and to our culture. However, it is no secret that the ideological, pro-Israeli bias of our government has historically penetrated other societal venues as well, such as academia, therefore influencing "scholarship."