Paul Manning...and Enemies of Humanity

Paul Manning of Trent University Embarrasses Himself in Public

A week after I launched a petition to Deny Tenure to Nadia Abu El Haj, http://www.petitiononline.com/barnard/petition.html  Paul Manning of Trent University launched a counter-petition.

Manning, an anthropologist who studies linguistic and semiotic anthropology in Wales and the nation of Georgia,  was earning his PhD in Anthropology at the University of Chicago when Abu El Haj was a young professor of Anthropology in the same department.  He first leapt to her defense in a comment about the alumnae/i petition posted at the Chronicle of Higher Ed.

“anyone who signs this petition against Nadia and anyone who supports this campaign is without exception an enemy of humanity. period.”  Paul Manning

http://chronicle.com/news/article/2866/alumni-group-seeks-to-deny-tenure-to-middle-eastern-scholar-at-barnard-college

An enemy of humanity. Imagine. A group of alumna/i expressing concern that a candidate for tenure at their alma mater fails to meet ordinary standards for the use of evidence in research are enemies of humanity.  

Within a day of making that remarkable assertion Paul Manning took me and the other alumnae/i signers to the International Court of Justice in the Hague to put us on trial for crimes against humanity.  Scratch that.  Actually, he put up a petition of his own. http://www.petitiononline.com/Barnard2/petition.html  without, apparently, giving the book a very careful read.   

Manning’s petition asserts that “Ms. Abu El-Haj has been singled out from among many other authors who make the same points.”  

I challenge Manning to name “many other authors” who make the extraordinary point Abu El Haj makes that at the time of  Herod “Jerusalem was not a Jewish city, but rather one…  inhabited, primarily, by 'other' communities.” (bottom of page 175)

In fact, I challenge him to find even a single such author.