Who Supports Nadia Abu El-Haj

Birds of a feather do indeed flock together - both Talal Asad and Timothy Mitchell have richly endorsed Nadua Abu El-Haj's book "Facts on the Ground."

Here are a few facts that might color that ground to a slightly different color:

Both Asad and Mitchell also signed an anti-Israel letter back in 2002, condemning Israel...in advance...for an action Israel never did. The professors called themselves "Professors of Conscience" and, in light of other activities in the region, issed a "warning of the possibility of ethnic cleansing in Israel and the Occupied Territories:

8. Professor Timothy Mitchell, New York University
56. Professor Talal Asad, CUNY, Graduate Center

Interestingly enough, Abu El-Haj's name appears on the same letter.

251. Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj, Barnard College, Columbia

Who would have guessed? http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/404

Talal Asad of City University of New York...

On "Facts on the Ground," Asad writes that it is "A fascinating and important study. Factually detailed and theoretically informed by the latest thinking the int anthropology and sociology of science, Nadia Abu El-Haj has provided us with an understanding of precisely how archaeology has contribted so crucially to the formation of nationalist sensibilities in a settler-colonial society."

but...who is Talal Asad...

On Suicide bombings, Asad writes:

"I argue that the creation of terror and the perpetration of atrocities are aspects of militant action in the unequal world we inhabit."

"I emphasize that although liberal thought separates the idea of violence from the idea of politics, mortal violence is integral to liberalism as a political formation. More significantly, I suggest that legitimate violence exercised in and by the modern progressive state—including the liberal democratic state—possesses a peculiar character that is absent in terrorist violence (absent not because of the latter’s virtue but because of the former’s capability): a combination of cruelty and compassion that sophisticated social institutions enable and encourage."

"I am simply impressed by the fact that modern states are able to destroy and disrupt life more easily and on a much grander scale than ever before and that terrorists cannot reach this capability."

Timothy Mitchell of NYU...

but...who is Timothy Mitchell...

Timothy Mitchell has added his name to a call for an academic boycott against Israel, signing himself as one of the "defenders of Palestinian academic freedom and supporters of the academic boycott against Israel." In this call, Mitchell and others demands from "the Israeli academic leadership where it stands on the issue of current Israeli policy, and to share with us what Israeli academic institutions are doing to challenge the behavior of your government."