Blog Talk on Nadia Abu El Haj

 

In the battle of the blogs...few can understand how a university such as Columbia could consider giving tenure to a young professor whose sole "claim to fame" is a single, flawed document meant to blur, twist, misrepresent, and lie about the truth. Nadia Abu El Haj's "Facts on the Ground" is about everything BUT facts....it is her political agenda - with no attempt to bother with the facts, the realities. She has no understanding of Israel, a country she clearly despises and feels has no justification for existing. Following is just a sample of the many Blog entries urging Columbia and Barnard...to simply to the RIGHT thing! After you read the following, please be sure you sign the online almuni petition. Some important examples from many blogs are listed below - as well as the following links: http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/010486.shtml http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/3321   http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2007/05/dangerous_gobbl_1.html http://motnews.blogspot.com/2007/05/columbia-university-professor-to-write.html   http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=4677 www.azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?Id=347&catID=4&showElement=True Many more links coming soon.... Blog Examples: Academia, seriously The battle over Columbia University's consideration of tenure for Nadia Abu El-Haj made headlines again today in the wake of Barnard College's decision in favor and an online almuni petition organized by Barnard alum Paula Stern. The petition calls for tenure to be denied, and for very good reason. El-Haj's sole claim to fame is, as Ms. Stern suggests, "a single profoundly flawed book" -- one which can best be described in the very terms El-Haj uses to characterize most of ancient Jewish and Israeli history: a pure political fabrication. The outrage here is not that Abu El-Haj, whose work is reported to be riddled with factual inaccuracies, seriously shoddy scholarship and unsubstantiated libel against professional archeologists (she is not one), might actually be granted tenure. The outrage is that an institution of Columbia's reputation and vaunted high standards would even be considering such a thing. Now a lot of excellent commentary has been written on this subject (e.g., here and here), and I highly recommend that you follow the links if you haven't followed the story to date. What I want to emphasize here is that this is not a struggle to deny a platform to someone with odious ideas (although it would have that effect), nor to silence criticism of Israel (to the contrary, these battles always tend to bring it out more vehemently), nor to interfere in what ought to be an internal academic decision made in accordance with the rules of the university and the professional judgment of peers (because that's not how this process is playing out). It is, rather, a struggle to salvage the integrity of one of this country's great institutions of higher learning (if not academia in general) and to restore confidence in its ability to provide a safe and healthy learning environment for all of its students. It's one thing to publish a volume of political propaganda thinly disguised as scholarship in an effort to delegitimize an entire religion, an entire people and an entire nation. This is a free country and Nadia Abu El-Haj is entitled to promote her version of revisisionist history and pseudo-science as she pleases. It's quite another thing when our esteemed academic institutions ignore their own standards in honoring such perversion. And it's beyond the pale to ask parents and alumni to stand idly by while those entrusted with the education (not indoctrination) of our young people demonstrate their inability to distinguish fact from fiction. It's time that academia started to take its role seriously again. It's time for consequences to ensue if it does not. http://incontext.blogmosis.com/archives/033806.html----------------------------------------------------------------- Another... Alumni Group Seeks to Deny Tenure to Middle Eastern Scholar at Barnard College

August 15, 2007

http://chronicle.com/news/article/2866/alumni-group-seeks-to-deny-tenure-to-middle-eastern-scholar-at-barnard-college Controversial research on Israel and the Palestinian territories has become the basis of yet another campaign to prevent a professor from winning tenure. A group of Barnard College alumni has drafted an online petition asking their alma mater to deny tenure to Nadia Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor of anthropology whose scholarship, they say, is flawed and skewed against Israel. The group’s criticisms of Ms. Abu El-Haj focus on her book Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (University of Chicago Press, 2001), which argues that Israeli archaeologists have produced biased research that bolsters the “origin myth” of the Jewish state. The petition, which has drawn just over 1,000 signatures, accuses Ms. Abu El-Haj of ignoring or mischaracterizing large parts of the archaeological record, of not being able to speak Hebrew, and of treating Israeli archaeologists unfairly in her work. Ms. Abu El-Haj declined to comment today. The petition comes on the heels of a high-profile campaign — led by Alan M. Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor — to persuade DePaul University to deny tenure to Norman G. Finkelstein, a professor known for his criticisms of Israel and what he calls the “Holocaust Industry.” Mr. Finkelstein was denied tenure. —John Gravois http://chronicle.com/news/article/2866/alumni-group-seeks-to-deny-tenure-to-middle-eastern-scholar-at-barnard-college And another...: When I was in graduate school in anthropology a hundred years ago, or thereabouts, one was required to be familiar with the body of literature that pertained to one’s subject of interest. In this case, that literature is predominantly written by Israeli archaeologists … in Hebrew. Not only does Ms. El-Haj misuse common Hebrew words in her book (indicating a lack of familiarity with the language), she does not reference any of the relevant major works (indicating a lack of familiarity with the literature). In my day this would have been considered academic malpractice and one couldn’t even have passed a course on such a basis, much less achieve tenure. In addition, El-Haj is engaging in very frightening racial “science” focused on Jews. She’s been giving talks recently to promote her research: “The Descent of Men: Genetics, Jewish Origins and Historical Truths”... “Jews – Lost and Found: Genetics and the Evidentiary Terrain of Recognition” ... “Bearing the Mark of Israel? Genetics, Genealogy and the Quest for Jewish Origins.” What seems obvious to me is that El-Haj is an anti-Israel activist trying – though not entirely succeeding – to present herself as a person of academic stature, with only a doctoral dissertation (the basis of her only book ) to show for it. It also seems obvious that Barnard is afraid NOT to grant tenure to a Palestinian Arab Woman, for fear of being declared an “enemy of humanity” (as per the unfortunate comment #34 above). I applaud Paula Stern and the petition signatories for supporting rigorous methodological parameters, no matter how antiquated they may seem in today’s highly politicized environment. — Anne Lieberman