Donate to Barnard/Columbia – Now More Than Ever

By: Paula R. Stern
April, 2008

Each year, I receive a request to donate money to Barnard and Columbia. As an alumnae, they remind me, it is my obligation to help others, as someone once helped me. I too should want to send someone to these great halls so that they can be enriched with the knowledge and culture I gained during my years there. I have donated small amounts in the past – limited not by will but by life’s realities. Raising five children, moving abroad, and building a business simultaneously – at the best of times, limits your resources.

I have finally arrived. My business has been so successful, we have now merged it with another up-and-coming company to double its capacity and hopefully triple its income. Two of my children are grown and mostly out of the house; another turned 18 last month. For the first time in my life, I drive a car not meant to haul children and groceries and my phone is state-of-the-art. In short, I believe I have fulfilled, after 25 years of work, Barnard’s hopes and dreams for the person I would become.

It is time to give back. Time to recognize that university gave me the base upon which to build. Words aren’t enough at this stage – there were always words in the past. Now, I will pull out my checkbook and write a donation to Barnard for $5,000. Perhaps next year, I can send them a larger check. Just one thing – across the face of the check, I will write “VOID.” Just a few months ago, I donated approximately the same amount to a charity for the poor here in Israel. I thought of donating the money to Barnard and then remembered that I had promised them and me that this would not happen.

They have Nadia Abu El-Haj, an anti-Israel professor who twists her words and her “research” for political purposes. In her book, essentially her only real published claim for tenure, she denies Israel’s roots, questions the right of Jews to this land, and belittles the terrorist mob that desecrated Jewish holy sites here. With limited knowledge of our culture and our language, she deemed herself worthy to pen a “scholarly” condemnation of Israel’s archeologists, though of course, she did not waste her time to properly investigate that which she wrote. To do that would have meant she cared for truth and honesty, when in fact, what she cared about was her own political heritage.

She could not prove a Palestinian presence in this ancient land and so she attempted to do the next best thing – she attempted to undermine and deny the one lasting presence that can be easily found throughout this land – the Jewish one. What surprised me was not her attempt or the fact that she was quickly supported by a notoriously anti-Israel anthropology department at Columbia. No, what surprised me was the number of American Jews in prominent places – writers for The Jewish Week and The New Yorker and The New York Times, who quickly grabbed her story and knighted her the embattled professor.

To support Abu El-Haj, one and only thing was required – to ignore the facts. This they did with great pleasure. They avoided speaking to the dozens of experts who ridiculed the Abu El-Haj book and platform; the experts who had actually read her book and given evidence against her lies. What matter truth, they essentially said, when educational freedom or whatever catchword they wanted to use came into play. Each had their method. The New York Times and The Jewish Week snagged onto the town where I live. Ah, it is across the “green” line – therefore you are a settler…therefore all that you say is wrong. The home towns of many others were ignored, only mine mentioned. My words were twisted – often invented, seldom quoted correctly. They, like Abu El-Haj, had their agenda and if it surprised me that they were so ignorant and foreign to facts about Israel and Judaism, I am certainly surprised no longer.

In the end, Columbia’s pre-determined granting of tenure, once the motions of the tenure committee were played out, was a surprise to know one. It was all part of a pre-established plan; the lesser of two evils. Take Abu El-Haj and get rid of the embarrassingly anti-Israel Joseph Massad. It’s acceptable to hate Israel at Columbia and Barnard these days, perhaps even preferred, but always it must be done with elegance and dignity and Massad lacked both.

During our work in bringing to light the facts behind the absurdity in Abu El-Haj’s “Facts on the Ground” I spoke to dozens of Columbia graduates, most equally horrified that Columbia would grant tenure to a scholar so clearly lacking. Most promised that if this came about, they would never send another penny to Columbia. Now is the time to prove that what you promised comes about – but do it in a way that Columbia can understand and measure. Send in your checks – even bigger and better than you would have last year or the year before. Columbia has the right to hire whom they wish under whatever terms they want - that is their right and no one ever tried to take that freedom away. Nadia Abu El-Haj has the right to say and write whatever she wants - that is her academic freedom - and on one ever tried to take that away. And I have the right to support (or not) a university that has made decisions to hire someone that I believe would see my home destroyed and my children butchered or exiled. That is my right as a mother, as a graduate, as a human being and no one has the right to take that from me. I choose - my choice - we are all free to follow our hearts, minds, and clearly, our political agenda. There are no victims here - only free will. So, when you consider donating to Columbia and Barnard this year, make it a bonus year – but write VOID across the face of the check and explain that so long as anti-Israel rhetoric is worshiped at Columbia and Barnard, those of us who cherish Israel will send our money to other causes.

I have chosen mine – a charity in Jerusalem that my mother-in-law often supported. They are simple and unpretentious; uneducated by Columbia standards of culture and education. They will quietly see that the poor have food and clothing – perhaps that is where truth and honesty still reign in this world for certainly, they no longer dwell in Morningside Heights.