Deny El-Haj Tenure Website Launched!

PRESS RELEASE:
Deny Abu El-Haj Website Launched in New Effort to Prevent Tenure

Members of the "Deny Nadia Abu El Haj Tenure" Committee have announced that their campaign to get Columbia University to deny the controversial Palestinian-American professor tenure have reached a new level with the launch of a website ( http://www.nadiaabuelhaj.com/ ). "I welcome this opportunity to join in the protest against Nadia Abu El-Haj receiving tenure at Barnard," writes one Barnard graduate. Maxine E. Schwartz (Barnard Class ‘60), Director of Development and Outreach at the University of Miami's Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Jewish Studies and a member of the Committee wrote, "I read Nadia Abu El-Haj’s book, Facts on the Ground, and was completely astonished at what seemed to me to be more like fiction on the ground. I sent the book to two professors in El-Haj’s field and they both thought it was completely lacking in academic rigor.”

The site was launched shortly after a petition by another Barnard graduate, Paula Rubenstein Stern (Class of 1982), a technical writer living in Israel. "The petition was launched because all other efforts to reach the Barnard administration were ignored," explained Stern. "Early on, I wrote to President Judith Shapiro that, 'As a Jew, as an American, as an Israeli, as a Barnard graduate, and as someone who has read her book, I can only pray that Abu El-Haj will not be allowed to represent Barnard or given the honor of educating future Barnard graduates.' Her response was to imply that I was an outsider and that the process should be left to the Barnard tenure committee, which consisted of two art history professors, a biologist and two historians...one who specializes in early American history and the other in medieval intellectual history; economic history; history of science."

To date, the petition ( http://www.petitiononline.com/barnard/petition.html ) has gathered over 2,800 signatures, with a counter petition gathering just over 1,300 signatures. "It isn't about the numbers," says Stern. "It's about what is right and what is wrong. It's about academic standards and integrity. Abu El Haj's book, the single credential on which her tenure is based, is filled with lies, twisted truths, absurd assumptions, and characterized by a tremendous ability to ignore proper research and evidence in order to get her political agenda across. This is all about Barnard's future and what it will mean to the next generation."

Contact Person: Paula Stern ()

Background information on the website: www.nadiaabuelhaj.com