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Take a Palestinian professor with a critically praised and questionable book about Middle Eastern archeology and add her desire for tenure at Barnard College, and you have a big headache for school administrators. The NY Times notes that Nadia Abu El-Haj's tenure bid is yet another instance of the "struggle over scholarship on the Middle East" at Columbia University.
Barnard officials have already approved tenure for Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor of anthropology who has been a Fulbright Fellow and recipient of many awards, but Columbia gets the make the final decision. Abu El-Haj's book, "Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society," was both acclaimed and criticized. The Times described the book:
In her book, which grew out of her doctoral research and was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2001, Dr. Abu El-Haj says Israeli archaeologists searched for an ancient Jewish presence to help build the case for a Jewish state. In their quest, she writes, they sometimes used bulldozers, destroying remains of other cultures, including those of Arabs.A 1982 Barnard graduate, Paula Stern, started a petition to protest Abu El-Haj's tenure, saying that she misrepresented data. Another Barnard professor, Alan F. Segal, told the Times, "There is every reason in the world to want her to have tenure, and only one reason against it — her work," calling her work "not good enough" and says, "She is so bizarrely off.” He also claims Barnard asked him for non-Jewish professors to comment on Abu El-Haj's work.She concludes her book by saying the ransacking by thousands of Palestinians in 2000 of Joseph’s tomb, a Jewish holy site in the West Bank, “needs to be understood in relation to a colonial-national history” of Israel and the symbolic resonance of artifacts.
But she does have supporters, who feel she is targeted because she is Palestinian-American. Michael Dietler, a University of Chicago professor, said, "She is a scholar of the highest quality and integrity who is being persecuted because she has the courage to focus an analytical lens on subjects that others wish to shield from scrutiny and because she happens to be Palestinian."
Back in 2004, some Columbia students accused some professors of humiliating and intimidating them while discussing Israeli politics in the Middle East and creating an inhospitable environment for Jewish students. As Columbia struggled to deal with the heated debate, one professor even said that student-professor tensions were "blood sport" and that he enjoyed it. Eventually, a university study found that Columbia was not anti-Semitic, but it did lack a way to process student complaints about professors.
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If this professor is good, let her have tenure. If she sucks, send her back to palestine.... or just let her find another job. But if the school keeps her and someone doesn't like her, they can merry well take another class. Whats up with all this nonsense from the ultra-liberals who claim they are for freedom of speech?
They're by no means "liberal".
Zionists are usually right-wing "conservatives" (read: uptight, easily threatened motherfuckers).
The idea that national aims influence scholarship opportunities and even practice is hardly a shocking one. The controversy comes from the political context. It's unfortunate that the Times could not get her critics to offer substance to back up their assertions or else failed to print them. The history and religion professor calling the anthropologist (the field under which archaeology is usually organized in the US) "an amateur" is disingenuous at best. Most disciplines examine their own history and practice. The Barnard religion professor focuses on a supposed misreading of "biblical tradition," but the article says nothing about how that affects her scholarship. I'd like to believe that her academic critics have something more to offer. I'm not certain how the outraged Barnard alum has any credible authority to judge Abu el-Haj's scholarship.
"...send her back to palestine..." uh, did you read the part about how she was born in the US?
yes, #3, of course the NYT could not acquire any substance to back up the critique! there is none!
the barnard alum sounds like someone who is trying to throw her weight the same way the david group did to attack joseph massad and other muslim/arab scholars. i say let the zionists(both jewish and christian) divest from columbia!!!! who needs them.
columbia university should be ABSOLUTELY ashamed of itself for giving a single iota of attention/"credibility" to these zionist attacks!
all columbia students and alumni should voice their disgust at these campaigns!
The outraged Barnard alum doesn't need any credible authority, not in this country at least. The reporter probably begged for counter-scholarship from this professor's critics but couldn't get any. Why? Because there isn't any -- the notion of Biblical archeology is a laughable Judeo-Christian construct.
In a larger political context -- and there certainly is -- I think Abu El-haj's work is courageous. American invasion and then entanglement in an Arab civil war were the answer to many dreidel-spinning prayers. But after four years in Iraq, Americans are slowly probing the Zionist role in shaping our perceptions and opinions. That questioning has started in elite universities and will, inexorably, filter down to popular culture.
Hopefully, they won't be sucking us dry forever.
"sucking us dry"? lovely...i gather that's a reference to blood sucking jews/blood libel. brilliant. what are you, an eastern european peasant circa early 20th century? or perhaps a reader of der sturmer, germany 1933?
what's up with the anti-semitism here? you know, you can justly criticise israel and stop with the anti-semitism. there are many jews who are opposed to the occupation, and beyond this or if you want, ignoring this fact entirely, cheap anti-semitic slurs negate any rational discussion/criticism of israel's policies.
There is, actually a great deal of scholarly analysis on the errors in the Abu El Haj book.
Here are a couple of quotes that tipify the tone of her book:
She asserts, repeatedly, that the ancient Hebrew kingdoms are not historical realities but political fabrications, "a tale best understood as the modern nation's 'origin myth'... transported into the realm of history." P. 104
During “the Herodian period, Jerusalem was not a Jewish city, but rather one... inhabited by ‘other’ communities.” p. 176
Both of these statements are simply absurd. Not true. Not supported by evidence. Pure political fantasies on the part of Abu El Haj.
Also, she makes a lot af accusations, that Israeli archaeologists mislabel Christian sites as Jewish, that Israeli archaeologists deliberately bulldoze and destroy evidence of Arab history, and so on - but the only support she offfers for these very serious and specific charges is the testimony of anonymous persons she claims that she spoke with. No newspaper would publish a story with so little support.
There area also long articles on her failure to cite sources, unfamiliarity with the scholarly literature, absurd mistranslations of Hebrew, and so forth. Some, but not all, of these are posted at Campus-watch.org and at NadiaAbuElHaj.com
Oh, and in defense of Barnard alumnae, lots of them actually have studied Israeli archaeology - it's not an uncommon hobby. It is far from uncommon for non academics to have subscriptions to archaeological magazines, attend touring archaeological seminars, and know a lot more about the archaeology of periods that interest them than Nadia Abu El Haj does. To anyone who follows archaeology, her ignorance of the field is patent on every page.
#8: knowledge of israeli archaeology????? huh? there is so much bull in there that even if a bunch of barnard/columbia alum have "studied" "isreali" archaeolgy, that does not mean they know the field. so many publications simply further the various zionist myths. that is the entire critique that abu el-hajj makes, yes! just look at the work of israel finkelstein and yigael yadin. then, who can forget moshe dayan's "love" for archaeology!
as for some of the quotes above... MANY ancient near eastern cities included communities of "others" - sorry to burst your bubble that maybe jews/isrealites/canaanites were not the totality of the population during ancient times! they certainly were not as of 1948, let alone 1967!
oh, and another thing, almost ALL ancient kingdoms/politcal entities recorded in history are built on a lot of myth building. just ask any historian worth his/her salt! the key is to identify what is myth and what is reality. to begin that process one has to deconstruct the myths!
jeez, i could go on here.
damn witch hunt!
signed, archaeology phd candidate at a major research insitution
whats with the unreadable comments font color...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This really sucks big time...
This is exactly why we have tenure - to protect the independence of academic scholarship.
I like the way that anti-semites like to say Zionist/Zionism instead of Jews or Israel/Israelis, as though its an insult. Zionists are people who believe in having a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel. Its not an insult, you dumbarses.
#6- feel free to suck me dry.
Both Jews and Zionists freak the hell out if anyone mentions anything at all negative about Israel. Plus that automatically makes you an anti-semite.
#13- being negative about Israel doesnt make you anti-semetic. It's the jew-hating that does. It just happens that usually both go together. One can be critical of Israel and its action without the underlying jew-hating. "sucking us dry" being the best example on this board about it.
Juan Cole denied a deserved position at Yale: Norman Finkelstein denied tenure at De Paul: Tony Judt planned speech cancelled at the Polish embassy in New York.Rashid Khalidi and Joseph Massad harrassed at Columbia And now this. If this situation follows true to form she will be denied tenure also.
And it is said that there is no "Lobby"??? Of yes there is.
Michael Dietler, of course, is hardly an objective source. He has called for the destruction of the state of Israel by means of an unlimited right of return for all descendants of palestinian refugees. He has also accused Israel of plotting to ehtnically cleanse all Palestinians while the world was distracted by the Iraq war.
He is a big fan of the overtly anti-Semitic, Holocauset-minimizing Norman Finkelstein.
Oh, and he he is an American patriot who supports our troops. He has called upon " all governments to grant asylum to American military personnel refusing to serve in Iraq."
Most of the commentary on Abu el Haj, especially from her supporters,is pretty wide of the mark. First of all, to dispose of the "freedom of speech" issue, it's bizarre to suggest that the First Amendment is an ipso facto guarantee of a lifetime academic position. On, then, to some more substantive points.
(1) To suggest that Abu el Haj is perforce knowledgable about archaeology because she is an anthropologist is absurd. She is very much in the post-Geertzian mold, that is, a nominal "anthropologist" whose stock-in-trade is generalized socio-political critique largely informed by postmodern theory. This development, as you may know, has led to a vast fissure in the field of anthropology, with the postmodernists and their antiempirical bent dominating what once was "cultural anthropology," while the "scientific anthropologists", that is, the physical and paleo anthropologists and the archaeologists taking an entirely separate course. Indeed, at Columbia, anthropology has been formally split in two.
(2) Abu el Haj's "scholarship", apart from its heavy dependence on undocumented sources to make grave charges against serious scientists, largely relies on the doctrines and theoretical extravagances of an enterprise called "science studies," which makes very strong claims as to the supposedly socially-constructed underpinnings of science. If you look at the index to Abu el Haj's book, you will note that all her theoretical authorities are in this camp, including such luminaries as Bruno Latour, David Bloor, Andrew Pickering, Karen Knorr-Cetina, and Donna Haraway. This is not a trivial matter. To give you some idea of how these folks theorize, let's look at an infamous paper by Latour, in which he debunks the archaeological finding that Pharoah Ramses II died of tuberculosis. His argument? Tuberculosis didn't come into existence until Robert Koch isolated the tubercule bacillus and noted that consumption was a result of infection by this organism. Thus Ramses II could not have had this condition because he lived in a society that did not recognize the ailment "tuberculosis" as such.
Note that Abu el Haj seems unfamiliar with any other schools of thought in the philosophy of science and scientific epistemology. She makes some very crude, amateurish mistakes when she tries to characterize these tendencies (always with a pejorative intent). Anyone taking a freshman survey course in philosophy would recognize these howlers, but, apparently, Abu el Haj's learning doesn't go that deep, despite the fact that she characterizes her work as "anthropology of science" (as opposed to the science of anthropology!!)
For telling critiques of postmodern science studies, see, inter alia:
Koertge, ed., "A House Built on Sand"
Sokal and Bricmont, "Fashionable Nonsense"
Gross, Levit and Lewis, ed., "The Flight from Science and Reason."
Gross and Levitt, "Higher Superstition"
Parsons, ed., "The Science Wars".
(3)Contra Abu el Haj and some previous comments, contemporary Israeli archaeology is hardly the handmaid of "biblical archaeology" or of the myths embraced by the Israeli religious right. Indeed, the orthodox regard the archaeologists as a thorn in their side, in that the latter have repeatedly debunked the biblical narrative as grossly inconsistent with empirical evidence. Most recently, Israeli scholars have shown that the inscription on a pomengranite-shaped mace head, which identified it as a ritual object from Solomon's Temple, was indeed a modern forgery, thereby dethroning the most sacred relic in Israel's national museum. This did not sit well with the black hats (nor with Christian biblical archaeologists like Herschel Shanks).
In short, Abu el Haj has produced an account that is obsolete at best, mendacious at worst, and which certainly doesn't entitle her to a tenured position at a first-rate institution (though, in fairness, Columbia has made similar blunders in the past).
The Lobby Man is at it again. One of the things The Lobby does is to criticize the scholarship of their opponents no matter how substantial their credentials are. We are then supposed to believe that that no criticism of Israel/Zionism is credible because of the lack of "scholarship". This fraudulent tactic is now patently obvious and is running out of steam.
Might I assume, as author of the previous posting, that I am the "Lobby Man" referred to? This will come as news to anyone familiar with my position on the Israel/Palestine conflict, which would certainly not please AIPAC. It seems that the author of this jibe, having no real knowledge of the background of Abu el Haj's "scholarly" methodology, nor of its serious flaws, is unable to mount a serious defense of her work and simply resorts to sneers at her opponents. He or she ought at least to acquaint his or herself with the science studies literature on which Abu el Haj draws, with the criticism that has been directed at it by scientists, philosophers, and historians alike, and, not least, with Abu el Haj's book. Just to point out a few glaring weaknesses of the last:
(1) Like most postmodernists, especially those who denigrate science, the author throws around the term "positivist" in a largely pejorative way. Positivism, of course, is an influential philosophical stance familiar to anyone who has followed developments in 20th century epistemology of science. Abu el Haj at least attempts a rough definition--but it is utterly wrongheaded. This is unforgiveable in anyone purporting to be an analyst of scientific truth-claims.
(2) Abu el Haj also repeatedly refers to Zionism as a "colonial" project. This is the kind of knee-jerk use of language that disdains terminological accuracy in favor of words with emotive firepower. By definition, a colony is a piece of territory seized by a foreign, often distant, nation and ruled by its military forces, sometimes with the aid of settlers from the colonizing nation, sometimes not. Whatever one thinks of the sins and/or virtues of Israel, it is certainly not a "colonoial" enterprise; where's the "mother country"?
I add, as a footnote, that I would oppose this promotion even if the subject at hand were archaeology in Norway or Nepal. It's the resort to futile "social constructivist" nonsense that puts me off.
Commenter #17 and #19 - Thank you!
The name that no one seems to be mentioning is Paul de Mann. Nadia Abu El-Haj is working in a tradition of thought in which de Mann was a kind of founding father, and it is no accident that the one time Nazi sympathizer should provide an academic framework and language for someone advancing such counterintuitive arguments.
Counterintuitive can be good, except when it is ridiculous. I am sorry that a lot of the anti-Nadia Abu El-Haj energy comes from the likes of David Horowitz, and that the Barnard grad who started the pettition is a settler. I don't find the academic right sympathetic at all. I basically hate the settlers.
Also, I have not read her book. I am not an academic. But I have read quotes from the book, ad as a citizen it seems that Nadia Abu El-Haj is a symptom of a terrible trend in academia, in which everything is treated as perception - and so maleable by political imperatives - and nothing is acknowledged fact. And don't forget that one of the popularizers of this trend was discovered to have been youthfull sympathizer and advocate of the Nazi's. I am not saying that makes Nadia Abu El-Haj a Nazi, not at all. But this connection should be pointed out, she is the fruit of de Mann's academic trail blazing.
Um, Paul de Man? (One n.) WTF? How does Paul de Man have anything to do with this controversy?