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Controversy Over New York Prof's Tenure
NEW YORK - A debate over an anthropologist's book on ancient Hebrew history isn't just academic - it's spilled over into an online dispute between critics trying to keep her from getting tenure and supporters who say the effort stifles scholarly freedom.
Nadia Abu El-Haj has been teaching at Columbia Univerity's Barnard College since 2002. Her book, "Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society," looks at the importance of archaeology in forming Israel's national identity.
The 2001 book discusses how archaeological discoveries have been used to defend the country's territorial claims and contributed to the idea of Israel as the ancient home of the Jewish people.
The professor, who is of Palestinian descent, argues that Israel has used archaeology to justify its existence in the region, sometimes at the expense of other nationalities like the Palestinians.
The book has garnered both praise and criticism, with opponents challenging her conclusions and her research. It was a co-winner of the Middle East Studies Association's Albert Hourani Annual Book Award.
Criticism has spilled out of academia and onto the Internet, with a Barnard alumnus starting an online petition against the professor's tenure. Her supporters have an online petition, too.
The outside protest is "just preposterous," said Laurie Brand, director of the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California and the chairwoman of the committee on academic freedom for the Middle Eastern Studies Association.
She said tenure decisions should be based on the opinions of other experts in the field, and that opposition to Abu El-Haj was coming from critics trying to silence her.
"You don't shut somebody down because of, as a result of honest inquiry, they've come up with conclusions you don't like," she said.
Barnard religion professor Alan Segal said he is against granting tenure to Abu El-Haj based on her work, which he said he has read. He called the public petitions for and against her tenure "silly" but added that they were unlikely to have any effect on the tenure decision.
"I don't believe it's affected the process in any way," he said, adding that the Barnard faculty, by and large, supports Abu El-Haj.
Barnard officials declined to comment, and Columbia officials were not available.
This isn't the first time that Mideast politics have roiled the Columbia campus. A few years ago, the school had to deal with accusations from Jewish students that they were being intimidated by professors of Middle Eastern studies.
A university report found no evidence to support the accusation, but it did criticize one professor of modern Arab politics and history for inappropriately getting angry at a student in his classroom.
Disputes over Mideast politics have arisen at other campuses as well.
Last week, Norman Finkelstein resigned from his job as a political scientist at DePaul University in Chicago, months after he was denied tenure at the school where his views and scholarship have come under fire.
Finkelstein, a vocal critic of Israel, has argued that some Jewish groups have exploited the Holocaust for political and financial gain.
Columbia may be the target of more protests next month from activists on both sides of the Israel and Palestinian divide.
University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer is scheduled to take part in a panel on academic freedom at the end of October.
Mearsheimer, along with Harvard professor Stephen Walt, recently wrote a book arguing that pro-Israel special interest groups have manipulated the United States to enact policies that favor Israel and work against American interests.
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs recently rescinded an invitation for Mearsheimer and Walt to speak at a public forum this month about the book.
Columbia President Lee Bollinger has defended the panel at the university's Heyman Center for the Humanities, saying it falls within the university's tradition of "engaging in critical discussions about important issues."
"One would hope that those committed to a robust First Amendment would see the vital importance of ensuring that our universities are places where free speech can be exercised, as well as taught," he said in a statement.
© 2007 The Associated Press
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9 Comments so far
Show All"Barnard religion professor Alan Segal said he is against granting tenure to Abu El-Haj based on her work, which he said he has read. He called the public petitions for and against her tenure "silly" but added that they were unlikely to have any effect on the tenure decision."
-- depending, of course, on how much Jewish-establishment endowment the university enjoys, i.e., as in the case of DePaul university and the Finkelstein case.
And as soon as El-Haj is turfed out of the academy, we will have the case of Professor Joel Kovel's book on Zionism to entertain us until he, too, is de-tenured.
I have read El-Haj's book, and it's excellent. But perhaps I say that because it confirms virtually everything I witnessed on my last trip to Israel in which I visited virtually all of the major archaeological sites and many of the minor ones. But what do I know? I'm just another one of those know-nothing antisemitic academics.
PS In case anyone's interested in the Joel Kovel controversy, here:
"The University of Michigan announced late Tuesday that the University of Michigan Press would resume distribution of Overcoming Zionism, a book that calls the creation of Israel a mistake and that prompted several pro-Israel groups to complain to the university about its role in making the available a book they characterized as "hate speech." The University of Michigan Press stopped distribution last month, following those complaints, and setting off complaints of censorship by others. Michigan was not the publisher, but distributed the book for Pluto Press, a British publisher specializing in leftist social science for an academic audience. The author of the book is Joel Kovel, distinguished professor of social studies at Bard College."
http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/12/mich
Money rules.
These are pioneers and they will pay a heavy price for their resistance to the pro-Israeli propaganda machine. They need our support because American taxpayers are paying for Israeli war crimes!
UW Academic Freedoms
"The action of the Board of Regents in 1894, 'Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the Great State University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found,' shall be applicable to teaching in the classroom and to the use of university halls for public addresses, under the control of the president of the university with appeal to the Regents." (May 2, 1922)
How dare you criticize the 51st state of the union!!!!!
Since we give it more aid than the other 50, it must be vital to our interests.
Remember the USS Liberty!!!!!
And so it goes. Walt and Mearsheimer were attacked last year for their writings about the Israel lobby. Then Tony Judt and Carmen Callil were denied speaking venues at the Polish consulate in New York by the ADL (Abe's Defamation League), and after that Allan Dershowitz bullyragged DePaul Univ. to deny tenure to Norman Finkelstein.
There is no boundary to the arrogance of these Zionist brownshirts. If someone doesn't mount effective resistance soon, these brownshirts will control the content of every class taught at every American university and will dictate who teaches them.
It's up to the universities to resist them and for the rest of us to lend support.
You can't say a word of criticism about Israel without being deemed "anti-semitic." Ms Abu El haj's book seems perfectly reasonable to me, and probably most others (except the Israel lobby). She is being wronged, just as Prof Finkelstein was wronged. What ever happened to free speech and free opinion? (by the way, if what Finkelstein said is true, he was right - why else do you see Holocaust museums everywhere you go, but no museums commemorating slavery, or the Armenian genocide, and so on? Because Jews have their own state, financial backers, and their own lobby).
Besides, Israel is a state that claims to represent Jews. I don't see it that way. Innocent Jewish people are being used so we can keep forking over to Israel billions of dollars for killing Palestinians. It's not the Jews; it's Israel. I detest anti-semitism.
Profs need to remain independent and make claims like this, because we all need to hear it. Free speech for ALL!