[wvns] After De Paul, Barnard?
Tenure Witch hunt: After De Paul, Barnard?
The Tribulations of Israel Critics in Academe
By KAREN W. ARENSON
http://windowintopalestine.blogspot.com/2007/09/tenure-witch-hunt-after-de-paul-barnard.html
A tenure bid by an assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard
College who has critically examined the use of archaeology in Israel
has put Columbia University once again at the center of a struggle
over scholarship on the Middle East.
The professor, Nadia Abu El-Haj, who is of Palestinian descent, has
been at Barnard since 2002 and has won many awards and grants,
including a Fulbright scholarship and fellowships at Harvard and the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. Barnard has already
approved her for tenure, officials said, and forwarded its
recommendation to Columbia University, its affiliate, which has the
final say.
It is Dr. Abu El-Haj's book, "Facts on the Ground: Archaeological
Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society," that has
made her a lightning rod, setting off warring petitions opposing and
supporting her candidacy, and producing charges of shoddy scholarship
and countercharges of an ideological witch hunt.
Judith R. Shapiro, Barnard's president, who is also an anthropologist,
said in a statement that the tenure process was "one of the linchpins
of academic freedom and liberal arts education," and that despite the
passions, it must be conducted "thoughtfully, comprehensively,
systematically and confidentially." She added, "This case will be no
different, both in its rigor and its freedom from outside lobbying."
The fracas is one of a growing list of bitter disputes over the Middle
East in academe, including charges a few years ago by Jewish students
at Columbia that they were being intimidated by professors of Middle
Eastern studies. A university investigation found no evidence of
anti-Semitic statements by professors, but it criticized one professor
for becoming angry at a student in his class in a discussion of
Israel's conduct.
At DePaul University in Chicago, a tenure fight led to the resignation
last week of an assistant professor, Norman G. Finkelstein. He has
written that Israel and Jews have used the Holocaust for their own
purposes, including to oppress Palestinians.
Zachary Lockman, a professor at New York University who is the
president of the Middle East Studies Association, said, "It's a very
conflicted field, given the passions about the Middle East, and there
are a lot of people outside academe who have very strong feelings."
Dr. Abu El-Haj, who is teaching a course on "Race and Sexuality in
Scientific and Social Practice" this semester, declined to be
interviewed while her tenure was under consideration.
Born in the United States in 1962, Dr. Abu El-Haj studied at Bryn Mawr
College and earned a Ph.D. at Duke. 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.
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.
The Middle East Studies Association, an organization of scholars who
focus on the region, chose her book in 2002 as one of the year's two
best books in English about the Middle East. The other was "Being
Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship," by Gershon Shafir and
Yoav Peled, published by Cambridge University Press.
Jere L. Bacharach, a historian at the University of Washington who
presented the awards, said at the time that both books were "nuanced,
nonpolemic works on subjects that too often lend themselves to
political tirades and polemics."
Critics of Dr. Abu El-Haj's book, however, said her aim was to
undermine Israel's right to exist, and challenged her methodology and
findings.
"Serious people are outraged when people who are rank amateurs come
in," Jacob Lassner, a professor of history and religion at
Northwestern University who wrote a negative review of her book, said
in an interview. "It's insulting. Brain surgeons would be offended if
a medical technician criticized their work. That's what's happened
here. The problem, of course, is that she is politically driven."
As Dr. Abu El-Haj's tenure deadline approached, Paula R. Stern, a 1982
Barnard graduate who lives in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank,
began an online petition against the professor for what it called her
"demonstrably inferior caliber, her knowing misrepresentation of data
and violation of accepted standards of scholarship." As of yesterday,
it had more than 2,000 signatures, some of them from Columbia faculty
members.
"I am horrified," Ms. Stern said in an interview, "that Barnard would
even consider tenure for a professor who is so clearly unqualified."
But Dr. Abu El-Haj also has many supporters, particularly in her
field, who say her book is solid, even brilliant, and part of an
innovative trend of looking at how disciplines function.
They have produced a counter-petition, signed by about 1,300 people,
including many professors around the country and abroad, urging that
she receive tenure and calling the attacks on her "an orchestrated
witch hunt" by those trying to shut down legitimate intellectual inquiry.
Paul Manning, a linguist in the anthropology department at Trent
University in Peterborough, Ontario, who initiated the petition
supporting her, said that he acted in part because "Nadia has been
targeted a long time, for years, and she's not been having a very good
time of it."
He was also concerned about the "concerted attack on the autonomy of
the tenure process," Professor Manning said. He added that people were
"particularly angered" about the Barnard case because it came on the
heels of the DePaul case, in which Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law
professor, campaigned to derail Dr. Finkelstein's tenure bid.
Dr. Abu El-Haj has some opponents at her own college. "There is every
reason in the world to want her to have tenure, and only one reason
against it - her work," said Alan F. Segal, a professor of religion
and Jewish studies at Barnard. "I believe it is not good enough."
He said he was particularly troubled by her suggestion that ancient
Israelites had not inhabited the land where Israel now stands, and he
said that she had either misunderstood or ignored evidence to the
contrary. "She completely misunderstands what the biblical tradition
is saying," he added. "She is not even close. She is so bizarrely off."
He also said that a Barnard official, whom he declined to name, had
asked him to suggest people who were not Jewish to comment on Dr. Abu
El-Haj's work for the tenure review, and that he had refused.
Elizabeth Gildersleeve, a Barnard spokeswoman, said that a high
official of the college had met with Professor Segal on the tenure
case and asked him to submit names for letters of reference. But Ms.
Gildersleeve said that "the charge that restrictions were put on that
request is absolutely untrue."
Dr. Abu El-Haj's supporters say that she has come under attack partly
because she is a Palestinian-American and that her opponents often
quote her out of context to distort her arguments.
"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," said Michael
Dietler, an anthropology professor at the University of Chicago, "and
because she happens to be of Palestinian origin."
*********************************************************************
WORLD VIEW NEWS SERVICE
To subscribe to this group, send an email to:
wvns-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
NEWS ARCHIVE IS OPEN TO PUBLIC VIEW
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/
Need some good karma? Appreciate the service?
Please consider donating to WVNS today.
Email ummyakoub@yahoo.com for instructions.
To leave this list, send an email to:
wvns-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:wvns-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:wvns-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
wvns-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
No comments:
Post a Comment