[wvns] Neocons attack Palestinian American anthropologist
Neocons wage campaign against Palestinian American anthropologist
The Muslim Observer
www.muslimobserver.com
New York City--May 28, 2007— Nadia Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor
in the department of anthropology at Barnard University, is the latest
target in the ongoing tenure wars against scholars, whose work is
viewed as undermining the official Israeli narrative.
University faculty that have experienced such attempts at academic
assassination have included Columbia's faculty members Rashid Khalidi,
Georges Saliba, Joseph Massad, and Hamid Dabashi, as well as Harvard
University's Hillary Rantisi and University of Michigan's Juan Cole.
Recently, a campaign led by Alan Dershowitz pressured De Paul
University to deny tenure to Norman Finkelstein.
Neoconservatives, including Daniel Pipes' Campus Watch and the
Solomonia website, which represents the David Project in the
blogosphere, have targeted Nadia Abu el-Haj because of her book, Facts
on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-fashioning
in Israel (University of Chicago, 2002).
This book analyzes the anthropology of Israeli archeology as well as
the role that Israeli archeology and geography play in Israeli society
and self-conceptualization.
Israeli academics are unused to being the object of anthropological
study by a Palestinian American scholar working at a prestigious
American University.
Critics claimed Abu El-Haj's analysis calls into question the
connections of modern Jews to ancient tribes of Palestine.
Abu El Haj interpreted the city name of Tel Aviv as a contrived
attempt to connect modern Jews with ancient Palestine because Tel is
an Arabic word meaning a mound composed of an ancient ruin while Aviv
means spring. Old-New Land, the title of a book by Zionist leader
Theodor Herzl advocating the colonization of Palestine, was rendered
into Hebrew as Tel Aviv.
Phil Orenstein of the Neoconservative Democracy Project implored
Barnard College President Judith Shapiro to "do the right thing" and
deny tenure to the Palestinian American anthropologist. He tried to
argue that pro-Israel advocates were being denied tenure.
President Shapiro clarified her position on the massive campaign waged
by neoconservative Israel advocates against El-Haj.
"I do not myself believe that the people who are getting in touch with
me anonymously truly need to do so. Nadia Abu El-Haj has also received
death threats from those opposed to her work."
She continued, "I have not received a single student complaint about
her teaching, advising, mentoring, or anything that has gone on in the
classroom. There are indeed places where Jews or Zionists are
endangered and marginalized, but Morningside Heights [NYC] in the year
2007 does not happen to be one of them."
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