Here is background information:
- http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/06/tenure-wars_4724.html
- http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/06/long-version-of-tenure-wars_14.html
- http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/07/re-new-comment-on-long-version-of.html
- http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/08/nadia-abu-el-haj-and-yael-zerubavel.html
- http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/08/nadia-abu-el-haj-and-truth-about-wizard.html
Please sign the following petition to support her tenure application.
http://www.petitiononline.com/Barnard2/petition.html
Please forward this request widely!
Please forward this request widely!
Tenure Wars
Battling for Control of Academic Discourse
karima4483@aol.com
New York City--May 28, 2007— Nadia Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor in the department of anthropology at Barnard College, is the latest target in the ongoing tenure wars against scholars, whose works are viewed as undermining the official Israeli narrative.
University faculty and staff 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.
Neoconservative organizations and individuals, including Daniel Pipes' Campus Watch and the Solomoniawebsite, which represents the David Project in the blogosphere, have focused on 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 societal 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's analysis would imply that the city name of Tel Aviv is 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 written by Zionist leader Theodor Herzl to advocate the colonization of Palestine, was rendered into Hebrew as Tel Aviv.
Phil Orenstein of the Neoconservative Democracy Project implored Barnard College President Judith Shapiro
President Shapiro clarified her position on the massive campaign waged by Neoconservative Israel advocates against Abu El-Haj.
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.
Phil Orenstein of the Neoconservative Democracy Project implored Barnard College President Judith Shapiro
President Shapiro clarified her position on the massive campaign waged by Neoconservative Israel advocates against Abu El-Haj.
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.
"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…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."
Nadia Abu el Haj and Yael Zerubavel
Muzzling Scholars of Arabic Ancestry
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com )
Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition by Yael Zerubavel discusses the construction of memory and the invention of traditions in Mandatory Palestine and in the State of Israel. The book describes some unusual Israeli or Zionist practices associated with Masada and Bar Kochba archeological excavations.
Rather like Nadia Abu el Haj in Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-fashioning in Israel, Zerubavel describes the use of archeology and other scholarship to construct Zionist national identity.
Other scholars have investigated the political use of archeology in various contexts. Not only Max Weinreich and Eric Hobsbawm provide similar analysis in their published works, but Constructing "Korean" Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State-Formation Theories by Hyung Il Pai addresses precisely that same issues with regard to the development of Korean national consciousness.
Even though Abu el Haj focuses more narrowly on professional archeologists whereas Zerubavel looks at Israeli society as a whole, both authors make similar points in their books, and Zerubavel provides support for some of the claims for which Nadia Abu el Haj has been most criticized.
Zerubavel received the 1996 Salo Baron Prize of the American Academy for Jewish Research for her work while Nadia Abu el Haj is the target of an international campaign to drive her out of Columbia/Barnard. The difference in the responses evoked by the two authors merits a scholarly study in itself.
Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition by Yael Zerubavel discusses the construction of memory and the invention of traditions in Mandatory Palestine and in the State of Israel. The book describes some unusual Israeli or Zionist practices associated with Masada and Bar Kochba archeological excavations.
Rather like Nadia Abu el Haj in Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-fashioning in Israel, Zerubavel describes the use of archeology and other scholarship to construct Zionist national identity.
Other scholars have investigated the political use of archeology in various contexts. Not only Max Weinreich and Eric Hobsbawm provide similar analysis in their published works, but Constructing "Korean" Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State-Formation Theories by Hyung Il Pai addresses precisely that same issues with regard to the development of Korean national consciousness.
Even though Abu el Haj focuses more narrowly on professional archeologists whereas Zerubavel looks at Israeli society as a whole, both authors make similar points in their books, and Zerubavel provides support for some of the claims for which Nadia Abu el Haj has been most criticized.
Zerubavel received the 1996 Salo Baron Prize of the American Academy for Jewish Research for her work while Nadia Abu el Haj is the target of an international campaign to drive her out of Columbia/Barnard. The difference in the responses evoked by the two authors merits a scholarly study in itself.
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