Nadia Abu El Haj: responses to tenure
A selection of further responses to Nadia Abu El Haj’s gaining of tenure, in no particular order.
Inside Higher Ed has a report that strives for balance, although citing this hostile review, now discredited, does no-one any favours. Some positive comments from two former students of Nadia Abu El Haj can be found at Interprete. Some tired old anti-tenure canards are given the chance to flutter their wings by Marty Peretz, who proves how well-informed he is about Nadia Abu El Haj’s work by getting her subject wrong (anthropology, not archaeology). A site called The Islamic Workplace has decided that Nadia Abu El Haj is a Muslim.
Over at Israel Matzav Paula Stern is quoted approvingly and at great length, which should tell you all you need to know. Elder of Ziyon favours an approach based on personal abuse, describing Nadia Abu El Haj as a ‘bigot’ pursuing ‘a purely Jew-hating agenda’, both of which claims are surely actionable. From another perspective (and under the category ‘Palestein’, sic), avari rejoices that Nadia Abu El Haj winning tenure means ‘that we are free to pursue knowledge against agendas of imperialism, oppression and hegemony’. Oh thank goodness, there are so few academics interested in doing that these days. Ethel Fenig at American Thinker condemns the tenure decision and reminds us that Jordan did a lousy job as custodian of eastern Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967, and that the Islamic authorities responsible for the Temple Mount today are little more than a gang of vandals. Both these statements are undeniably true; quite what they have to do with whether Nadia Abu El Haj should have been awarded tenure, however, is far from clear.
MuzzleWatch (’comments are closed’) welcomes the tenure decision, and cites Larry Cohler-Esses as a counter to Paula Stern; both pieces are, in my opinion, rather too partisan to form the basis of a balanced view of the issue. Israpundit offers a semi-literate but concise blend of misrepresentation, unfounded accusation and insulting insinuation: ‘Abu El-Haj, is an artful deconstructionist, fiction writer and Christian dhimmi doing the bidding for her beleagured Palestinian Islamists benefactors as a Social Anthropologist in the academy’.
Finally, The Bwog, which is compiled by staff from Columbia University’s undergraduate magazine The Blue and White, puts things in perspective with its description of the whole tenure controversy as ‘a drawn-out squabble on the margins of academia’.
[UPDATE 6 November 2007: I’ve slightly amended the wording of the penultimate paragraph to be fairer to Larry Cohler-Esses, in response to Richard Silverstein’s comment below.]
November 5th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Thanks again for linking to one of my posts on the subject.
I’m not sure why you call Larry Cohler Esses an “ill informed partisan.” He’s a reporter for Jewish Week and one of the best in the country in my opinion. He actually read Facts on the Ground from cover to cover which, as a non-archaeologist/non-anthropologist is quite an achievement. His pieces on this subject appeared in The Nation and Jewish Week which are certainly respectable publications. He also interviewed Stern & elicited some damning admissions fr her which I take to be a contribution to the debate.
November 5th, 2007 at 01:11 pm
I did not call Larry Cohler-Esses an ‘ill informed partisan’, and wouldn’t do so. My criticism here is of the line he takes in one particular article. I liked his piece for The Jewish Week, ‘Flinging dirt in archaeology dispute’ (which included the Stern material), and recommended it here; but I found his ‘New McCarthyism’ piece one-sided and unhelpful. I think he let his dislike of the politics of some of those in the anti-tenure camp get the better of him in the latter article.
[UPDATE 6 November 2007: Having reflected on Richard Silverstein’s comment I’ve revised what I say in this posting about Larry Cohler-Esses’s article. I still think ‘The New McCarthyism’ partisan and not constructive, but to take the dismissive tone I did and to call it ‘ill-informed’ was incorrect. Apologies to him, and thanks to Richard for taking me to task.]
November 6th, 2007 at 09:53 am
I appreciate yr willingness to re-evaluate your appraisal of his work. It’s really magnificent of you.
I can see how the title ‘The New McCarthyism’ might lend itself to being interpreted as overly partisan. I myself don’t think the phrase quite gets at the issues at hand since I think that the campaign against Abu El Haj has an innately schismatic Jewish flavor to it. I’d call it “The Jewish Wars” (which I think was a title by Josephus if I haven’t forgotten all my college Jewish history) before referring to Joseph McCarthy.
But Larry has written some wonderful, complex & deeply researched work in Jewish Week & other publications. Any reporter willing to spend an entire week plowing through ‘Facts on the Ground’ deserves a medal in my book.