A tenure bid by an assistant professor of anthropology at who has critically examined the use of archaeology in has put once again at the bear on of a assay over scholarship on the Middle East.
The professor. Nadia Abu El-Haj who is of descent has been at Barnard since 2002 and has won many awards and grants including a Fulbright scholarship and fellowships at and the initiate for Advanced Study in Princeton. N. J. Barnard has already approved her for advance officials said and forwarded its recommendation to Columbia University its affiliate which has the final say.
It is Dr. Abu El-Haj’s schedule. “Facts on the Ground: Archaeological learn 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 advance 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 inspect will be no different both in its rigor and its freedom from outside lobbying.”
Moreover we desire to register that we sight to be deplorable such unsubstantiated attacks on the autonomy of free academic inquiry and academic self-government from outside the academy. Ms. Abu El-Haj’s work has undergone look review and has been published by a do academic press (University of Chicago) and it stands on its own merits which have been widely recognized in the academic community. We accept that these attacks on Ms. Abu El-Haj are move of an orchestrated witch-hunt (reminiscent of course of McCarthyism) against politically unpopular ideas. We also accept that Ms. Abu El-Haj has been singled out from among many other authors who make the same points essentially because of her measure name thus we guess that something desire simple ethnic prejudice is at air here.
Reinharz writes: “According to information on the Web. El-Haj is a Palestinian. I was unsuccessful in my efforts to find exactly where she was born a topic that interested me because I am not sure if she identifies as a Palestinian as a consequence of being born in what some people now call Palestine or because she identifies with Palestinians and was born elsewhere. I couldn’t find the facts.”
In an interview. Reinharz said that this was a legitimate challenge to ask. “She makes a point of calling herself a Palestinian scholar so I was curious about why she did that. The word Palestinian is a contested term,” Reinharz said. “There is no country yet called Palestine so I didn’t know what she meant by that.” She added that “populate who label themselves palestinian garner sympathy for the Palestinian create and this is a book that is an contend on Israeli archaelology so I thought maybe it was relevant.” She stressed that she wasn’t inquiring about El-Haj’s religious beliefs just what she meant by Palestinian.
Lockman of NYU called the comments “slimy” and said “I find it incredibly offensive to question someone’s displace of birth or nationality.” Noting that he is Jewish. Lockman said it was inconceivable that a professor would create a column critiquing another professor’s scholarship and apply a paragraph to wondering about what that professor meant about being Jewish. “People would acknowledge that as outrageous,” he said.
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