20 thoughts on “Pro-Israel Campaign to Deny Nadia Abu El-Haj Tenure – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. This is a long posting and I haven’t had time to digest it all. Some comments:

    (1) You said that Paula Stern is a ” hard-line right-wing pro-Israel nationalist”.
    SO? What are you implying, that anyone who fits this discription is inherently
    a liar? Ad hominem attacks do not add anything to your arguments.
    (2) What is the “fetish about the Temple Mount” you mention? You claim to be very educated
    Jewishly. Then you are certainly aware that a large part of the TANACH (Bible)
    Talmud, Midrashim and Halachic literature over the millenia deal with the Har HaBayit
    (Temple Mount), Beit HaMikdash (Holy Temple) and the sacrificial system which is currently
    in abeyance for technical reasons but is still very relevant. Jews have been very involved
    with the Har HaBayit since the beginning and many Jewish customs around the year are
    involved in keeping its memory alive.

    (3) The views of Finkelstein, Herzog and the other “minimalists” in the Israeli archeaology are not accepted by most Israeli archaelogists. In fact, I heard a seminar in which other archaelogists attack them for the things you attack the “right-wingers” for, i.e. using their “science” and twisting it to fulfill an anti-Zionist agenda. Two can play this game. You yourself say they are against “Israeli nationalism” and turning Judaism from supposedly a “spiritual” religion into one with an “obsession with land and monuments”. Again, anyone who denies a deep, strong connection between traditional Judaism as practiced over the ages and LAND, Eretz Israel, is simply not knowledgabe about Judaism and Torah.

  2. Hi Richard,
    I appreciate your throwing light on these scurrilous scoundrels: “The Jewish right-wing is on the warpath again against an imagined academic foe of Israel. Groups like Daniel Pipes’ Campus Watch and David Horowitz’s Frontpagemagazine have turned their life’s work into making the lives of such academics a living hell. They and their allies have gone on the warpath against Princeton when it offered an endowed chair to Rashid Khalidi, Yale when it did the same to Juan Cole, Khalil Shikaki and Natana DeLong-Bas at Brandeis, ”

    Another person who should be added to the list of targets is Dr. Joseph Massad at Columbia Univ.
    Dr. Massad has been seriously hounded for years. I have heard him speak a couple of times. I don’t always understand him – he is a brilliant guy, and I don’t always agree with him, but he has been unfailingly courteous to me in responding to my questions and comments. What makes his situation particularly sad and outrageous and ironic to me is that, to hear the attackers talk about him, one would look for horns, or at least a swastika, yet I’ve seen him often after an event. He walks in the crowd, sometimes alone, sometimes talking to a friend, such a quiet gentle person.

    You know, some people feed on attacks, I think Finklestein does, and that by no means is said to justify them, but I think he gives as good as he gets.
    Dr. Massad strikes me, and I don’t know him personally, but he strikes me very much as a person who would like to be let alone to do his work.

    —ellen

    from Counterpunch:
    [http://www.counterpunch.org/dols04112005.html]

    “The investigation [of Massad and other Middle Eastern professors] was prompted by the documentary film Columbia Unbecoming–produced by the David Project, a pro-Israel advocacy group–that alleges abuse of Jewish students by pro-Palestinian professors. University President Lee Bollinger gave legitimacy to these claims by publicly “assuming” that they were true–and set a dangerous precedent by creating a panel of professors to investigate the Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) Department.”

    “Bollinger has remained silent in the face of death threats and racist e-mails sent to MEALAC professors, the subsequent canceling of Massad’s class due to intimidation, and calls from politicians and the New York media for Massad’s firing. Bollinger never met with Massad–though he met with the accusing students.”

    from The Committee on Academic Freedom on the Middle East and North Africa:
    [http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1952]
    “In the most thorough journalistic account of the controversy over Dr. Massad, in the November 2 issue of The Jewish Week, staff writer Liel Leibovitz interviewed four of the seven students who reportedly appear in the film, and several dozens others who have attended MEALAC classes over the last five years. According to the article, those who took classes with Dr. Massad, including Jewish and Israeli students, were strikingly positive about their experience.”

    Pressure to dismiss Columbia U Prof Joseph Massad
    by Committee on Academic Freedom on the Middle East and North Africa
    Middle East Studies Association
    November 5, 2004

    http://fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/CAFMENAletters.htm#041105Columbia

    Friday, 05 November 2004

    Dr. Lee Bollinger
    President
    Columbia University
    New York, NY 10027

    Dear Dr. Bollinger,

    I write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our concern regarding numerous public calls for Columbia University to suppress or infringe upon academic freedom. Recently these pressures have extended to demands for the dismissal of a professor in the Department of Middle East and Asian Language and Culture (MEALAC). We are heartened that the university administration has insisted on upholding the fundamental right of free expression in the university community. In this you have our unconditional support, and our encouragement to persevere.

    MESA is…

    The latest salvo against academic freedom at Columbia has come in reports of a film by a Boston-based organization containing allegations against Professor Joseph Massad. According to these allegations, Dr. Massad had expressed views of Israel that were tantamount to anti-Semitism, and had intimidated students who did not share his views. The film has not, as of this writing, been available for public viewing. Its allegations have nonetheless received prominent notice in several New York-area tabloids, assisted by a letter to you, dated October 21, from Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a Brooklyn Congressman, publicly calling on you to “fire” Dr. Massad. Rep. Weiner’s letter also invoked earlier campaigns against Columbia’s appointment of Professor Rashid I. Khalidi to an endowed chair, and the appointment of former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson as Professor in the Practice of Public Affairs.

    In the most thorough journalistic account of the controversy over Dr. Massad, in the November 2 issue of The Jewish Week, staff writer Liel Leibovitz interviewed four of the seven students who reportedly appear in the film, and several dozens others who have attended MEALAC classes over the last five years. According to the article, those who took classes with Dr. Massad, including Jewish and Israeli students, were strikingly positive about their experience.

    We understand that you have asked the Provost of the university to look into the matter. This is certainly an appropriate step if there are any genuine grounds for concern regarding these allegations. Such a response, however, because it has been made public, may also suggest that the university is open to politicized pressure from the outside to silence debate and dissent on Columbia University’s campus. We therefore urge you to take every appropriate opportunity to reassert that Columbia University will continue to uphold the fundamental values of freedom of expression and the free exchange of ideas, and that the campaign of defamation against Dr. Massad will find no resonance within your administration. We assure you of our full support in this endeavor.

    Sincerely,

    Laurie Brand
    President, Middle East Studies Association

    Joe Stork, Human Rights Watch, Middle East
    Lisa Anderson, Columbia University
    Sheila Carapico, University of Richmond
    Kaveh Ehsani, University of Illinois at Chicago
    Gregory Gause, University of Vermont
    Azzedine Layachi, St. John’s University
    A. R. Norton, Boston University
    Marsha Pripstein Posusney, Bryant College
    Donald Reid, Georgia State University
    Glenn Robinson, Naval Postgraduate School

    cc: Rep. Anthony D. Weiner, Member of Congress

    Note: Articles listed under “Middle East Studies in the News” provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch’s critique.

  3. You have spent a lot of energy defending Norman FInkelstein, Azmi Bishara, and now Nadia. I am waiting for you to write a column on the Israeli victims of terror, such as Kobi Mandell and Malki Roth. Unlike Finkelstein, Bishara and el Haj, their setbacks are permanent. I am wondering if you consider people like Kobi Mandell and Malki Roth to be insignificant losers, and their families loss to pale in significance to the academic political battles of your friends

  4. In other cases, they quote such a small portion of El-Haj’s writing that you cannot tell whether she is being quoted in context or not. Take this as an example: ‘She asserts that the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a “pure political fabrication.”’ Why wouldn’t it have been possible to quote an entire sentence or paragraph to determine what El-Haj actually wrote and believes on this subject.

    I just looked this up on Amazon reader. The actual sentence is: “In other words, the modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins is not understood as *pure* political fabrication.” The rest of the context is even more exculpatory — check it out for yourself.

  5. Melvin: Your comment is beneath contempt and undeserving of reply. If you need to ask that question of me w/o knowing the answer then you don’t belong here because you’re a hardened ideologue unwilling to concede humanity in yr opponents. I have no interest in addressing someone with that attitude.

  6. You said that Paula Stern is a ” hard-line right-wing pro-Israel nationalist”. SO? What are you implying, that anyone who fits this discription is inherently a liar? Ad hominem attacks do not add anything to your arguments

    What is ad hominem in my attack on her? The petition she wrote contains charges against El Haj which are flat out untrue & a tiny bit of research would’ve uncovered that they were untrue. Either she’s deliberately lying or else she couldn’t be bothered to check whether her charges were true. That’s not an ad hominem attack. It’s an attack based on her argument, such as it is.

    Then you are certainly aware that a large part of the TANACH (Bible)
    Talmud, Midrashim and Halachic literature over the millenia deal with the Har HaBayit (Temple Mount), Beit HaMikdash (Holy Temple) and the sacrificial system

    I’m also aware that there has been a period of a millenium or so when there has been no Temple. I’m aware that Yochanan ben Zakkai deliberately established a communal religious structure that could survive w/o a physically central geographic institution, a structure that could survive exile and all the other savageries that have beset us throughout that period.

    Like Finkelstein in the Ynet story I don’t worship buildings & I don’t worship priestly castes. I worship ideas, values and traditions. The Temple is but one of those traditions, but by no means the only one.

    anyone who denies a deep, strong connection between traditional Judaism as practiced over the ages and LAND, Eretz Israel, is simply not knowledgabe about Judaism and Torah.

    Nor do I deny it. But what “land” are we talking about? And what is our attitude toward it? Are we talking about Jerusalem and Tel Aviv or are we talking about Hebron, Gaza or Mt. Sinai for that matter? Do we merely acknowledge our connection to those places outside the Green Line or must we OWN them? If you insist we must physically HAVE those places then you are a literalist about our tradition, which I am not. I am perfectly cnotent to realize Jewish peoplehood within the Green Line. That is more than sufficient for me.

  7. Jesse: That’s dynamite. It shows even more bad faith on the part of the petition writers & their right wing allies. Here’s a link for page 250 of the book in Amazon reader and the sentence in context is:

    While by early the 1990s, virtually all archaeologists argued for the need to disentangle the goals of their professional practice from the quest for Jewish origins and objects that framed an earlier archaeological project, the fact that there is some national-cultural connection between contemporary (Israeli)-Jews and such objects was not itself generally open to sustained discussion. That commitment remained, for the most part, and for most practicing archaeologists, fundamental. (Although archaelogists argued increasingly that the archaeological past should have no bearing upon contemporary political claims). In other words, the modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins is not understood as *pure* political fabrication.

    These people are intellectual jackals.

  8. In truth, Campus Watch identifies an appropriate shill like Paula Stern and has her do their dirty work. That way their fingerprints aren’t on the murder weapon (murdering a career, that is). A dirty business.

    That is a very serious charge indeed. Potentially libelous. Proof, please?

  9. Eris: I have a challenge for you. Contact Paula Stern and Winfield Myer at Campus Watch and ask them whether they communicated with each other regarding this petition or Nadia Abu El-Haj. If they both deny it I’ll publish their denial here. I won’t believe it. But I’ll publish it.

    And while you’re at it ask Paula Stern how she first heard of Abu El-Haj and if she doesn’t say from a Frontpagemagazine or Campus Watch story I’ll eat my hat. And then ask her where the actual content of her petition was lifted from. If it wasn’t from material in either of those publications I’ll eat another hat.

  10. I can answer this honestly and openly. No, I did not contact Campus Watch before posting the petition. I did not ask their opinion. I did not seek their advice. I have no need. All I had to do was read Abu El Haj’s “Facts on the Ground.” Did Silverstein commit slander in his post? Probably – but who cares? I don’t listen to what he wrote or give it wait – I DO value and give importance to the dozen or so experts who have commented on El Haj’s shoddy work. I was in Israel when Palestinian mobs rampaged and desecrated Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus. El Haj refers to this as “In destroying the tomb, Palestinian demonstrators eradicated one ‘fact on the ground.'”
    No, what they did was rampage, burn and destroy an important historical, religious, and archeological site. As for my politics…congratulations, you know how to use Google. But my politics has nothing to do with the fact that Abu El Haj has used and abused her dissertation to put forth HER political agenda…that might be expected, has she bothered to do the research necessary to back up her position. She didn’t.

    As for her knowing Hebrew – the book is riddled with mistakes in Hebrew – simple, basic words she got wrong. She spent virtually no time consulting the real experts in the field, ignores common and acceptable Israeli archeological working methods and assumes to know what is proper and what is not. She makes no mention of the momentous damage done by the bulldozers on the Temple Mount – being employed by the Islamic WAKF as they attempt to do physically what El Haj attempted to do on paper…that is, deny and destroy the Jewish connection to Israel.

    As for a counter petition, I am not concerned, and am even grateful. The more controversy this issue kicks up, hopefully the harder and deeper Columbia will look into what Nadia Abu El Haj has written. The more they look, the more they will, indeed, see and read and smell something rotten. Abu El Haj should be denied tenure – not because she is anti-Israel and from her comments on Jews and Jewish genetics, most likely an anti-Semite as well. No, she should be denied tenure for one simple reason – she lacks credibility. She lacks the credentials worthy of a professor at one of the most prestigious universities in the country.

  11. Sorry, missed this the first time around:

    You wrote: “And while you’re at it ask Paula Stern how she first heard of Abu El-Haj and if she doesn’t say from a Frontpagemagazine or Campus Watch story I’ll eat my hat. And then ask her where the actual content of her petition was lifted from. If it wasn’t from material in either of those publications I’ll eat another hat.”

    Please post pictures of the two hats you will eat. I first heard about Abu El Haj from a Barnard graduate who was horrified about the possibility that she might reach tenure. She posted a note to all Barnard graduates on a list in Israel and I saw it, contacted her and …that’s your first hat. You might want to get a glass of water while you chew.

    I consulted neither FrontPage nor Campus Watch for the petition content. There was no reason – all that is there…and much more…has been posted in a large and complete section on my website: http://www.paulasays.com. I combined that with notes I took while researching and reading El Haj’s book – and that’s the second hat. I challenge you to post pictures on this site because you most definitely own me an apology – and perhaps a video of the hat-eating ceremony!

  12. Well, I *am* an archaeologist, or used to be. It was obvious that certain periods (like the late Iron Age or the Hellenistic/Roman periods) get a lot of attention and Ummayad period sites don’t. Eg, I visited Khirbet MInya, a lovely small Ummayad palace on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. It’s famous for its mosaics, but they were not at all protected from tourists wanting to take away bits of stone. I have no idea if anything is left now, 20 years later.

    Not that there’s not lots of conservation problems with other periods.

    Languages: Israeli archaeologists publish both in Hebrew and English. Probably French and German as well.

    As for the tenure problems, I’m glad I live in China now. I don’t get tenure, but I don’t face a political inquisition, either.

    Zhu Bajie, going up and down and to and fro in the world

  13. Richard, reminds me of a case a few years ago in which an author got a letter from the Turkish Embassy criticizing his mention of the “Armenian Genocide” in his book. What shocked the author is that along with the Embassy’s letter was an accidentally enclosed letter from a scholar TO the embassy, advising them on how to deal with the author in order to maintain the fiction that there was no historical consensus on the genocide as a proven fact. Ironically, the quisling scholar had suggested that they ignore the author’s book because it was not that important.

    What shocked the author was that in the correspondence from the scholar to the embassy the genocide WAS treated as a historical fact! So they knew they were promoting a lie. Of course the author publicized the scholar’s letter, which indicated that he was prostituting his expertise in order to promote a lie. Needless to say, his name was MUD among his peers from then on.

    The same tactic is being used here–if you throw enough manure against the wall some of it will stick.

  14. I DO value and give importance to the dozen or so experts who have commented on El Haj’s shoddy work.

    NO, you give “value & importance” only to those “experts” who have savaged her work. Many other scholars have spoken highly favorably of her work. You have ignored them as inconvenient to yr ideological agenda.

    As for her knowing Hebrew – the book is riddled with mistakes in Hebrew – simple, basic words she got wrong.

    I’m waiting…what are they. One review that trashed her mentioned that she mistook nachal for neve. I haven’t even researched this to validate that the charge is correct. But that’s one possible mistake. What are the others? And DO pls quote fr. her text & provide page numbers to allow us to judge for ourselves whether your judgement is valid or not.

    She makes no mention of the momentous damage done by the bulldozers on the Temple Mount

    What I do love about right wing pro-Israel nationalists is that they are actually insulted when you don’t address their own agenda in your writing. Who says Abu El-Haj’s has to take into account yr obssessions? Who says she has to address what you find important? She addresses what she finds important. You have yr own megaphone at IsraelInsider. Go scream bloody murder about Arab perfidy there all you want. But don’t expect Abu El-Haj to kowtow to you or yr concerns.

    The more they look, the more they will, indeed, see and read and smell something rotten.

    Actually, the more one looks at your work and petition the more rotten it smells.

    I first heard about Abu El Haj from a Barnard graduate

    Please DO tell us where SHE first heard of Abu El Haj. I’m waiting for the answer…

  15. Richard, there you go again with the ad hominem attacks that you claim you don’t use. Here is your quote….

    —————————-

    What I do love about right wing pro-Israel nationalists is that they are actually insulted when you don’t address their own agenda in your writing.

    ——————————–

    I want you either to provide PROOF that all “right-wing pro-Israel nationalists” do all the nefarious things you claim, or to retract your claims. As a matter of fact, I have enountered “progressives” who are liars , cheats, dishonest and all the other epithets you have used against “right-wing pro-Israel nationalists. On the other hand, I know “progressives” who are honest, upright people. Again, either you provide PROOF that ALL “right-wing pro-Israel nationalists” have all the bad characteristics you mention or retract your ad hominem attacks.

  16. I want you either to provide PROOF that all “right-wing pro-Israel nationalists” do all the nefarious things you claim, or to retract your claims

    I seem to have hit a raw nerve. I didn’t say ALL right wing pro israel nationalists demand that I write according to their agenda. Such a statement would be absurd because many, if not most of them don’t even know I exist. I meant that most of those fitting that description who comment here at this blog at one time or another berate me for not writing about some Arab outrage or another and use this as evidence that I’m either an Arab lover or hater of my own people. Sorry for hitting that nerve & hope this clarifies my thinking.

    And let’s be clear about what an ad hominem attack IS. It’s not what you say it is. It’s an attack against a person rather than their argument. And what I wrote was not a personal attack therefore not ad hominem.

  17. Nadia is not an archeologist [sic].
    Her book is not about archeology [sic].
    Archeologists follow a specific methodology, Nadia doesn’t.
    Kapos…this web-site won’t save you.

    1. Emma is not an archaelogist (nor does she know how to spell) OR anthropologist. She doesn’t know jack about either field. Professor Abu El Haj (unless you know her personally, it is insulting to address her by her first name) follows an anthropological methodology. Emma doesn’t. Moron…your ignorance will not save you.

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