Comments on: Barnard Alumni Against Abu El-Haj Create Anonymous Smear Site

By: the greycat blog

the greycat blog — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:26:16 +0000

[...] I’ve been following the controversy around the work of Barnard College anthropology professor Nadia Abu El Haj for a while now, since becoming interested in her analysis of archaeological practice in Israel as presented in a number of periodical articles and her book Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001). In particular, I’m interested in her claims about the place of the bulldozer in Israeli archaeology, which I read in the context of the image of the bulldozer in the culture of the Middle East more generally. For more on this, see my essay ‘Bulldozer archaeology? Excavation, earthmoving and archaeological practice in Israel’ In a wider sense, Nadia Abu El Haj’s work has become a focus of hostility among those who claim that she sets out to disprove the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. I would not want to go that far, but I do think that an anti-Israeli bias suffuses and, I think, undermines her work. Some have argued that her work is so tendentious in its uses of evidence and polemical in its argument that she should be denied the tenure for which she is currently being considered by Barnard College (which is a part of Columbia University). This debate is, in my view, illegitimate: tenure is an internal academic process that cannot be subject to public influence. A petition does not lend credibility to an attempt to interfere that process, while the fact that some of those participating in the campaign are Barnard College graduates is neither here nor there. The fact that someone graduated from an educational institution in the past does not give them a say in the internal administrative and academic processes of that institution. They will be wanting a veto on the stationery budget next. Finally, to usurp somebody’s own personal name and use it as the domain name for a site attacking and denigrating her is simply despicable (particularly when at least some of the contents of such a site are in flagrant violation of copyright). [...]

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 18:48:16 +0000

President Shapiro counted Nadia Abu el Haj among her students at Bryn Mawr and has shepherded her appointment at Barnard and now her tenure consideration…

I’ve never heard of any university president “shepherding” any tenure appointment and it would be HIGHLY inappropriate to do so. If you have any real evidence that she has done anything out of the ordinary involving this case including showing undue favoritism toward Abu El Haj you should make it known instead of making unsubstantiated charges.

By: Robin

Robin — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 17:13:29 +0000

Actually, knowing that President Shapiro counted Nadia Abu el Haj among her students at Bryn Mawr and has shepherded her appointment at Barnard and now her tenure consideration is very relevant to understanding why this case did not just die years ago.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 03:55:55 +0000

I don’t know enough about El-Haj’s book to defend or attack it. Nor do I know enough about her tenure qualifications to argue she should or should not be denied tenure.

But the fact that her attackers would be so sleazy as to hide their names and attack her anonymously makes me sympathetic to El-Haj just on fairness grounds alone. The cowardly people who created that site even hide their registration of the domain name from WHOIS records. It’s an ugly, ugly thing to see, and reminds me of the anonymous notes left on my grandmother’s door by “neighbors and concerned citizens” in the 1930’s in Germany who wanted my bubbe to move to another neighborhood.

By: DSW

DSW — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 16:18:21 +0000

Dear Mr. Silverstein, thank your for putting your attention to this situation. Wars between peoples always involve disagreements over history, over ‘heritage,’ real, claimed, and invented. This whole case just goes to show us that ideas matter. As one not personally implicated in the Israel-Palestine conflict, the problem I have with Sondra Rubenstein’s position (which I take to be articulated in her book review Denial of Heritage) is this. Dr. Rubenstein criticizes Dr. Abu el-Haj for shoddy scholarship but mostly for sins of omission. According to Dr. Rubenstein, Abu el-Haj purposefully neglects the overall history, in which there have been episodes of Hebrew place names being overwritten by Arab ones, many of which survive into the present day. And that there have been episodes of irresponsible clearance of artifact-rich sites on the part of Arabs, also. Basically, she spends much of the article saying, Well, the Arabs did all that same stuff, too, rather than actually rebut the scholarly findings of Dr. Abu el-Haj. And in Dr. Rubenstein’s playbook, that makes Dr. Abu el-Haj a clear partisan whose scholarship is not to be trusted, much less anointed with the prestigious and generous support of tenured professorship. Okay, fine. But if those sins of omission are the indicator of politicization on the part of Dr. Abu el-Haj, then what does Dr. Rubenstein’s reported residence in an Israeli settlement suggest about her political motives? If both sides have been guilty of displacing each other over the centuries, if both sides bear the same wounds, the same traumatic memories, and the same shame, would not the wise and peace-loving thing to do be to cease the displacements going on right now? I can only guess that Dr. Rubenstein does not think so.

By: amir

amir — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 10:34:40 +0000

Yes you are correct. They switched it from one link, but left it at the other. I’m going to stop “huffing and puffing now.” Apparently I didn’t make my point clear. It was not my intention to defend the anti Abu el-Haj site or to condemn you for using material from Haaretz but merely to point out the irony that you hold others to a standard that you yourself don’t adhere to. I won’t be making any more comments on this subject.

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:20:44 +0000

Amir: No less than Ralph Harrington himself just wrote to me to tell me that his article is still posted at the anti-Abu El Haj website. And I’ve confirmed this. You shouldn’t be so quick to assume you are right and I am wrong in such matters. The owner of the site merely changed a single link at the site to Harrington’s article so that it now links to Harrington’s site. But the owner neglected to remove the Harrington article itself fr. their site so the copyright violation continues unabated.

By: amir

amir — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 04:42:20 +0000

I just think it’s ironic.

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 00:13:20 +0000

The anti Abu el Haj site (with which i have no connection) replaced the reproduction of Dr. Harrington’s work on their site with a link to his site a long time ago.

That’s simply not true. It was only removed (UPDATE: Dr. Harrington notifies me that his article continues to be posted at the site) after I wrote my post noting his objection & my post was not written “a long time ago,” davke l’hefech. And he objects to them linking to it as well, though their doing so isn’t a copyright violation.

You’re being entirely disingenuous in yr criticism of my treatment of Haaretz material. If it were any other site but my own & you were not having a dispute w. me you wouldn’t give it half a thought. And if you really care about the issue I again invite you to ask the editors to review my site to determine whether they object to my use of their site. In fact, I think I’ll write to the editor & ask what their policy about blogging is. I do wish you’d stop yr huffing & puffing about copyright…it’s so transparent. You’ve been commenting here for ages. Did it start bothering you all of a sudden?

By: amir

amir — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:39:09 +0000

If you want to use material from Haaretz then you should read THEIR site rules. YOUR site rules are irrelevant. The anti Abu el Haj site (with which i have no connection) replaced the reproduction of Dr. Harrington’s work on their site with a link to his site a long time ago. Providing a link to someone elses site is certainly legitimate.