It’s not often one gets mentioned in The New Yorker as my blog did today, so I’m wearing a small intellectual glow. I used to read the magazine religiously back when I was a literature major in college and grad school. I read it from cover to cover. I can still remember vividly profiles by John McPhee and Pauline Kael’s remarkable film reviews. I’m trippin’.

Jane Kramer writes a long article, The Petition: Israel, Palestine, and a Tenure Battle at Barnard, about Nadia Abu El Haj’s ultimately successful battle for tenure at Barnard College. It profiles her anthropological research and the pro-Israel detractors who made her tenure process a cause celebre for the Israel-First crowd. Many of you know that I devoted considerable time, energy and words to this subject before she earned tenure. I thought a gross injustice was being perpetrated by the Campus Watch-Frontpagemagazine crowd and that the Barnard anthropologist deserved someone monitoring the campaign against her, which was what I did.

Kramer notes that this blog was one of the first to take up the cause, something of which I’m very proud:

Stern’s facts were wrong. Within a few months, she was exposed in the progressive Zionist blog Tikun Olam and in the Jewish press–most notably in the Jewish Week…

She goes on to credit Larry Cohler-Esses’ work there in unmasking Stern’s vilification and falsehoods. I’m also proud of the teamwork between myself and Cohler-Esses which advanced this story, though I want to make clear that Larry did all his own research and drew his own conclusions. Hell, he even spent 10 days wading through Facts on the Ground for which he deserves a medal since it is a VERY DENSE text. Even I didn’t do that.

Kramer doesn’t note the critical role played by Jesse Walker of Reason Magazine. While I was already interested in Abu El Haj’s battle, Jesse first brought to my attention the deliberate misquotations of the academic’s work by her opponents. This in turn opened up the subject in a way it might not have otherwise done. Jesse published his research in his publication.

The New Yorker story is interesting not just for its recap of the tenure battle, but because the author puts that battle in the context of a furious tug of war taking place in higher education over academic freedom and the right of third party advocacy groups to intervene in the tenure process and inject political considerations into scholarly discourse.

I never thought of this analogy until just now, but it appears to me that what Campus Watch and Paula Stern did was akin to the Terry Schiavo circus. In the latter case, a group of religious fanatics with a vested interest attempted to intervene in both a personal family tragedy and a medical process out of which they should’ve kept their noses. Their effort demeaned the family involved and dragged the field of medicine into a political arena in which it had no business being. I’d argue that the Schiavo fiasco contributed significantly to the Republican defeat in the 2006 elections.

The Abu El Haj detractors have paid no such price. In fact, they’ve gone on to new targets of opportunity in their propaganda battle on behalf of Israel. But articles like Kramer’s and efforts like mine help shine a light on such smearmongering so that it may be discredited even more firmly the next time it rears its ugly head.

I thought one particular section of Kramer’s essay was particularly evocative and helpful in understanding the political motivations of Abu El Haj’s opponents. Here she quotes Jonathan Boyarin, an Orthodox Jewish academic and friend of the Barnard professor:

Sometimes, I think the Jews who attack Nadia are really grasping at the idea that Israel is THE standard of Jewish life and faith–so, for them, defending Israel, even against scholarly debate, becomes the way to express Jewishness. I haven’t advanced much in my understanding of this kind of anxiety. But I know that if you’re looking for a reasoned, progressive scholar who’s on the same side as those guys, you’re not going to find him.

This is an important epiphany. The mission of Campus Watch and Paula Stern has everything to do with Jewish identity (and a narrowly defined identity at that) and little or nothing to do with academics. That is why their efforts should be derided and disqualified by the academy.

Pipes reinforces the intolerance and extremism of his approach in this passage:

…I very much dispute the notion that academics cannot function freely and be accountable at the same time. It doesn’t come free, this very special set of privileges they have, and there’s nothing to be said for the abstracted position that they can disdain the public, the students, and only engage with each other. They are financed by the public and are thus accountable in some way to the public. They say, No, only we can judge and evaluate each other’s work. Well, that’s not how things work in this country.

This is a profoundly important distillation of Pipes’ anti-intellectual philosophy. The academy is not to be trusted with decisions affecting itself. The public and its representatives like Pipes are the best judges of what is best for the academy since they take into account not just academic needs, but society at large’s needs. I can’t think of a much more pernicious approach, one that is more inimical to the very foundations of scholarly inquiry and academic freedom, than this.

While I tend to think that Kramer bent over backwards to portray Abu El Haj in the most favorable light possible, in this passage she finds a weakness in the latter’s work which bothered me during my entire time writing about this. Kramer notes:

…a tendency to reduce the complexities of Zionism to colonial terms…

I think this idea deserved amplification because it does deeply inform Facts on the Ground and renders it a less persuasive critique than it might otherwise have been. There is too much dismissive ideological grandstanding and speech that trumpets an academic anti-colonial approach that detracts rather than amplifies.

There were a few moments in reading the New Yorker piece when I thought the author stretched too far in portraying Abu El Haj as a mainstream academic figure:

[Virginia] Dominguez [Abu El Haj's dissertation advisor] says that Facts on the Ground was received by Israeli social scientists “not as a scathing critique but as right in line with what they were doing there.”

In fact, I have read no Israeli social scientists who defended Abu El Haj’s work. I’m not saying there aren’t any since I don’t read Israeli academic publications. I AM saying that there were many Israeli academics, especially archaeologists, who reacted with high moral dudgeon to her attacks on them. Again, I’m not saying their views were correct or justified. But I believe we should call a spade a spade and not ignore the academic uproar her work caused in certain Israeli circles, as both Kramer and Dominguez seem to do. [NOTE: Ms. Kramer informs me that the Columbia Spectator does feature comments by Israeli academics who support Abu El Haj's work, so I stand corrected on that score.]

A tidbit: those of you who follow the Jewish right will enjoy Charles Jacob’s (founder of the David Project) description of himself as a “classic liberal.”

I wish there had been a little more in Kramer’s article about the mysterious “Hugh Fitzgerald” who wrote the Frontpagemagzine-Campus Watch article which helped fuel the tenure battle.  Personally, I don’t believe that Fitzgerald is a real person. I would love for Kramer to have gone back to that original story and researched its origins further, including Fitzgerald’s real identity.  [NOTE: Ms. Kramer informs me that she made a considerable effort to do just that and was ultimately unsuccessful.]

A note about the New Yorker cartoon above: I thought it was an interesting and powerful evocation of the conflict. It portrays the lone academic standing on the steps of Columbia’s Low Library (precisely where the Alma Mater statue normally sits), battling against political forces outside herself and the campus. In that sense it conveys well some of the issues involved. But it also misses something important. While Abu El Haj may see herself as purely an academic and scholar, in her work she does take a political position. She is engaged in the debate though perhaps in a more nuanced way than Pipes or Stern. If she was not engaged, then she would have used a different set of rhetorical tropes to describe Israeli archaeological practice than she did. Again, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with her being engaged in this way. But I think that everyone needs to put all their cards on the table and in this battle none of the parties have fully done so, though Abu El Haj has done so much more transparently than her enemies.

Thanks to Seth Flaxman and Dan Sieradski for almost simulateneously notifying me about my 20 seconds of New Yorker fame.

Nadia Abu El-Haj (Barnard College)

The long, arduous journey of Nadia Abu El-Haj, Barnard professor of anthropology, to tenure is finally over. The Columbia administration has approved Barnard’s recommendation and she will become tenured faculty on approval of both institutions’ boards of trustees. Thanks to Sol Salbe for noting the JTA report on this from earlier today. However, a Jewish journalist friend of mine has pointed out a typical JTA error in the copy for the story:

El-Haj is the author of “Facts on the Ground,” a book that attacks the Israeli archaeological establishment for fabricating material used to legitimize Israeli policies.

My friend called this sentence:

a complete and utter distortion of the book, which, of course, the journalist, whoever he/she might be, has not read. What he/she has read is Paula Stern’s petition or Gabrielle Berkner’s New York Sun story. On deadline, people [just] WRITE STUFF. It’s a pity The Sun gets to set the template.

It would have been much more precise to say that Abu El Haj’s book attacks the Israeli archaeological establishment for fabricating ideas used to legitimate Israel’s national identity. She has never accused Israeli archaeologists of fabricating materials or evidence.

I should add that even the notorious neocon NY Sun got the story basically right this time (though of course they refused to include an interview with anyone defending Abu El Haj’s views). They call her:

A Barnard College professor who argues in her scholarly work that archeological evidence has been manipulated to justify the existence of a modern Jewish state…

In the book, Ms. Abu El-Haj, who is a Palestinian Arab, writes that Israeli archaeologists use their research to further an origin myth about the homeland of the Jewish people.

There are two issues here. First, the academic issue: Columbia, in granting her tenure has reaffirmed its commitment to considering tenure and advancement decisions based on a scholar’s academic record and free from political interference. In this regard, the decision arrived at was the only one Columbia could’ve made if it wanted its academic reputation to be intact.

Second, is the political issue. Campus Watch, Frontpagemagazine, the David Project and their allies among Barnard alumni who campaigned against Abu El-Haj have lost this round. I say round because to them this clearly is a never-ending ideological war. No doubt they will be back when the Barnard professor publishes her next research into Jewish genetics and genealogy. No doubt they will be trolling for the next Abu El Haj to whom they can take an ax. But the good news is that they have been stopped here. Academia finally said to them: here and no farther.

JTA describes Columbia’s statement:

[It] said El-Haj had passed the college’s “rigorous” tenure process and expressed confidence in her ability to contribute to scholarship and learning at Barnard.

“Tenure, together with the norms of academic freedom that pertain to all faculty, gives scholars the liberty to advance ideas, regardless of their political impact, so that their work may be openly debated and play a critical role in shaping knowledge in the scholar’s academic field,” the statement said.

There will be a temptation by the Foxmans of the Jewish world to pile on Columbia. I hope they resist the inclination. But if they don’t we will be there to call them for their cynical manipulations of issues like academic freedom and anti-Semitism.

It’s both instructive and entertaining to read Paula Stern’s delusional ramblings on the defeat of her campaign against the Barnard anthropologist. Poor Nadia is likened to those who have hung nooses and swastikas lately on the doors of other Columbia professors:

This is a warning to Jewish students at Barnard and Columbia – you will now have one more professor to avoid, one more purveyor of hate in your ranks. Already the lowest forms of life are crawling out amid the ivy. A swastika was painted on a door of a Jewish professor at Columbia, a noose on the door of a black professor, more swastikas in other places – think you that there is no connection?

Barnard president Judith Shapiro comes in for her share of opprobrium:

Shapiro can have little doubt that many will remember her for the seeds she planted long after she is gone from Barnard. These are the seeds of hatred and racism.

Here Stern acknowledges that she took a Columbia course from one of the great Zionist teachers of the 20th century:

While at Columbia, I took an amazing class, the History of Zionism, with Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg. It was an enlightening class by a brilliant man. He put forth the idea that you should not fight a battle unless you know you can win. To lose, he told us, is to damage yourself more. Better not to fight at all.

I disagreed then, and I disagree now. You fight evil. You fight injustice. Even knowing you will likely lose – you fight it so that the next time, the fight will be easier and perhaps in the next battle, those who fought against evil will triumph.

She of course distorts Hertzberg’s views as she has distorted Abu El Haj’s. Hertzberg was one of the great fighters against evil and injustice. In fact, he was one of the most principled and vociferous Zionist doves regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict precisely because he understood the injustice done to Palestinians in creating the Jewish state. He would doubtless stand aghast at the views and behavior of his former student, if not disown her.

Here Stern lumps together those of us who supported Abu El Haj’s tenure bid with the big bad anti-Semit’n:

The anti-Semites think they have won – and they are painting their glory across the campus with swastikas. This too is a sign that Columbia has lost its way.

Should anyone need proof that Stern has taken leave of her senses, read this:

Though our hearts are heavy, victory goes to those who fought a good fight, a clean fight, an honest one.

Sure, if you leave out the lies, distortions and fabrications it was one helluva good, clean, honest fight.

Here is more of Stern’s ‘clean, honest’ lies:

As for El Haj, let her be warned – the fight will continue to be waged. She can deny Israel’s right to exist all that she wishes and attempt to rewrite Israel’s history

Stern never provided a single example during her entire campaign of Abu El Haj “denying Israel’s right to exist.”

Finally, I would add that for those who disagree with Abu El Haj in a principled way there is the time-honored tradition of academic debate in the world of ideas. I urge them to follow her work; critique it; argue with it; don’t accept it at face value. But do so while remaining true to the standards of evidence and debate. Read her work. Quote it properly. Marshal counter-evidence. Publicize your findings. But do not smear; do not lie; do not use intellectual short cuts.

There will no doubt be calls to boycott Columbia’s fundraising program by alumni. I urge Columbia alumni (like myself) to contribute to Columbia and Barnard even more than you have in the past. Show the Daniel Pipes, Paula Sterns and Diana Muirs of the world that for every chnyuk who boycotts Columbia another one of us will step forward to take their place.

Apparently, the pro-Israel right continues the battle against Barnard College professor Nadia Abu El-Haj despite the fact that their cause is likely lost. As I’ve written often in the past here a group of right-wing Jewish groups including Campus Watch, Frontpagemagazine and “intellectuals” like Shulamit Reinharz have taken up the cudgels against Abu El-Haj, who is up for tenure this year. Both Jesse Walker at Reason Magazine and I have uncovered the unsavory nature of the campaign including fabricated quotations from Abu El-Haj’s work, reviewers hiding their affiliations with anti-Abu El-Haj groups, etc.

One of the disturbing aspects of this fight is how the right co-opts, often through subterfuge, respectable media outlets to do their bidding. So the Jewish Telegraphic Agency published a report virtually parroting the falsehoods spread about the Barnard professor without interviewing anyone to represent the academic’s perspective on this battle.

The Journal of Near Eastern Studies published a highly negative review by Alexander Joffe, who continues to insist–despite the fact that the publication’s editor has written to me that this was material–that his role as director of Campus Watch when the review was published need not have been disclosed either to the editors or within the review itself.

History New Network published a “review” of Facts on the Ground by Diana Muir, one of the early leaders of the anti Abu El Haj campaign. In the review, Muir did not disclose any of her political affiliations, which would’ve allowed HNN readers to take account of her possible prejudices in this matter. I disclosed this to an HNN editor weeks ago and his way of dealing with the issue was to link to two blog posts of mine about the Abu El-Haj smear campaign.

Now I see that HNN has published yet another piece of garbage against Abu El-Haj repeating virtually the same charges peddled earlier by Joffe, Muir, and “Hugh Fitzgerald” (at Campus Watch and Frontpagemagazine). Again, HNN displayed links to my own posts as if that somehow absolves them of any responsibility for the regurgitated lies peddled by this new reviewer. This is the height of editorial irresponsibility.

There are some authors I respect who publish at HNN like Mark LeVine. So I can’t say the entire site is characterized by this intellectual narischkeit. But there is a serious lack of editorial judgment afflicting HNN, and its readers should know that trusting the bona fides of its writers is a dubious proposition.

The new smear, Archeology and the Propaganda War Against Israel, is by one Richard L. Cravatts, listed as:

director of Boston University’s Program in Book and Magazine Publishing at the Center for Professional Education

If you’re like me you’re wondering where his credentials as a historian (presumably the subject of HNN), archaeologist (the subject of Abu El-Haj’s book) or anthropologist (Abu El-Haj’s field) are. Gone missing I guess. But that doesn’t stop Cravatts from writing on subjects far and wide about which he has dubious credentials:

[he] writes frequently on terrorism, higher education, politics, culture, law, marketing, and housing, and is currently writing a book about the world-wide assault on Israel taking place on college campuses.

That last phrase is a dead giveaway for a Campus Watch/Frontpagemagazine groupie–and whadayaknow, guess where Cravatts writes? Almost entirely in right-wing publications: Frontpagemagazine, American Thinker, Intellectual Conservative, Free Republic, the right-wing Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and World Sentinel (affiliated with Town Hall). HNN doesn’t tell you any of that in his bio. In fact, I had to search far and wide on the web to discover that he earned his PhD in English from the University of Louisiana. For some reason, he omits this from his online bios probably because it would reveal he has no particular expertise in any of the fields listed above and has done no original research whatsoever in publishing this piece.

And what does Cravatts bring that is new to this discussion that would merit publishing his article? Nothing. The same old lies claiming that Abu El Haj doesn’t know Hebrew (she does), that she denies a link between ancient Israel and the Jewish people (she doesn’t), etc. And you’ll find the same fabricated quotation from Abu El Haj’s work which Jesse Walker and I debunked weeks ago. Here’s Cravatt’s review:

…“the modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins” is a “pure political fabrication…”

Of course, Abu El-Haj actually wrote quite the opposite:

“…the modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins is not understood as *pure* political fabrication.”

Cravatts also disingenuously quotes from archaeologist Ralph Harrington without noting that while Harrington is critical of aspects of Abu El-Haj’s work, he is also critical of the campaign against her and and does not endorse the view that she should be denied tenure. I’m afraid this is just more recycled garbage.

To paraphrase the original fighter against intellectual McCarthyism–Joseph Welch: Have you no shame HNN? At long last, have you no shame?

Sam Hardy has done a tremendous job of recapitulating all the arguments and evidence mustered on both sides of the argument. Anyone interested in this matter should read his meticulous work.

UPDATE: I wrote to Rick Shenkman, HNN editor, about this matter and he was most gracious. He took down the Cravatts piece until the author can back up his charges with facts. I think that shows a certain amount of class and I give him credit for that. So read what I wrote above in the light of this update.

It’s a might strange world, that’s for sure. A hat tip to Joachim Martillo for pointing me to this post from Ethan Stanislawski’s blog about Peretz. Stanislawski is the son of Columbia Jewish historian Michael Stanislawski, who once had a close relationship with Marty Peretz. What is delicious is that the younger Stanislawski chronicles the gradual alienation that developed between Peretz and his father, a good deal of which revolved around the issue of Ahmadinejad’s canceleed speech at Columbia last year and his rescheduled speech of last week.

He begins with a Peretz rant against Columbia in The Spine. To read Marty Peretz is to watch a grown man make an utter fool of himself. And Peretz does it virtually every time he opens his mouth, especially if he’s talking about Israel. Here are some of the non sequiturs, howlers, distortions, lies, myths and just plain errors which both Stanislawski and I note in his post:

Columbia is “reeling,” reads the headline in Wednesday’s New York Times. Columbia is the Sulzbergers’s university, and they had traditionally put a wordy buffer between what really happened at the institution and their paper’s readers. Of course, that’s virtually impossible to do these days.

Note the notion that the Sulzberger family has an ownership stake in Columbia, making it of course responsible for all the university’s sins in Peretz’s eyes.

…It is not the Times that has excelled in reportage on Columbia during the past few tempestuous years. It is the Sun which has taken on that burden — and, with some pleasure, I would think, since the university is a model of what the upstart daily thinks of as paradigmatic of the cowardice of liberal institutions in general. Or worse, the pusillanimity of liberal institutions when their very liberalism is being undermined from within.

This is Peretz hailing the journalistic courage of one of the scummiest neocon rags in the nation, the New York Sun. What Peretz admires is the Sun’s yellow journalistic pursuit of the Arab studies professors at Columbia; and the Sun’s obssession with, and distortion of the the anti-Semitism meme. You’ll note that Marty Peretz, proud possessor of one of the finest liberal arts educations money could buy from Harvard and later a professor at that august institution derides Columbia, and by extension all liberal arts institutions with the phrase “the cowardice of liberal institutions in general.” Methinks he bites the hand that fed him so well for so long.

Rashid Khalidi has not been heard from on the A’jad matter. He has bigger fish to fry: making sure that…the Barnard tenure aspirant, Nadia Abu El-Haj, who believes that archeology proves there were never any Hebrews in the Holy Land, also is tenured. My guess is that, this time, the gang loses.

I’ve read many distortions of Abu El-Haj’s scholarly oeuvre but I don’t think any quite match Peretz’s for sheer outrageous audacity. She doesn’t even come close to believing “there were never any Hebrews in the Holy Land.” But this is certainly characteristic of the academic character assassination launched by Campus Watch, Shulamit Reinharz, Alexander Joffe (formerly of Campus Watch and currently with the David Project), Paula Stern and others. Their motto seems to be there is no lie too great for the purpose of stopping Abu El Haj from getting tenure.

The notion that Abu El Haj is Khalidi’s academic pawn in an Arab campus power grab is noxious and insulting. Also ludicrous is the notion that Peretz predicts that Massad and Abu El Haj will not get tenure when Lee Bollinger, who he spends the entire post insulting, is the one who will make the final decision in the matter.

…It is not only Columbia that is reeling. It is Bollinger himself. The faculty see this; the students certainly see this; and the trustees who typically will give a president enough rope to hang himself see that he has. My conclusion is that Bollinger is on his way out. The mandate of heaven has deserted him. He has no authority, least of all moral authority.

Note Peretz’s prediction of Bollinger’s imminent demise. Of course, he presents no facts to support his claim. In his grandiosity, Peretz need only want the event to happen for that to make it the truth. Also, note how the Spined One alludes to Bollinger as an academic emporer (“the mandate of heaven…”), more scenery-chewing overstatement on the writer’s part.

I also have a speculation about why the earnest protestations of Jewish students and others who were pro-Israel never could touch Bollinger about their terrible experiences in classes in the Middle East: he himself is Jewish, maybe an ambivalent Jew, maybe a frightened Jew, but a Jew nonetheless.

Stanislawski points out Peretz’s gaffe in that Bollinger is NOT Jewish. Too bad Ethan had to spoil the party. Marty was having such a good time spinning his fantasy about Bollinger not being able to feel the pain of those poor pro-Israel students because he himself was allegedly Jewish.

John Coatsworth, whom Bollinger lured from Harvard…What can one say about Coatsworth without having oneself strung up as a McCarthyite? Let’s leave it at this: at least since graduate school at the University of Wisconsin he has been extremely radical.

I don’t know much about John Coatsworth’s acaemic background. He is currently the dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and issued the Ahmadinejad invitation. But to think that any dean of any major school at any major national university could achieve such a position by being “extremely radical” strains credulity. And knowing it is Peretz making such a claim automatically dismisses the charge.

Richard Bulliet is the Columbia historian who negotiated with the Iranians for their president’s visit…Bulliet was a supporter of the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Again, I don’t know much about Bulliet as a historian. But to claim he “was a supporter of the 1979 Iranian revolution” without supplying any evidence in support of the charge also strains credulity.

In the following passage Peretz gratuitously insults Michael Stanislawski, calling him Bollinger’s “court Jew,” and wonders what the Jewish historian thinks of his alleged patron, Bollinger inviting Ahmadinejad to campus:

I wondered what Stanislavski made of Bollinger’s canceling A’jad last year, giving permission for his speaking this year…There is in Jewish history the figure of the court-Jew. This Jew did financial and commercial business for the prince. Sometimes he was a medical doctor and cared for the prince and his family. He also tried to intercede for the Jews when trouble was coming their way. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he failed. I guess Michael failed. But Jews no longer need court-Jews, and they haven’t for at least a century. It must be sad trying to fill a function that has been obsolete for so long.

Ethan Stanislawski notes in his blog post that Peretz spells his father’s name wrong. Gee, you’d think that the least you could do for an old friend when you’re insulting him is spell his name right.

What surprises me is that Stanislawski and Peretz could ever have been friends–though I suppose that people can change radically over the course of time & someone you loved or respected when you were young can turn into something else entirely when you’re older. That’s certainly true of Peretz though I liked him neither when he was younger nor older.

What Marty Peretz doesn’t realize is that the less he says or writes the better off he is. The more drivel flows from his mouth or pen the more lies, distortions and outrageous myths flow along with them. But Marty likes the sound of his own voice too much and so makes a fool of himself serially.

Scott Jaschik interviewed Shulamit Reinharz about her Jewish Advocate column on Nadia Abu El Haj, which I wrote about here. He elicited further damning opinions from the neocon spouse of Brandeis president, Yehuda Reinharz. In her column, she states she declined to attend her Barnard reunion for the strange reason that no one at Barnard would tell her whether or not Abu El Haj had been granted tenure. She adds another odd statement–that she could not find anywhere Abu El Haj’s birthplace:

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.

One cannot help wondering what the point of all this is. Thankfully, Jaschik has smoked out her prejudices for the world to see:

In an interview, Reinharz said that this was a legitimate question to ask [about Abu El Haj's birthplace]. “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 “people who call themselves Palestinian garner sympathy for the Palestinian cause, and this is a book that is an attack 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.

You see, if you’re a scholar and call yourself Palestinian anything you write on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is immediately suspect. Reinharz neglects to say whether or not Jewish scholars should be similarly suspect though since she is one I’d guess her answer would be an emphatic No. In addition, calling oneself “Palestinian” seems to be a propganda tactic rather than a legitimate expression of ethnic identity for Reinharz.

It’s also telling that she raises the hackneyed old “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” canard used by Israeli nationalists and those as far to the right as Kahanists. One of my readers reveals that Reinharz was a leader of the David Project, a conservative Jewish group which attacks alleged Islamism on campus and in society.

The topping on the cake for this interview is this closing quotation:

“It’s not racism, it’s curiosity,” she said.

So questioning a scholar’s scholarship based on their ethnicity is not racism, but rather mere intellectual curiousity. Makes sense to me…Thankfully, the president of the Middle East Studies Association disagrees:

But others see this as the latest sign of how bitter the debates have become.

[Zachary] Lockman of NYU, called the comments “slimy” and said “I find it incredibly offensive to question someone’s place of birth or nationality.” Noting that he is Jewish, Lockman said it was inconceivable that a professor would publish a column critiquing another professor’s scholarship and devote a paragraph to wondering about what that professor meant about being Jewish. “People would acknowledge that as outrageous,” he said.

“Her origin is irrelevant to her scholarship,” Lockman said. “It’s clear people are pulling out all the stops.”

Personally, I think Reinharz is out of her academic element. She’s a women’s studies professor. Yet all of a sudden she’s expert enough in the fields of archaeology and anthropology, which are Abu El Haj’s specialties in her book, to render unbiased judgment.

All this raises an interesting question. Now that the wife of Brandeis’ president has weighed in on another school’s internal tenure decisions can we expect the wife of Barnard’s president (if he’s an academic) to intervene in Brandeis’ tenure process? Just where does this end? There’s a reason DePaul should’ve told Alan Dershowitz to butt out of the Finkelstein tenure decision–because if you don’t, pretty soon you’ll have national campaigns by academics and outsiders regarding ANY unpopular or controversial scholar up for tenure. If we think Congress can’t govern due to intense partisanship wait till we see what the tenure field could turn into. There could be blood in the halls of academe–and only some of it figurative.

The editor of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies (JNES), Wadad Kadi, wrote to me today expressing concern with the circumstances of Alexander Joffe’s 2005 JNES review of Facts on the Ground. I’m gratified that Dr. Kadi understands both the issue of Joffe’s potential conflict and is concerned by the misuse of the Joffe review in the campaign against Abu El Haj’s tenure process:

As Editor of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies (JNES), I am deeply disturbed to learn that Alexander Joffe’s review of Nadia Abu El Haj’s book “Facts on the Ground”…could have been written when he was in a position that creates a conflict of interest, and that his review could have had an effect on her academic appointment. At that time, the editor of JNES was my predecessor…who, I am certain, had no idea about the conflict of interest you point out in your message. I know for a fact that a number of times scholars to whom he offered a book for review wrote back declining because of a real conflict of interest or what they thought might be perceived as a conflict of interest (being a personal friend, having had a course from a person, having been on a particular dig, having seen a draft of a chapter, etc.); Joffe made no such comment, as scholars of unimpeachable integrity normally do.

You are right: it is difficult for editors to be aware of all conflicts of interest, but they should be vigilant in order to avoid such unfortunate situations in the future.

Thanking you for attracting our attention to this very regrettable situation, I remain.

Shulamit Reinharz is one of the latest academics to exploit Joffe’s review for the purpose that Kadi decries as I posted here yesterday. This should put anyone on notice who does the same that the Journal itself has distanced itself from Joffe and this abuse of his review.

Further, at least one author has come forward to decry copyright violations at the Deny Nadia Abu El Haj Tenure website. Ralph Harrington, whose own review of Facts on the Ground was appropriated in its entirely without permission at the site, wrote to me referring to this statement at his own website:

It has come to my notice that my Israeli ‘bulldozer archaeology’ essay is featured on the website of the ‘Deny Abu El Haj Tenure Committee’. I would like to make it clear that I have not given permission for my essay to be included on this site, and that its presence there represents no endorsement whatsoever on my part of that site or of the campaign of which it is part.

It is very noticeable that those behind the ‘Deny Abu El Haj Tenure Committee’ have been careful to conceal their own identities, while taking Nadia Abu El Haj’s own name and registering it as the domain for a website dedicated to attacking and denigrating her. This strikes me as questionable behaviour, coming from people who claim to be standing up for academic integrity.

I couldn’t have said it any better myself. And this is from someone who wrote a review that was critical of the book and who has no vested interest in whether or not she receives tenure. By the way, his review is still at the anti Abu El Haj site despite his public notice that he disapproves of its display there. This is now a blatant copyright violation among other sins of this site.

Apparently, one academic is pleased her work is being used in the partisan political campaign to oust Abu El Haj. And she’s none to happy with yesterday’s critique of the Barnard alumni ‘hit-man’ website. If she reads this, she may want to retract the following portion of her comment:

Judging by how I was treated, I can only assume the website owners were as careful with others as they were with my article.

Wrong, Professor. Dead wrong.

People claiming to be Barnard-Columbia alumni have sunk to a new low in their campaign to deny Nadia Abu El Haj tenure. Last month, they created a website attacking Abu El Haj and urging people to sign Paula Stern’s scurrilous petition. Nothing new in people creating websites attacking others. But what is especially pernicious about this website (whose existence was reported to me by an indignant reader) is that its URL essentially appropriates Abu El Haj’s own name: nadiaabuelhaj.com. I find this shocking and my reader had this to say:

How ethical is it to take someone’s actual name and use it as the domain for a website attacking them? This strikes me as disgusting, verging on personal violation.

I think this site is a disgraceful, shabby exercise in cowardly intellectual terrorism.

“Intellectual terrorism.” I like the phrase. Sorry I didn’t think of it myself.

But stealing Abu El Haj’s name is par for the course for the campaigners against her. They have fabricated quotations from her work, mischaracterized her arguments and lied about her through their teeth. What would stop them from stealing their enemy’s own name to do a hatchet job on her? They probably think it’s a terribly clever thing to do.

The second most sleazy thing about this site is its complete anonymity. Again hear my reader:

Who is behind it? No names, affiliations or backgrounds are given. How can they be contacted? There is no e-mail or other address for this ‘campaign’.

Here is what the site owners say about themselves:

We are a committee of Barnard and Columbia graduates who have never stopped caring about our alma mater.

But don’t ask how to contact them because you can’t as my reader wrote. So why the secretiveness? What are these people afraid of? If they are a committee why can’t they name themselves? If there’s is a public campaign why are they incommunicado?

Does Ralph Harrington approve of his work endorsing the anti Abu El Haj campaign?

The third most sleazy thing they do is feature at their site in their entirety copyrighted articles written by authors from whom they have largely not received permission to reproduce their content. I could find only one article which specifically states they have the author’s permission to republish. I have written to several of the other authors making them aware that their material is featured at this site and asking whether they approved publication at a site which advocates denying Abu El Haj tenure. Have these people agreed, in effect, to lend their names to this campaign? Are these authors aware of the unsavory tactics of both this site and the entire anti-tenure campaign?

For example, does Sondra Rubenstein know that this site has appropriated her work and featured it under the banner “Deny Nadia Abu El Haj Tenure?” Does Ralph Harrington know they have done the same to him? I find it laughable that the website has a copyright notice when they so flagrantly flaunt copyright in appropriating the material of others. Do all the scholars quoted know they their words have been used to serve the machinations of an anonymous committee in its holy war against Abu El Haj?

No doubt, owners of the anti-Abu El Haj site may read this and alter their site accordingly. Personally, I hope they don’t. But I want others to see the site as it is now to confirm what I write here.

If this is all that the anti-Abu El Haj forces can muster then they are indeed a morally and intellectually discredited lot. They only make it that much easier for Columbia to finally approve Abu El Haj’s tenure application by their antics.

Recently, I waded into the Campus Watch campaign against Nadia Abu El-Haj, who is seeking tenure at Barnard College. Since 2005, pro-Israel academics, Campus Watch and Frontpagemagazine have been calling for her head. I was helped in my research into the Jewish neocon campaign by several academics who found the tactics of Abu El-Haj’s opponents to be odious. Scott MacEachern, in particular, made me aware that Alexander Joffe wrote the first bitterly negative academic review in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, which was published in 2005. MacEachern pointed out that at the time of publication Joffe was the director of Campus Watch. I asked in my blog why neither the Journal nor Joffe saw fit to mention this affiliation, which created a clear conflict of interest considering Campus Watch’s harsh, ideological campaign against her tenure.

Today, Joffe replied to my charges and apparently he’s oblivious to any ethical issue:

I wrote and submitted the review in question in 2003, and began working for MEF [Middle East Forum--a Daniel Pipes group related to Campus Watch] a year later. It appeared in the journal in 2005.

My assessment of the book has nothing whatsoever to do with politics and everything to do with scholarship. This should be evident to those who have actually read the review.

The issue is not institutional affiliation, identity, or demanding that editors change lines in pieces that have gone to press. it is the content and coherent of the critique.

So his answer is essentially, I wrote the review before working for Campus Watch, therefore I’m home free. The fact that he was working for Campus Watch WHEN it was first published doesn’t faze him in the least. And the fact that Campus Watch’s campaign against Abu El-Haj was anything but “scholarly” also doesn’t phase him. In his world, you can lead a bifurcated existence as director of an ideologically driven propaganda outfit while also being a dispassionate scholar.

I replied thus to this e mail:

You were intellectually & politically dishonest in not reporting yr affiliation to the publication & asking them to note it so that readers could put into context your vested interest in trashing her work.

And by the way, how did Campus Watch come to be interested in trashing her work to begin with? Through your own interest in her possibly? And who is the real Hugh Fitzgerald, whose hatchet job on Abu El Haj in Campus Watch & Frontpagemagazine published around the same time your review was published & while you were director?

And any time you ever write about any academic subject on which Campus Watch has campaigned (including attacks on Arab researchers) I will expect you to note your former affiliation and if you do not I will do my best to ensure it is noted for you. I will also circulate this information in the archaeology field among your peers who will have more opportunity than I to monitor your publications.

I didn’t expect Joffe would like reply and he didn’t disappoint:

Fortunately I do not have to satisfy your expectations in any sphere of endeavor, nor append my life history to everything that I write. Writing and analyses stand on their own merits, something which you evidently cannot comprehend– rather than on the presumed politics, identity or motives of the writer. Sadly, academia operates almost exclusively on your principles, and this is another reason I am glad to no longer be wasting my time in that area.

I have some sympathy for those who’ve left academia without fulfilling their ambitions as I’m one of those people myself. But to blame one’s failures or dissatisfaction on the alleged political machinations or vendettas of other scholars seems downright bitter and just plain sad. You’ll also note that Joffe condemns my allegedly poisoned political principles while denying that he has any such principles that might be relevant to what he writes on this subject.

And this, it seems to me, is precisely the subject of Abu El-Haj’s book: that archaeologists like Joffe do their work in a vacuum that ignores the political, national, and historical assumptions they bring to that work. And these assumptions often unconsciously inform their judgments and decisions. But I wouldn’t expect someone as obtuse as Joffe to begin to understand this.

I also note that Joffe did his doctoral disseration under William Dever who, it should be noted, is another one of the archaeologists to call for Barnard to deny Abu El Haj tenure. And where did Prof. Dever make his views known? In the pages of the neocon New York Sun, which served as a willing media conduit for the charges of Campus Watch. Do I detect a unifying theme here?

A commenter notes below that Joffe currently serves as director of research for the David Project, a Jewish ultra-Israel group which also monitors campuses for alleged Islamist hate. The David Project spearheaded the attack on Columbia Arab studies professors like Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi. The attacks against Abu El-Haj (who teaches at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College) fit in nicely with the David Project/Campus Watch MO.

Oh and here are some of the distinguished academic achievements of the professor accused of “junk scholarship” by one of her academic detractors (not an archaeologist of course):

She held fellowships at Harvard University’s Academy for International and Area Studies, the University of Pennsylvania Mellon Program, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. She is, in addition, a former Fulbright Fellow and a recipient of awards from the SSRC-McArthur Grant in International Peace and Security, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the National Endowment for the Humanities among others. Professor Abu El-Haj has lectured widely at the New York Academy of Sciences, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics (LSE), and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London