Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Elder of ZiyonFrom the Columbia Spectator:
The Trouble With Tenure
By Chris Kulawik
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 18, 2007
As a generation of controversial Columbia academics trudge toward tenure, get ready for a fight. Normally a mechanism to protect and embolden the research of legitimate scholars, it can and will be abused by “scholars” who, without such protection, already masquerade punditry and politics as scholarship. Concerned students and alumni cannot allow these polemicists a free pass.
For those who missed Spectator’s sparse coverage of the brewing controversy, Nadia Abu El-Haj, an anthropology professor of Palestinian descent, published a controversial book called Facts on the Ground. Critics reject Abu El-Haj’s contentious hypothesis that ancient Israelites did not live in what is today Israel. They argue that her work is misleading, if not unscholarly and slanderous. They posit three criticisms of Abu El-Haj, all worthy of consideration.
First, concerned alumni argue, Abu El-Haj is not an archeologist. Rather, Abu El-Haj studied in the Bryn Mawr anthropology department with Barnard President Judith Shapiro. For a scholar with a limited professional background in the subject, she is not in a position to make many of the claims she does. Second, many respected scholars passionately disagree with her findings. Weighing in on the subject, the New York Times cites fellow faculty member, Alan F. Segal, a professor of religion and Jewish studies at Barnard, who opines, “There is every reason in the world to want her to have tenure, and only one reason against it—her work.”
To be fair, Abu El-Haj has her share of supporters, including many in her notoriously like-minded discipline. No doubt talented individuals in their own right, they are anything but objective and impartial. Finally, critics take issue with Abu El-Haj’s postmodernist and unabashedly relativist approach. Dr. Candace de Russy, a member of the SUNY Board of Trustees, writes online,
“In her introduction, El-Haj explains that she works by ‘rejecting a positivist commitment to scientific method,’ writing, instead, within a scholarly tradition of ‘post structuralism, philosophical critiques of foundationalism, Marxism, and critical theory and [...] in response to specific postcolonial political movements.’”
Such abstraction in a discipline as evidentially and methodologically oriented as archeology is inherently counterintuitive. I too am not an archeologist, but with just a rudimentary knowledge of the field, it appears that one of two things must be true: either Abu El-Haj stumbled upon one of the greatest findings of the young millennium, or she practices faulty scholarship. Consensus and common sense seems to lean toward the latter. Still, a greater, far more contentious fight looms. Assistant professor Joseph Massad, noted anti-Israel polemicist, lumbers toward tenure and a place in Columbia’s 20-year plan.
Massad, some will argue to great effect, has yet to produce a piece of scholarship not loaded with anti-Israel and anti-Zionist rhetoric. Much of his scholarly work, equally at home on an op-ed page as his classroom, must be read to be believed. Once charged with classroom intimidation and violations of academic freedom, Massad has emerged as the poster boy for an increasingly political and activist Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures. To many, myself included, the thought of Joseph Massad as a facet of Columbia life for the next several decades is a frightening and wholly untenable proposition. There is no place within the academic establishment for thinly-veiled demagoguery. Individual departments or tenure committees must recognize this and act accordingly. To abandon their responsibilities is to commit a great disservice to the University.
To circumvent the inevitable criticism, let’s clarify: this is not a call to discriminate against unpopular ideas, but poor scholarship. Consider for the sake of this rejoinder the life and work of Edward Said. For all the rock-throwing and pro-Palestine sentiment, the late Columbian was a brilliant scholar who made significant contributions to not only his discipline, but academia and society at large. Agree with him or not, he was, unequivocally, one of the great minds of the 20th century. There’s no denying that a scholar of Said’s stature deserved tenure. Unfortunately, Massad is no Said. If it were simply a matter of denying tenure to professors with different political beliefs than my own, the ivory tower would be a pretty lonely place.
For all the gray area, convoluted processes, and controversy, there’s no way for Columbia to avoid the looming tenure battles—try as it might. Instead, the Columbia community must assert its right to secure objective, transparent, and academic proceedings. We must remember that tenure is both a reward and honor not to be taken—or given—lightly and without merit.
Chris Kulawik is a Columbia College senior majoring in political science.
September 16th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I can’t help but notice that, for all of the supposed “vitriol” my posts here contained, not one of those who are defending Abourezk has been able to find anything that I have written about him or his sources that is incorrect.
It is also a bit humorous to see that somehow the all-powerful Israel Lobby, of which I seem to be a part, manages to not only let books like Walt/Mearsheimer’s and Jimmy Carter’s to be published, but also allows them to be best sellers. We are so sloppy that we even allow a forum such as this to exist, where people openly defend a person - who is on video supporting terrorists - as a purveyor of truth and a great person to review a book that blames all of America’s problems on a small cabal of Zionists.
We Lobbyists must be slipping badly!
September 16th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Elder, you say that Abourezk is on video supporting terrorists. How typical. Your arguments lack merit so you resort to smear tactics. Moreover, who is really guilty of supporting terrorists? The supporters of Israeli ethnic cleansing or those who oppose it? Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
September 16th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Why did seven well equipped Arab armies attempt to destroy the poorly armed and newly founded ‘Jewish State’?
The baseless myth, of how the Arab armies wanted to destroy the ‘Jewish State’, has been propagated in all sectors of the Israeli society, especially in its school system, military boot camps, and media. As it will be proven below, this myth was deemed necessary by most Zionists to legitimize their continued USURPATION of the Palestinian people’s political, civil, and economic rights.....
September 17th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Gordon, not only did I say that Mr. Abourezk supports terrorists, I quoted the transcript and gave the URL of the video where he calls Hamas “resistance fighters” rather than the far more accurate “terrorists.”
If quoting Mr. Abourezk and inviting people to watch the video that he made for Hezbollah TV is considered a “smear tactic,” then I must be guilty.
Atheo, you are correct in that the Arab armies in 1948 were poorly organized with the exception of the Transjordanian Arab Legion. That has no bearing whatsoever on the Arab desire to utterly destroy Israel, which is incontrovertible.
But if you doubt it, here’s a quote from May 15, 1948, when the Arab League Secretary General Abdul Razek Azzam Pasha announced the intention to wage “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”
If you need a few dozen other quotes from Arab leaders determined to not only destroy Israel but also to wipe out any vestiges of Jews from the area, just ask. I’ll be happy to educate you, as well as Mr. Abourezk, if he is still lurking about.
September 17th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
For anyone who is interested in following up on how Israel created itself as a state, please allow me to recommend some books that will inform you.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe (an Israeli historian,who also enumertes the relative size of the opposing military).
Taking Sides, by Steven Green. (An American writer)
Any of Israeli historian Tom Segev’s books.
I believe these books, plus the Donald Neff Trilogy, can be ordered from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, www.middleeastbooks.com. That organization has an extensive book list, all of such books are at a discounted price. Donald Neff used to be Time Magazine’s Jerusalem correspondent until he quit time and began writing Middle East history.
One other point–The UN General Assembly passed a partition plan in 1947, but General Assembly votes are non-binding, unlike Security Council votes which are binding. Thus, the myth that the UN created Israel is just that–a myth. If such votes were binding, then Israel would be forced to obey the dozens of General Assembly votes passed since then that have favored Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders, all of them ignored by Israel. There have also been dozens of Security Council votes criticizing Israel for committing war crimes, etc., all of which have been vetoed by the United States.
Ilan Pappe’s book on ethnic cleansing is particularly shocking to read. Pappe recounts the horrendous slaughter, accompanied by a campaign of fear by the Zionist armies and terror groups designed to drive the Palestinians out of Palestine in order to create a majority Jewish state.
Another book that may now be out of print is: Terror Out of Zion, by J. Bowyer Bell (St. Martin’s Press), which carefully details the terrorism wrought by Zionist terror groups, such as the Irgun and the Stern Gang. Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun, was elected Israel’s Prime Minister in the 1970s, and Yitzak Shamir, one of the troika who led the Stern Gang, also was elected as Prime Minister of Israel.
I became friends with Nathan Yalin Mor, who was also one of the Troika running the Stern Gang, however, since he later had become a “peacenik,” opting for peace between
Jews and Arabs, he was sort of persona non grata in Washington, D.C. It was up to me to make appointments for him when he wanted to see someone in our government, as none of the Jewish groups would even speak to him. The tribulations of someone who wants peace are somewhat remarkable. I once asked him if the Stern Gang had sent letter bombs to British politicians in the 1940s, as Sir Christopher Mayhew told me that his secretary opened one and was injured by doing so. Nathan said, “yes, we sent lots of letter bombs.”
September 17th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
I already addressed Ilan Pappe’s lack of interest in historical truth.
Yes, the Stern Gang engaged in terror. This is not news. What is manifestly a lie is the idea that the Zionists engaged in “ethnic cleansing,” a reprehensible slander that is shown to be false by the simple fact that there are 1.2 million Arabs living in Israel today. If anyone should be accused of “ethnic cleansing” it would be the Arab world that expelled nearly every Jew in the years following 1948. The Old City of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria became literally Judenrein under “moderate” Jordanian rule - not a single Jew was left in those areas, and every single synagogue in the Old City was demolished within days of Jordanian control in 1948.
Other Arab atrocities that Mr. Abourezk wants to sweep under the rug started in 1886 with the first Arab attacks on a Jewish settlement, and they escalated in 1921, 1929 with the horrendous massacres in Hebron and elsewhere (ancient Jewish communities that had lived in Palestine for centuries), the 1936-39 reign of terror where thousands were killed including from Arab infighting, and no shortage of Arab massacres of Jewish civilians in 1947-48 including Hadassah Hospital.
I have spent much time reading contemporaneous accounts of the events in newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s and the Zionists (at least the ones that wrote for the Palestine Post) consistently wanted to live in peace with their Arab neighbors. The archives are online so if you want to find counterexamples, feel free. Yes, not every single Jew acted in an exemplary manner - real life doesn’t allow such neat categorizations - but the vast majority of Zionists considered the terror attacks from Irgun and Stern to be outrageous and did not celebrate them, as too many Arabs have been wont to do whenever Jews or Westerners are murdered.
In other words, Abourezk is cherry-picking the facts that fit his agenda and is not only ignoring the rich history of Arab terror that continues on to this day, he appears to embrace it when the perpetrators are Hamas and Hezbollah (we unfortunately do not have a record of his opinion of Islamic Jihad, PFLP, Al Aqsa Brigades, or any of dozens of other groups.) Israel has time and time again offered real concessions for real peace and it has been rejected by the Arabs, and very often the people who suffer most are the very Palestinians that the Arabs pretend to care so much about.
For more details about the history of the entire Palestinian Arab people - and I am far more sympathetic to them than you might think, although their leaders have been atrocious for decades - I have been writing a series of postings about them. Check out http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2007/05/psychological-history-of-palestinian.html
And if you find any mistakes, please let me know. Unlike some people, I really do care about the truth.