Nadia Abu El Haj

Nadia Abu El Haj
Born	1962 United States of America
Occupation	Anthropologist

Nadia Abu El Haj (b. 1962) is a Palestinian-American academic with a PhD in Anthropology. She is an assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard College and the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University.

The author of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (2001), Abu El Haj became the center of a tenure battle at Barnard and Columbia University during the 2006-07 academic year.

Academic background

Abu El Haj attended Bryn Mawr for her Bachelor of Arts degree, and received her doctoral degree from Duke University. Between 1993 and 1995, she did post-doctoral work with a fellowship from Harvard University's Academy for International and Area Studies with a focus on the Middle East. She secured further academic credentials by way of fellowships from the University of Pennsylvania Mellon Program, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.

She is a former Fulbright Fellow and the recipient of many awards including 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.

Abu El-Haj has lectured 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. She also served as part of the faculty of the Anthropology Department at the University of Chicago.

She is one of the Associate Editors of the American Ethnologist: A Journal of the American Ethnological Society.[1]

Philosophical bases

Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society

Main article: Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society

In 2001, Abu El Haj published Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. The book was recognized by the Middle East Studies Association of North America as one of the winners of the 2002 Albert Hourani Book Award, which recognizes outstanding publishing in Middle East studies.

This work examines the relationship between scientific knowledge and the construction of social imaginations and political orders. Focusing on the discipline of archaeology as a historical science, it specifies how archaeological practice generates facts and attempts to understand how those facts help to fashion cultural understandings, political possibilities and 'common-sense' assumptions.

Recent Scholarship

Abu El-Haj's more recent scholarship explores the field of genetic anthropology through the analysis of projects aimed at reconstructing the origins and migrations of specific populations. Analysis is also directed toward the role of for-profit corporations offering genetic ancestry testing. How race, diaspora, and kinship intersect and how genetic origins emerge as a shared concern among those seeking redress or recognition are predominant themes in the work.

Impact on her peers the the academic community

Abu El Haj's work has been very well-received by her peers in the field of anthropological studies, and in the wider academic community. Keith Whitelam, a professor of religious studies at the University of Sheffield and the author of The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History told the New York Sun that "Facts on the Ground" was a "first-rate book," that made "a very fine contribution" to the study of "how national identity is constructed and the assumptions which are then built into academic work on history and archaeology."

Adam T. Smith, in his work, "The end of the essential archaeological subject" mentions Abu El Haj in the acknowledgments for the work. In discussing how archaeology can be used to serve "sectional political commitments," he quotes from Facts on the Ground:

"Israeli archaeology did far more than dig in search of evidence of an ancient Israelite and Jewish past embedded in the land. It was driven by an epistemology that assumed nations, itself embedded in a specific conception of what history is, including the significant events of which it is made . . . and the relevant historical actors by which it is made (Abu el-Haj 2001, 3, emphasis in original)."

Lisa Wedeen, a Middle East scholar at the University of Chicago and chair of its Political Science department, also acknowledged Abu El Haj's work in her 2002 paper, "Conceptualizing Culture: The Possibilities for Political Science" where she puts forward a case for borrowing from anthropological study to inform analysis in the field of political science. Her thesis is that the conception of culture as "semiotic practice" - and its study as such - can be useful to probing questions of compliance and ethnic identity-formation.

Tenure controversy

Abu El-Haj joined the Anthropology Department at Barnard College in the fall of 2002. Because of Barnard College's affiliation with Columbia University, professors recommended for tenure at Barnard are subject to approval by Columbia. Abu El Haj was considered for tenure at Barnard in the 2006-07 academic year, and is under consideration at Columbia in the 2007-08 academic year.

A group of Barnard alumnae opposed to tenure for Abu El Haj was formed, led by Paula Stern, who lives in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Stern wrote that Abu El Haj had "written a book denying that the ancient Jewish or Israelite kingdoms existed. 'What was considered to have been ancient Jewish national existence and sovereignty in their homeland' is 'a tale best understood as the modern nation's origin myth ... transported into the realm of history.' The Hasmonean and Davidic dynasties are a mere 'belief, an ideological assertion, a pure political fabrication.' Paula Stern identifies this "absurd and unsupported assertion" as the theme of Facts on the Ground.

Barnard President Judith Shapiro responded in November 2006 with an open letter to alumnae in which she wrote that Abu El Haj's tenure review process would involve "distinguished scholars in the candidate's field", including "archaeologists with appropriate expertise and broad comparative perspectives". She said that tenure decisions are made after "long and careful consideration to such outside evaluations". She expressed appreciation for feedback from alumnae, but wrote that she was concerned about "communications and letter-writing campaigns" and said that Barnard would "adhere to the principles that have served us so well throughout our history." Shapiro also stated that "it is a legitimate cultural anthropological enterprise to show how archaeological research can be used for political and ideological purposes."

On the same day, William Dever, retired professor of Near East archaeology at the University of Arizona told the New York Sun that Abu El Haj should be denied tenure "not because she's Palestinian or pro-Palestinian or a leftist, but because her scholarship is faulty, misleading and dangerous."

Articles appeared intermittently during the remainder of the 2006-07 academic year, but widespread attention was drawn to Abu El Haj just before the start of the 2007-08 academic year with a pair of dueling petitions, to deny and to grant tenure.

The petition opposing tenure appeared first. Part of the lengthy preamble states: "We are submitting this petition because the use of evidence in "Facts on the Ground" fails to meet the standards of scholarship that are expected of Columbia and Barnard undergraduates." It also repeats many of the charges made by Paula Stern and concludes:

"We very much fear that the appointment of a scholar of Abu El Haj's demonstrably inferior caliber, her knowing misrepresentation of data and violation of accepted standards of scholarship will indeed destroy public trust in the University and undermine sensitive relationships between Columbia, Barnard and the graduates who used to be proud of the high standards of scholarship that Columbia and Barnard always stood for. We urge you to protect Columbia's reputation for scholarship and integrity by upholding the principal that research must be based on a disinterested consideration of evidence."

In response, a petition supporting Abu El Haj was initiated by Paul Manning, a linguist in the anthropology department at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada. He explained that part of what motivated him was that, "Nadia has been targeted a long time, for years, and she's not been having a very good time of it." By September of 2007, some 1,300 people had signed to "strongly endorse" her bid for tenure, and "completely reject every unsubstantiated allegation" made in the petition to deny Abu El-Haj tenure. Calling the attacks on her "an orchestrated witch hunt" designed to shut down legitimate intellectual inquiry, the petition concluded: "We also believe that Ms. Abu El-Haj has been singled out from among many other authors who make the same points essentially because of her last name, thus, we suspect that something like simple ethnic prejudice is at issue here. By this time, Stern's petition had garnered 2,000 signatures.

Elaine Bloom, a Barnard alumnist and former politician with no known credentials in anthropology or archaeology, said that Abu El Haj "has written and made statements that are not based in fact and refused to recognize fact." She also said she might stop contributing to the college if Abu El Haj wins tenure.

In August of 2007, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that support for Abu El Haj was growing among scholars of anthropology and of Middle East studies. Lisa Wedeen, Chair of the Political Science department at the University of Chicago, said that Facts on the Ground was about "how science and nationalist imaginings work together, how they basically shape each other", and that Abu El Haj was more interested in the philosophy of science than in political argument.

The Chronicle of Higher Education also wrote that many of Abu El Haj's supporters said that peer review, and not public pressure, are appropriate measures of a scholar's work, and they noted that Abu El Haj has been the recipient of many awards, grants, and academic appointments.

An article in the New York Times in September of 2007 reported that many of Abu El Haj's supporters, particularly those in the field of anthropology, say "her book is solid, even brilliant, and part of an innovative trend of looking at how disciplines function." The book continues to be harshly criticized by archaeologists and historians.

In the same article, Alan F. Segal, who teaches the history and archaeology of ancient Israel at Barnard College said that "There is every reason in the world to want her to have tenure, and only one reason against it — her work, I believe it is not good enough." He proceeded to say that he was specifically concerned by El Haj's hypothesis that the ancient Israelites did not live in the area now known as Israel, and feels that she either ignored or misunderstood the evidence to the contrary. “She completely misunderstands what the biblical tradition is saying,” he added. “She is not even close. She is so bizarrely off.”

Conversely, Michael Dietler, a professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago said, "She is a scholar of the highest quality and integrity who is being persecuted because she has the courage to focus an analytical lens on subjects that others wish to shield from scrutiny, and because she happens to be of Palestinian origin."

Published works

• "The Genetic Reinscription of Race" in Annual Review of Anthropology (2007).
• "Rethinking Genetic Geneaology: A Response to Stephan Palmi" in American Ethnologist (2007), 34:2:223-227.[2]
• "Edward Said and the Political Present" in American Ethnologist (2005), 32:4:538-555.
• "Reflections on Archaeology and Israeli Settler-Nationhood" in Radical History Review (spring 2003), 86:149-163.[3]
• "Producing (Arti)Facts: Archaeology and Power during the British Mandate of Palestine" in Israel Studies Summer (2002), 7:2:33-61.
• Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (2001), University of Chicago Press.
• "Translating Truths: Nationalism, Archaeological Practice and the Remaking of Past and Present in Contemporary Jerusalem" in American Ethnologist (1998), 25:2:166-188.

Academic lectures

• "Bearing the Mark of Israel? Genetics, Geneaology, and the Quest for Jewish Origins," (30 November 2004) for The New York Consortium on Science and Society

• "Genealogical Quests: Question of Identity at the Crossroads of the Historical and Natural Sciences," (28 April 2004) at the University of California in Santa Barbara.[4]

• Lecturer for classes on "Theories of Culture" and "Race and Sex in Scientific and Social Practice" (2002-2003) for the Barnard College Anthropology Department.