[Marxism] Academic freedom and the use of archaelogy in Israel

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, September 10, 2007
Fracas Erupts Over Book on Mideast by a Barnard Professor Seeking Tenure
By KAREN W. ARENSON

A tenure bid by an assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard 
College who has critically examined the use of archaeology in Israel has 
put Columbia University once again at the center of a struggle over 
scholarship on the Middle East.

The professor, Nadia Abu El-Haj, who is of Palestinian descent, has been 
at Barnard since 2002 and has won many awards and grants, including a 
Fulbright scholarship and fellowships at Harvard and the Institute for 
Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. Barnard has already approved her for 
tenure, officials said, and forwarded its recommendation to Columbia 
University, its affiliate, which has the final say.

It is Dr. Abu El-Haj’s book, “Facts on the Ground: Archaeological 
Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society,” that has 
made her a lightning rod, setting off warring petitions opposing and 
supporting her candidacy, and producing charges of shoddy scholarship 
and countercharges of an ideological witch hunt.

Judith R. Shapiro, Barnard’s president, who is also an anthropologist, 
said in a statement that the tenure process was “one of the linchpins of 
academic freedom and liberal arts education,” and that despite the 
passions, it must be conducted “thoughtfully, comprehensively, 
systematically and confidentially.” She added, “This case will be no 
different, both in its rigor and its freedom from outside lobbying.”

The fracas is one of a growing list of bitter disputes over the Middle 
East in academe, including charges a few years ago by Jewish students at 
Columbia that they were being intimidated by professors of Middle 
Eastern studies. A university investigation found no evidence of 
anti-Semitic statements by professors, but it criticized one professor 
for becoming angry at a student in his class in a discussion of Israel’s 
conduct.

At DePaul University in Chicago, a tenure fight led to the resignation 
last week of an assistant professor, Norman G. Finkelstein. He has 
written that Israel and Jews have used the Holocaust for their own 
purposes, including to oppress Palestinians.

Zachary Lockman, a professor at New York University who is the president 
of the Middle East Studies Association, said, “It’s a very conflicted 
field, given the passions about the Middle East, and there are a lot of 
people outside academe who have very strong feelings.”

Dr. Abu El-Haj, who is teaching a course on “Race and Sexuality in 
Scientific and Social Practice” this semester, declined to be 
interviewed while her tenure was under consideration.

Born in the United States in 1962, Dr. Abu El-Haj studied at Bryn Mawr 
College and earned a Ph.D. at Duke. In her book, which grew out of her 
doctoral research and was published by the University of Chicago Press 
in 2001, Dr. Abu El-Haj says Israeli archaeologists searched for an 
ancient Jewish presence to help build the case for a Jewish state. In 
their quest, she writes, they sometimes used bulldozers, destroying 
remains of other cultures, including those of Arabs.

She concludes her book by saying the ransacking by thousands of 
Palestinians in 2000 of Joseph’s tomb, a Jewish holy site in the West 
Bank, “needs to be understood in relation to a colonial-national 
history” of Israel and the symbolic resonance of artifacts.

The Middle East Studies Association, an organization of scholars who 
focus on the region, chose her book in 2002 as one of the year’s two 
best books in English about the Middle East. The other was “Being 
Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship,” by Gershon Shafir and 
Yoav Peled, published by Cambridge University Press.

Jere L. Bacharach, a historian at the University of Washington who 
presented the awards, said at the time that both books were “nuanced, 
nonpolemic works on subjects that too often lend themselves to political 
tirades and polemics.”

Critics of Dr. Abu El-Haj’s book, however, said her aim was to undermine 
Israel’s right to exist, and challenged her methodology and findings.

“Serious people are outraged when people who are rank amateurs come in,” 
Jacob Lassner, a professor of history and religion at Northwestern 
University who wrote a negative review of her book, said in an 
interview. “It’s insulting. Brain surgeons would be offended if a 
medical technician criticized their work. That’s what’s happened here. 
The problem, of course, is that she is politically driven.”

As Dr. Abu El-Haj’s tenure deadline approached, Paula R. Stern, a 1982 
Barnard graduate who lives in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, 
began an online petition against the professor for what it called her 
“demonstrably inferior caliber, her knowing misrepresentation of data 
and violation of accepted standards of scholarship.” As of yesterday, it 
had more than 2,000 signatures, some of them from Columbia faculty members.

“I am horrified,” Ms. Stern said in an interview, “that Barnard would 
even consider tenure for a professor who is so clearly unqualified.”

But Dr. Abu El-Haj also has many supporters, particularly in her field, 
who say her book is solid, even brilliant, and part of an innovative 
trend of looking at how disciplines function.

They have produced a counter-petition, signed by about 1,300 people, 
including many professors around the country and abroad, urging that she 
receive tenure and calling the attacks on her “an orchestrated witch 
hunt” by those trying to shut down legitimate intellectual inquiry.

Paul Manning, a linguist in the anthropology department at Trent 
University in Peterborough, Ontario, who initiated the petition 
supporting her, said that he acted in part because “Nadia has been 
targeted a long time, for years, and she’s not been having a very good 
time of it.”

He was also concerned about the “concerted attack on the autonomy of the 
tenure process,” Professor Manning said. He added that people were 
“particularly angered” about the Barnard case because it came on the 
heels of the DePaul case, in which Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law 
professor, campaigned to derail Dr. Finkelstein’s tenure bid.

Dr. Abu El-Haj has some opponents at her own college. “There is every 
reason in the world to want her to have tenure, and only one reason 
against it — her work,” said Alan F. Segal, a professor of religion and 
Jewish studies at Barnard. “I believe it is not good enough.”

He said he was particularly troubled by her suggestion that ancient 
Israelites had not inhabited the land where Israel now stands, and he 
said that she had either misunderstood or ignored 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.”

He also said that a Barnard official, whom he declined to name, had 
asked him to suggest people who were not Jewish to comment on Dr. Abu 
El-Haj’s work for the tenure review, and that he had refused.

Elizabeth Gildersleeve, a Barnard spokeswoman, said that a high official 
of the college had met with Professor Segal on the tenure case and asked 
him to submit names for letters of reference. But Ms. Gildersleeve said 
that “the charge that restrictions were put on that request is 
absolutely untrue.”

Dr. Abu El-Haj’s supporters say that she has come under attack partly 
because she is a Palestinian-American and that her opponents often quote 
her out of context to distort her arguments.

“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,” said Michael 
Dietler, an anthropology professor at the University of Chicago, “and 
because she happens to be of Palestinian origin.”

Whether Dr. Abu El-Haj will win tenure is expected to be decided in the 
next few months. The tenure rate at Barnard in recent years has been 
high: The college said that of 37 faculty members nominated for tenure 
by departments since 2002-3, tenure was granted to 33.

===

The New York Times, March 9, 2002 Saturday
New Torah For Modern Minds
By MICHAEL MASSING

Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses. 
The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible probably never 
occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho. And 
David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a 
mighty capital, was more likely a provincial leader whose reputation was 
later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation.

Such startling propositions -- the product of findings by archaeologists 
digging in Israel and its environs over the last 25 years -- have gained 
wide acceptance among non-Orthodox rabbis. But there has been no attempt 
to disseminate these ideas or to discuss them with the laity -- until now.

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which represents the 1.5 
million Conservative Jews in the United States, has just issued a new 
Torah and commentary, the first for Conservatives in more than 60 years. 
Called "Etz Hayim" ("Tree of Life" in Hebrew), it offers an 
interpretation that incorporates the latest findings from archaeology, 
philology, anthropology and the study of ancient cultures. To the 
editors who worked on the book, it represents one of the boldest efforts 
ever to introduce into the religious mainstream a view of the Bible as a 
human rather than divine document.

"When I grew up in Brooklyn, congregants were not sophisticated about 
anything," said Rabbi Harold Kushner, the author of "When Bad Things 
Happen to Good People" and a co-editor of the new book. "Today, they are 
very sophisticated and well read about psychology, literature and 
history, but they are locked in a childish version of the Bible."

"Etz Hayim," compiled by David Lieber of the University of Judaism in 
Los Angeles, seeks to change that. It offers the standard Hebrew text, a 
parallel English translation (edited by Chaim Potok, best known as the 
author of "The Chosen"), a page-by-page exegesis, periodic commentaries 
on Jewish practice and, at the end, 41 essays by prominent rabbis and 
scholars on topics ranging from the Torah scroll and dietary laws to 
ecology and eschatology.

These essays, perused during uninspired sermons or Torah readings at 
Sabbath services, will no doubt surprise many congregants. For instance, 
an essay on Ancient Near Eastern Mythology," by Robert Wexler, president 
of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, states that on the basis of 
modern scholarship, it seems unlikely that the story of Genesis 
originated in Palestine. More likely, Mr. Wexler says, it arose in 
Mesopotamia, the influence of which is most apparent in the story of the 
Flood, which probably grew out of the periodic overflowing of the Tigris 
and Euphrates rivers. The story of Noah, Mr. Wexler adds, was probably 
borrowed from the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh.

Equally striking for many readers will be the essay "Biblical 
Archaeology," by Lee I. Levine, a professor at the Hebrew University in 
Jerusalem. "There is no reference in Egyptian sources to Israel's 
sojourn in that country," he writes, "and the evidence that does exist 
is negligible and indirect." The few indirect pieces of evidence, like 
the use of Egyptian names, he adds, "are far from adequate to 
corroborate the historicity of the biblical account."

Similarly ambiguous, Mr. Levine writes, is the evidence of the conquest 
and settlement of Canaan, the ancient name for the area including 
Israel. Excavations showing that Jericho was unwalled and uninhabited, 
he says, "clearly seem to contradict the violent and complete conquest 
portrayed in the Book of Joshua." What's more, he says, there is an 
"almost total absence of archaeological evidence" backing up the Bible's 
grand descriptions of the Jerusalem of David and Solomon.

The notion that the Bible is not literally true "is more or less settled 
and understood among most Conservative rabbis," observed David Wolpe, a 
rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and a contributor to "Etz Hayim." 
But some congregants, he said, "may not like the stark airing of it." 
Last Passover, in a sermon to 2,200 congregants at his synagogue, Rabbi 
Wolpe frankly said that "virtually every modern archaeologist" agrees 
"that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way that it 
happened, if it happened at all." The rabbi offered what he called a 
"litany of disillusion" about the narrative, including contradictions, 
improbabilities, chronological lapses and the absence of corroborating 
evidence. In fact, he said, archaeologists digging in the Sinai have 
"found no trace of the tribes of Israel -- not one shard of pottery."

The reaction to the rabbi's talk ranged from admiration at his courage 
to dismay at his timing to anger at his audacity. Reported in Jewish 
publications around the world, the sermon brought him a flood of letters 
accusing him of undermining the most fundamental teachings of Judaism. 
But he also received many messages of support. "I can't tell you how 
many rabbis called me, e-mailed me and wrote me, saying, 'God bless you 
for saying what we all believe,' " Rabbi Wolpe said. He attributes the 
"explosion" set off by his sermon to "the reluctance of rabbis to say 
what they really believe."

Before the introduction of "Etz Hayim," the Conservative movement relied 
on the Torah commentary of Joseph Hertz, the chief rabbi of the British 
Commonwealth. By 1936, when it was issued, the Hebrew Bible had come 
under intense scrutiny from scholars like Julius Wellhausen of Germany, 
who raised many questions about the text's authorship and accuracy. 
Hertz, working in an era of rampant anti-Semitism and of Christian 
efforts to demonstrate the inferiority of the "Old" Testament to the 
"New," dismissed all doubts about the integrity of the text.

Maintaining that no people would have invented for themselves so 
"disgraceful" a past as that of being slaves in a foreign land, he wrote 
that "of all Oriental chronicles, it is only the Biblical annals that 
deserve the name of history."

The Hertz approach had little competition until 1981, when the Union of 
American Hebrew Congregations, the official arm of Reform Judaism, 
published its own Torah commentary. Edited by Rabbi Gunther Plaut, it 
took note of the growing body of archaeological and textual evidence 
that called the accuracy of the biblical account into question. The 
"tales" of Genesis, it flatly stated, were a mix of "myth, legend, 
distant memory and search for origins, bound together by the strands of 
a central theological concept." But Exodus, it insisted, belonged in 
"the realm of history." While there are scholars who consider the Exodus 
story to be "folk tales," the commentary observed, "this is a minority 
view."

Twenty years later, the weight of scholarly evidence questioning the 
Exodus narrative had become so great that the minority view had become 
the majority one.

Not among Orthodox Jews, however. They continue to regard the Torah as 
the divine and immutable word of God. Their most widely used Torah 
commentary, known as the Stone Edition (1993), declares in its 
introduction "that every letter and word of the Torah was given to Moses 
by God."

Lawrence Schiffman, a professor at New York University and an Orthodox 
Jew, said that "Etz Hayim" goes so far in accepting modern scholarship 
that, without realizing it, it ends up being in "nihilistic opposition" 
to what Conservative Jews stand for. He noted, however, that most of the 
questions about the Bible's accuracy had been tucked away discreetly in 
the back. "The average synagogue-goer is never going to look there," he 
said.

Even some Conservative rabbis feel uncomfortable with the depth of the 
doubting. "I think the basic historicity of the text is valid and 
verifiable," said Susan Grossman, the rabbi of Beth Shalom Congregation 
in Columbia, Md., and a co-editor of "Etz Hayim." As for the mounting 
archaeological evidence suggesting the contrary, Rabbi Grossman said: 
"There's no evidence that it didn't happen. Most of the 'evidence' is 
evidence from silence."

"The real issue for me is the eternal truths that are in the text," she 
added. "How do we apply this hallowed text to the 21st century?" One 
way, she said, is to make it more relevant to women. Rabbi Grossman is 
one of many women who worked on "Etz Hayim," in an effort to temper the 
Bible's heavily patriarchal orientation and make the text more palatable 
to modern readers. For example, the passage in Genesis that describes 
how the aged Sarah laughed upon hearing God say that she would bear a 
son is traditionally interpreted as a laugh of incredulity. In its 
commentary, however, "Etz Hayim" suggests that her laughter "may not be 
a response to the far-fetched notion of pregnancy at an advanced age, 
but the laughter of delight at the prospect of two elderly people 
resuming marital intimacy."

In a project of such complexity, there were inevitably many points of 
disagreement. But Rabbi Kushner says the only one that eluded resolution 
concerned Leviticus 18:22: "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a 
woman; it is an abhorrence." "We couldn't come to a formulation that we 
could all be comfortable with," the rabbi said. "Some people felt that 
homosexuality is wrong. We weren't prepared to embrace that as the 
Conservative position. But at the same time we couldn't say this is a 
mentality that has been disproved by contemporary biology, for not 
everyone was prepared to go along with that." Ultimately, the editors 
settled on an anodyne compromise, noting that the Torah's prohibitions 
on homosexual relations "have engendered considerable debate" and that 
Conservative synagogues should "welcome gay and lesbian congregants in 
all congregational activities."

Since the fall, when "Etz Hayim" was issued, more than 100,000 copies 
have been sold. Eventually, it is expected to become the standard Bible 
in the nation's 760 Conservative synagogues.

Mark S. Smith, a professor of Bible and Near Eastern Studies at New York 
University, noted that the Hertz commentary had lasted 65 years. "That's 
incredible," he said. "If 'Etz Hayim' isn't around for 50 years or more, 
I'd be surprised."

Its longevity, however, may depend on the pace of archaeological disco