Abu El-Haj, Nadia 1962–

PERSONAL:

Born 1962. Education: Attended Bryn Mawr College; Duke University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, Schermerhorn Extension, Rm. 452, 1200 Amsterdam Ave. & W. 119th St., New York, NY 10027-7054. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

During early career, member of anthropology faculty at University of Chicago; Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, NY, assistant professor of anthropology, 2002—, director of graduate studies. 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.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fulbright Fellow; Albert Hourani Annual Book Award for the best book published on the Middle East, 2002, for Facts on the Ground; awards from the Socia Sciences Research Council-MacArthur Grant in International Peace and Security, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

WRITINGS:

Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2001.

Contributor to professional journals, including the Annual Review of Anthropology, American Ethnologist, Radical History Review, and Israel Studies.

SIDELIGHTS:

Nadia Abu El-Haj is an academic whose first book, the award-winning Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, has been both widely praised and harshly criticized to the point that some have demanded that she not be granted tenure at Barnard College. The book focuses on the pervasive and forceful role that archeology has played in Israeli society. In the process, the author analyzes how archeology has been used to not only legitimize cultural and political visions in Israel but also to reshape them as it helps define Israel's past, present, and future. The author also examines the relationships among Israeli archeological practices, science, colonization, territorial expansion, and nation-state building. The controversy surrounding her book in non-archeologist circles focuses primarily on the belief that the author is questioning the legitimacy of the Jewish people's claim to Israel as their land based on a historical connection between the modern Jews and the ancient Hebrews.

"In most of her book, Abu El-Haj provides clear examples of how specific instances of archaeological production—survey and excavation projects, museum organization, tour presentations—produce history, justify social practice, and underwrite political decisions and frameworks,’ reported American Ethnologist contributor Kimbra L. Smith. In her review of the book, Smith also noted that Facts on the Ground is ‘accessible to a wider audience, both because of the broader themes with which she engages—the political nature of science, how science can ‘operate as a metaphor for specific national and political values and commitments’ … how territorial conflicts such as those in Israel/Palestine can through science be grounded in observable fact—and because she is … careful to define unfamiliar terms."

Other critics who praised the book noted that the author is examining the idea that science should be studied as a part of society. ‘This is what Abu El-Haj does well in her book,’ remarked Elia Zureik on the Crossing Boundaries: New Perspectives on the Middle East Web site. ‘In the first and tenth, and concluding chapter of her book, Abu El-Haj draws upon the sociology of science, in particular actor-network theory, to argue that a better way of understanding the nature of scientific activity (in this case archeology) is to move away from discourse analysis, which has characterized postcolonial studies, to examine the way scientists actually practice their craft—in other words, to consider science (archeology) as action rather than as discourse."

In a review of the book in Middle East Quarterly, Jacob Lassner commented: ‘The peoples of the Middle East have long waged battles to co-opt history. Since ancient times, communal polities, ranging from small tribal configurations to vast empires, and from closely knit ethnic groups to more inclusive modern nations, have turned to the past to legitimize the present. Abu El-Haj … explores in this interesting study how archeology has shaped the social and political imagination of Israel and served the aims of the state."

As for the public outcry against the author, Front Page Magazine contributor Hugh Fitzgerald noted: ‘For this book is not really about archeology at all. Rather it is a relentless attack on how and why Israelis, Jews really, have done archaeology in the land they have the audacity to call Israel. For the past, like the present, is merely a cruel and daring fiction foisted on the world at the expense of Palestinians, a social construction, as the orotund phrase has it. Ignoring or destroying whatever got in their way, Jewish archaeologists have been relentless in their pursuit of the Jewish past to claim the land and its history for modern Israel, and of course to dispossess Palestinians and their ‘claim’ to the past."

Others, however, have come to the defense of the author, asserting that opponents to her tenure and critics of her book sometimes have been guilty of the same things they accuse the author of in terms of changing facts and providing incomplete information. For example, in Reason Jesse Walker commented on accusations made against the author by Paula Stern, a pro-Israel activist who started a petition against Abu El-Haj: ‘I hold no brief for El-Haj's book. I have not read it, and even if I had I would be in no position to judge the quality of her scholarship. But I am in a position to judge the quality of Stern's arguments: They clearly, unmistakably distort the truth, and they do so in easily checked ways.’ In addition to noting that the author's detractors have taken several quotes from the book out of context, Walker wrote that, ‘if it is a work of sloppy scholarship, the petitioners are doing its author a favor. Rather than asking her to confront serious charges that might stick, they're firing a volley of easily refuted distortions."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Ethnologist, May, 2003, Kimbra L. Smith, review of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society.

Columbia Spectator, September 21, 2007, Alan F. Segal, ‘Some Professional Observations on the Controversy about Nadia Abu El-Haj's First Book."

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, September, 2004, Apen Ruiz, review of Facts on the Ground.

Isis, September, 2004, Aren M. Maeir, review of Facts on the Ground, p. 523.

Journal of Near Eastern Studies, October, 2005, Alexander H. Joffe, review of Facts on the Ground, p. 297.

Middle East Quarterly, summer, 2003, Jacob Lassner, ‘Not Grounded in Facts,’ review of Facts on the Ground.

New York Times, September 10, 2007, Karen W. Arenson, ‘Fracas Erupts over Book on Mideast by a Barnard Professor Seeking Tenure."

Reason, August 18, 2007, Jesse Walker, ‘The Case of Nadia Abu El-Haj."

ONLINE

Barnard College Department of Anthropology Web site,http://www.barnard.columbia.edu/anthro/ (October 17, 2007), faculty profile of Nadia Abu-El-Haj.

Crossing Boundaries: New Perspectives on the Middle East,http://web.mit.edu/cis/www/mitejmes/ (October 15, 2007), Elia Zureik, review of Facts on the Ground.

Front Page Magazine, http://www.frontpagemag.com/ (October 10, 2005), Hugh Fitzgerald, ‘Crisis at Columbia: Nadia Abu El-Haj."

History News Network,http://hnn.us/ (May 31, 2006), Diana Muir and Avigail Appelbaum, review of Facts on the Ground.

Muzzle Watch,http://www.muzzlewatch.com/ (August 16, 2007), Cecilie Surasky, ‘Campaign to Deny Nadia Abu El-Haj Tenure at Bernard: Is Tenure Process No Longer the Domain of Academic Peers?"