Nadia Abu El Haj

Biography

Early life and education

Abu El-Haj was born in the United States, the second daughter of a "Long Island Episcopalian" mother, and a Palestinian Muslim father. Her maternal grandfather was French and maternal grandmother, Norwegian-American, and she has characterized her religious upbringing as "church twice a year."

Abu El-Haj spent a couple of years in private schools in Tehran, Iran and Beirut, Lebanon, while her father was deployed there for the United Nations. She returned to the United States for her university studies, attending Bryn Mawr College for her Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science, Between 1993 and 1995, she did post-doctoral work on a fellowship from Harvard University's Academy for International and Area Studies, focusing on the Middle East. She also received fellowships from the University of Pennsylvania Mellon Program, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She speaks English, Arabic, French, Persian, and Hebrew.

Academic career

Abu El-Haj taught at the University of Chicago from 1997 She has also 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.

A former Fulbright Fellow, she was a recipient of the SSRC-McArthur Grant in International Peace and Security, and grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In a 2008 interview with The New Yorker, she said, "I'm not a public intellectual. ... I don't court controversy."

Research

''Facts on the Ground''

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.

Facts on the Ground has been reviewed in both scholarly and popular publications. The book was awarded the Middle East Studies Association of North America 2002 Albert Hourani Book Award which it shared with Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled's Being Israeli: the Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship. Negative reviews were intense. The book was also dismissed as 'crank scholarship,' and she was called a 'charlatan anthropologist'. An internet domain was registered in her name dedicated exclusively to defaming her and damaging her reputation.

Other 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.

Reviewing El-Haj's 2012 book, The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology, geneticist Richard Lewontin, writing in The New York Review of Books, described her as a "genetic determinist" not in the "usual sense" but because she writes that "fundamental aspects of who one is are determined by one's past" and that "who we really are collectively and individually is given by and legible in biological data." He proposes that a term such as "biological determinism" might be coined to describe her attitude despite her assertion that although the choice to act or not act on the available information about our ancestry, which she describes as telling us who we "really are" is a matter of free choice.

Tenure controversy

Abu El-Haj joined the Anthropology Department at Barnard College in the fall of 2002.

Dueling petitions

On August 7, 2007, an online petition against the professor was started by Paula Stern, a 1982 Barnard alumna who lives in the Israeli settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim. In response to Stern's petition, in late August a petition supporting Abu El-Haj was initiated by Paul Manning, a linguist in the anthropology department at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada.

By the time Barnard announced that it had granted Abu El-Haj tenure, in November 2007, 2,592 people had signed the anti-tenure petition and 2,057 had signed the pro-tenure petition.

Academic debate of Abu El-Haj's credentials

In August 2007, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on support for Abu El-Haj 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 showed 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, is the appropriate measure of a scholar's work, noting that she has been the recipient of many awards, grants, and academic appointments. An article in The New York Times in September 2007 reported that many of Abu El-Haj's supporters, particularly those in the field of anthropology, praised her book as "solid, even brilliant, and part of an innovative trend". For example, Michael Dietler, a professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, described Abu El-Haj as a top-quality scholar. Dietler also said Abu El-Haj was being opposed because she is of Palestinian descent.

Alan F. Segal, a professor of religion and Jewish studies at Barnard, questioned the quality of her research. Saying that Abu El-Haj had suggested that "ancient Israelites had not inhabited the land where Israel now stands", Segal said that she either ignored or misunderstood the evidence to the contrary. Segal later told The Forward that Abu El-Haj hates Israelis.

William G. 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 because her scholarship is "faulty, misleading and dangerous", and not because she is a Palestinian or a leftist.

Segal and Dever spoke at lectures sponsored by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and LionPAC (a pro-Israel advocacy group at Columbia) In responding to the controversy surrounding Abu El-Haj's work, Barnard President Judith Shapiro said that showing how archaeological research can be used for political and ideological purposes is a legitimate cultural anthropological enterprise.

Tenure decision

On November 2, 2007, Barnard announced that Abu El-Haj had been granted tenure. Subsequent to the tenure decision, Barnard president Shapiro praised Abu El-Haj to an interviewer from the New Yorker.

Published works

• {{cite journal |title=Rethinking Genetic Genealogy: A Response to Stephan Palmi |journal=American Ethnologist |date=2007 |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=223–227 |jstor=4496797 | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4496797 |last1=El-Haj |first1=Nadia Abu |doi=10.1525/ae.2007.34.2.223 |url-access=subscription }}

References

References

1. Arenson, Karen W.. (10 September 2007). "Fracas Erupts Over Book on Mideast by a Barnard Professor Seeking Tenure". New York Times.
2. "Nadia L. Abu El-Haj". Columbia University Department of Anthropology.
3. (2008). "Who Got to Decide on Nadia Abu El-Haj's Tenure?".
4. (November 21, 2006). "Input or Intrusion?".
5. Finder, Alan. (November 3, 2007). "Embattled Barnard Anthropologist Is Awarded Tenure". New York Times.
6. Kramer, Jane. (2008-04-07). "The petition".
7. Abu El Haj, Nadia. (1995). "Excavating the Land, Creating the Homeland: Archaeology, the State, and the Making of History in Modern Jewish Nationalism". Duke University.
8. "Academy Scholars (1986-2006)". Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
9. She is also an Associate Editor of the ''American Ethnologist: A Journal of the American Ethnological Society'' and serves on the Editorial Collectives of ''[[Public Culture]]'' and ''[[Social Text]]''.[http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/ae.2007.34.2.toc American Ethnologist - 34(2):i]{{Dead link. (April 2020)
10. "Albert Hourani Book Award Recipients, 1991-2005". [[Middle East Studies Association of North America]].
11. Harrington, Ralph. (November 2007). "Was Nadia Abu El Haj Treated Fairly?".
12. Abu El-Haj, Nadia. (January 10, 2013). "Distressed Genes: An Exchange".
13. Lewontin, Richard C.. (6 December 2012). "Is There a Jewish Gene?".
14. Karni, Annie. (November 2, 2007). "After Battle, Barnard Professor Given Tenure". The New York Sun.
15. (August 30, 2007). "Barnard prof's critics launch website".
16. Gravois, John. (November 2, 2007). "A New Fact on the Ground: Nadia Abu El-Haj Wins Tenure at Barnard College". [[The Chronicle of Higher Education]].
17. Gravois, John. (August 20, 2007). "Newest Battlefield of Middle East Conflict Is Tenure Case at Barnard College". [[The Chronicle of Higher Education]].
18. Birkner, Gabrielle. (November 16, 2006). "Barnard Alumnae Opposing Tenure for Anthropologist". New York Sun.