Barnard Grants Tenure To Anti-Zionist--But There's A Bright Side

Barnard University has decided after all to grant tenure to Nadia el-Haj, an Arab anthropologist who denies that the Jewish people have any roots in Israel and justifies the attack and destruction of Joseph's Tomb in Shechem in 2000. She has written "Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society," a book heavily criticized by experts.

So what's the bright side? Paula Stern, a Barnard alumnus who started an online petition against the tenure gave an interview:

Although the petition she sponsored ultimately failed, Stern told Yishai Fleisher of Israel National Radio that she saw a victory in this defeat. Stern said the decision to grant Abu el-Haj tenure was apparently part of an internal political deal in which Columbia University, with which Barnard is affiliated, will deny tenure to a well known anti-Israeli intellectual, Joseph Massad. In addition, she told Fleisher, it will now be "that much harder" for Columbia to accept blatantly biased people like Abu el-Haj into its teaching staff.

To get a snapshot of what Massad is all about, Campus Watch has an excerpt from the now defunct "Columbia University's Worst Faculty":

Joseph Massad of the Middle Eastern department. According to reliable source, Prof. Massad has openly supported Islamist terrorism against Israel, including suicide bombings of civilians. In his class on Israeli-Palestinian politics, Massad openly engages in conspiracy theories, teaching students about the connections between Nazis, Rothchilds, international bankers, and a host of other nefarious characters (such as the Freemasons or the Knights Templars) to dispossess Palestinians of their land and make them permanent victims of Western colonialism and imperialism. From what I hear, his behavior behooves that of a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and not that of a published academic. Massad has also come close to belittling, if not denying the Holocaust outright.

If there really is a deal, just what is gained substituting one pseudo-scholar for another? And if having Massad around did not discourage granting tenure to el-Haj, what makes Stern think that it will be any harder to hire more like her?

Technorati Tag: Nadia el-Haj and Columbia University and Barnard.