Abu El-Haj Granted Tenure

From the Columbia Spectator:

Controversial Barnard professor Nadia Abu El-Haj will receive tenure, according to an e-mail sent to the anthropology department list-serv by academic departmental administrator Xiomara Perez-Betances.

“Here is the good news: Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj is now a tenured member of the Barnard and Columbia Anthropology Departments,” the e-mail said, providing no further information.

Abu El-Haj has come under fire for her 2002 book, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, in which she allegedly denies the existence of the ancient Jewish state of Israel.

Though her bid for tenure drew wide criticism from alumni and organizations like Campus Watch, Abu El-Haj also received strong support…

Strong is Thomas Strong, lecturer in the department of anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He has previously held teaching and/or research posts at the University of Helsinki, the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Wisconsin, and (oddly enough) the American Academy of Ophthalmology. His publications include essays on the symbolism of blood and body in the U.S. and elsewhere, new cross-disciplinary work on kinship, and ideas of culture loss and bodily detumescence amongst the Dano-speakers of Papua New Guinea's eastern highlands province. His on-going research in PNG concerns transformations in sociality, gender relations, and personhood following the mid-twentieth-century repudiation of the traditional men's cult in the upper Asaro valley. His other interests include 'brand' as an ethnographic and analytic concept, HIV/AIDS (especially in the U.S. gay male community), and celebrity/fame.