Dangerous Gobbledegook: "Jewish Racial Science"

You will remember Nadia Abu El-Haj, who is being considered for tenure at Barnard. You will remember that her one publication is her doctoral dissertation rewritten in the misnomered book, Facts on the Ground, in which she makes wild assertions about Jews and Israeli archaeology, that contemporary Israeli Jews aren't related to ancient Israelites and that the area's archaeological record is "pure political fabrication." Of course she couldn't have even read any of the standing literature as she has no command of the indigenous language, i.e. Hebrew. For added appeal, she used her book to slander those who would, under normal circumstances, have been considered and treated as her professional colleagues. Oh, and she used anonymous sources for that purpose.

It's unbelievable. None of this would have been considered kosher anthropological practice in my day. Way Back Then in the 1980s, this kind of conduct wouldn't have been tolerated through a single course, much less all the way to an Assistant Professorship, and forget tenure! In my day, we were confined by rigorous methodological parameters; we began our research with a question, followed the facts where they led us, and didn't draw a conclusion until the end of the process. Nowadays, however, Academic Malpractice is all the rage, and "researchers" are free to begin with a predetermined conclusion and fill in afterwards with sentiment. Thus we find Abu El Haj free to conjure up her own new and improved poorpalestinian narrative, while the self-loathing white liberals in the Ivoy Tower eat it up and beg for more. She is apparently accommodating them with new "research" and a bio page to match:

My research is concerned most generally with the relationship between scientific knowledge and the making of social imaginations and political orders. I have sought to specify the ways in which particular historical sciences generate facts and to understand how those facts circulate in wider social worlds, helping to fashion the cultural understandings, political possibilities and “common-sense” assumptions that have been central to making of particular colonial regimes, national cultures and diasporic identities.

My current research analyzes the field of genetic anthropology by focusing on research first, projects that seek to reconstruct the origins and migrations of specific population groups and second, for-profit companies that offer “genetic ancestry testing” (to various “populations”) on the other. Most generally, I am interested in the conceptions of race, diaspora and kinship that this work makes possible, the refiguration of nature—and of its relationship to culture—that it entails, and the political demands for “recognition” or “redress” that are made on its evidentiary terrain.

What does all this gobbledegook mean? Well, we're in luck; Abu El Haj has been promoting her new research in "talks," such as

• “The Descent of Men: Genetics, Jewish Origins, and Historical Truths”
• “Jews – Lost and Found: Genetics and the Evidentiary Terrain of Recognition”
• “Bearing the Mark of Israel? Genetics, Geneaology and the Quest for Jewish Origins”

Paula Stern writes, and I agree: "In these titles ... there is more than a whiff of racial essentialism."

But wait, it gets worse:

Someone recently attended a Brown Bag luncheon last spring to hear Abu El Haj speak on “Jews and Arabs: The Shifting Boundaries of Kinship and Difference.” What this person heard was simply chilling.

[Abu El Haj] chose to focus on what she called the “Jewish Racial Science” as practiced by Jewish physicians in Mandatory Palestine. Eugenics was fashionable and more than respectable in that era. Today, we look back with horror at a time when respectable people advocated selective breeding and Justices of the United States Supreme Court now recalled with the greatest respect for other decisions they signed, endorsed forced sterilization of the genetically inferior.

In that era, I am quite certain that Barnard undergraduates could hear talks in Sulzberger Parlor about how the members of the eugenically superior races and classes had an obligation to bear large families while the inferior races were to be discouraged form doing so. Of a certainty, such talks were given to the young women attending most colleges in this country.

Abu El Haj did not offer so much as a nod to the history or wide international acceptability of eugenics in the period. She focused solely on the racial science of the Jews. The story she told was of a small group of Jewish physicians in Mandatory Palestine who conceived of themselves and their ethnic and social peers as a physically, mentally, and eugenically superior race. This superior Jewish race was to be encouraged to bear more children. It was imperative to limit the breeding of the benighted ultra-religious Jews and of the short, dark-skinned Jews then immigrating in substantial numbers from Yemen.

She gave descriptions of these Jewish physicians that made them sound like Joseph Mengele, although the Nazi scientists were not actually discussed, and these eugenist physicians did not sterilize anyone – they merely talked, mostly about who should breed and who should not. No context of the international eugenics movement was discussed, only what was made to appear as the appalling racialism of the Jewish professional class in Mandatory Palestine. The vile racialism and eugenic proposals of that group were alone held up for revulsion. During the discussion period, all questioners appeared to accept that early twentieth century Jewish racial science was a unique phenomenon.

This is incredibly dangerous stuff, even more dangerous perhaps than Jimmy Carter's maps, The professors and the terrorists, George Soros's anti-Israel media ploy and The Council for the National Interest all rolled up into one.

You may want to write to Barnard President Judith Shapiro -- even though she's not too keen on hearing from the hoi polloi - see her statement on Abu El Haj:

... Once a teacher-scholar is appointed to the Barnard faculty, she becomes subject to the rights and responsibilities specified in our Code of Academic Freedom and Tenure. In the case of a tenure review, we solicit outside letters from distinguished scholars in the candidate's field. The reviewers are not chosen by the candidate and she does not know who they are.

In this case, and with specific reference to Facts on the Ground, these reviewers will certainly include archaeologists with appropriate expertise and broad comparative perspectives. While it is a legitimate cultural anthropological enterprise to show how archaeological research can be used for political and ideological purposes — something that is common not merely to Israelis and Palestinians, but is a pervasive pattern in many parts of the world — it is, needless to say, of the essence that the archaeological enterprise itself be addressed responsibly and knowledgeably. That is something to be determined by those in a professional position to do so. The Faculty Committee on Appointments, Tenure, and Promotion, along with the Provost, gives long and careful consideration to such outside evaluations, among other kinds of information, when they make a recommendation to me about whether a faculty member should be tenured. The decision then is mine.

Please understand that I greatly appreciate your feedback. I always want to respond to any concerns our alumnae may have. At the same time, I will share with you my concern about communications and letter-writing campaigns orchestrated by people who are not as familiar with Barnard as you are, and who may not be in the best position to judge the matter at hand.

Shapiro's email is JShapiro@Barnard.Edu and her office phone is (212) 854-2021.

Note that she has just been elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is "stepping down" from the Barnard presidency next summer.

The Barnard Parents Committee might be even more interested in your thoughts, since their own children are the primary targets of Abu El Haj's campaign to demonize the state of Israel and the Jews.

---------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE, A QUESTION: Why do you suppose The University of Chicago Press lists Abu El-Haj's book in the category of "Europe"? Yeah, they do. Go look.

Back when I was in the Ivory Tower, they never would have ... oh, never mind.