“It’s possible Morningside Heights has found its annual autumn incident,” writes Marc Tracy in Tablet, an online magazine of Jewish news. According to his article published earlier today, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) will investigate a complaint that the chair of Barnard’s Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures ”steered” a Jewish Barnard student away from taking one of Columbia MESAAS Professor Joseph Massad‘s classes because his pro-Palestinian leanings may have made the student feel “uncomfortable.” Tablet notes that Professor Massad has been criticized before, most notably in the 2004 film Columbia Unbecoming, for “cultivating classrooms hostile to pro-Israel voices.” A subsequent internal investigation at Columbia cleared Professor Massad of all allegations, and, after an initial rejection, he was granted tenure in 2007.

Kenneth Marcus, President of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research (IJCR) and former head of the OCR during the Bush administration, brought the complaint to the Department of Ed. He has also served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR), a committee that advises OCR and investigated Columbia for antisemitism in 2006 (go to page 58). It looks like investigating accusations of anti-semitism on college campuses is a top priority for USCCR; they even maintain a special website to report anti-semitism.

Although Marcus brought the incident to the attention of the feds, he didn’t discover it on his own. According to Tablet, Judith Jacobson, a professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and co-founder of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, a group of American academics committed to fighting anti-semitism and anti-Israel bias on college campuses, informed Marcus of the alleged “steering.” Professor Jacobson strongly opposed awarding tenure to Massad and later to Barnard Anthropology Professor Nadia Abu el-Haj, whose work on Israeli anthropology some scholars viewed as too critical of Israel.

Columbia claims Massad isn’t involved in the steering story. A spokesman for the University told Tablet, “It is important to note that the individual complaint appears to relate to academic advising at Barnard College and in no way involves Professor Joseph Massad.” But that’s not how Marcus sees it. His complaint may concern a department head’s “steering,” but the root of his problem is with, as Tablet puts it, “Columbia’s alleged failure to address the perception that Massad’s classes might make Jewish students unduly uncomfortable.” In an IJRC press release, Marcus writes, “if there is a problem in Prof. Massad’s classroom, as the Barnard chair may believe then steering Jewish students away is not the solution…the big question is whether Massad is violating students’ rights too.”

Marcus told Tablet he eagerly anticipates the Department of Ed’s investigation, and in the event that they find Columbia classes are hostile environments for Jewish students, professors involved “need to be dealt with.” Columbia has a historically flourishing Jewish community. According to a survey by Reform Jewish Magazine, Barnard currently ranks third in the country for highest percentage of Jewish students with 43.5%, and Columbia comes in close behind at 25%. Given the tireless commitment that OCR and USCCR have shown to thoroughly investigating accusations of anti-semitism on college campuses, it seems Columbia will have to take these accusations very seriously.
Click here for responses from administrators and student groups

In non-housing-selection related news, this week’s New Yorker has a piece by Jane Kramer (it’s not online, but you can read an excerpt here — and an interesting critique of the piece here) about Barnard anthropology professor Nadia Abu El-Haj. In truth, it’s something of a misrepresentation to say that the piece is about El-Haj, as it ranges in focus from discussing MEALAC’s history of controversy to examining the tenure process’s relationship to politics. But it is interesting and worth a read, if only because it’s the most we’ve heard out of press-averse Abu El-Haj following the ordeal of her tenure process in the fall.

If you’re looking for a piece that will outline Abu El-Haj’s argument, explain her methods of analysis and interpretation, and provide excerpts of her very dense book “Facts on the Ground”, this isn’t it. (If you are, the Current did so subjectively last fall.) While Kramer meanders in this direction, what she’s mainly interested in is how one academic’s tenure process turned into an online firestorm of misinformation and vilification that often said more about Columbia’s Jewish community and faculty than Abu El-Haj’s work.

Read more…

The Sun reported a few days ago–from a “source at the college”–that Columbia has rubber stamped the hotbutton professor Nadia Abu El-Haj’s tenure bid at the Barnard Anthropology Department, the culmination of a drawn-out squabble on the margins of academia (Bwog’s resident expert Josh Mathew took a look when the grandstanding reached its height around the beginning of the semester). Spec still hasn’t independently confirmed it, and we don’t reckon anyone’s going to be answering e-mails over break. But that didn’t stop New Republic editor Marty Peretz from going off on the appointment, bemoaning the state of historical integrity and calling for the Trustees to hand PrezBo a pink slip. 

It’s not the end of the world, Marty. At least Joseph Massad still doesn’t have tenure, according to another wildly speculative rumor.

UPDATE, 1:05 PM: Okay, Spec did confirm it.

In which Bwog correspondent Josh Mathew reports on last night’s lecture about a book and all the hubbub it’s caused.

The Underground Lecture Series: What Archaeology Tells Us About Ancient Israel

Alan Segal, PhD, Professor of Religion and Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies, Barnard College

What does Biblical archaeology tell us about the First Temple Period?

Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj is wrong. At least, that’s what I learned pretty quickly from Professor Alan Segal. The flyer for the event hadn’t mentured El-Haj, but Segal made it clear that, though not a “harangue or tirade,” his remarks served to question El-Haj’s scholarship.  

The event was sponsored by LionPac and the cheerfully-named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, who, according to their website, are “trying to counterbalance the well-documented and increasing anti-Israel and anti-Semitic forces that have made their way to the college campuses today.” A survey of their position papers reveals a dearth of articles actually about peace or conflict resolution, but the name sounds nice.

Segal’s lecture focused primarily on the debate between Biblical maximalists and minimalists—those who consider the Bible to be a reliable historical source regarding non-miraculous things, vs. those who don’t—and finally moved on to El-Haj’s supposed reliance on the latter in her book Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society.  He accuses her of inaccurately portraying maximalists as Biblical fundamentalists and evangelicals, and minimalists as rational thinkers.  In a short history, Segal discussed the historical dominance of the maximalists and the challenges posed by the minimalists, whom he described as an academic minority with little supporting archaeological evidence. Read more…