Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Wow, Barnard's Nadia Abu El Haj has certainly been making a name for herself, all without saying a word. Here are a few new links.
Judith has two good posts on the subject: The Times spins for Nadia al-Haj and The Times spins for Nadia Abu al-Haj - my response.
The Columbia Spectator has two new pieces. One fer: On Academic Freedom, and one agin: On Academic Integrity.
Finally, The Jewish Week reports: Tenure Battle At Barnard Gains Fresh Urgency.
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The Media is hungry for Arab, Palestinian, Muslim commentators, intellectuals, who look and speak "European". You won't find the same indulgence towards other, visible or invisible, minorities. The Media need to feel that they are being even-handed, clean, unprejudiced, doing their job of "speaking truth to power". They are suffering from the fallacy that Bertrand Russell called "The suprior virtu of the oppressed". Arabs, Muslims and especuially palestinians are the fashionably "oppressed" today.
In the treatment of El-Haj, I sense a very conscious attempt to bend over backwards in order to present her case in as favourable a light as possible. It's the soft racism of little expectations, or something. Edward Said enjoyed and exploited this indulgence to the fullest, without which his Orientalist theories would have remained marginal and even discredited (as they are beginning to be now). His intellectual offsprings, El-Haj being one of them, are now basking in the aftermath of that media glow. To Said's credit, he never pretended to be any expert other than on Literary Criticism. He knew his limitations and the limit of scholarly indulgence. Seems to me El-Haj is getting carried away in her sense of her own importance. She pretends to be an expert in disciplines in which she has an amaturish type of knowledge.
Below is a link to a group called "Stop The Madrassa: Protecting Our Public Schools from Islamist Curricula".
http://stopthemadrassa.wordpress.com
The group was created in response to the "Khalil Gibran International Academy" in NYC.
The deposed founding principal, Debbie Almontaser wore a shirt with "Intifada NYC".
Debbie is a bit insensitive after 9/11.