All this notoriety that she got wouldThere is a silver lining to this development. All this notoriety should have made her extra cautious about what kind of theories she advances in the future. She is going to be challenged for every sentence she writes which she cannot nail down with evidence and sound arguments. It is better off for her to be within a system and answerable to an academic accountability and standards. Rather than float and manufacture outlandish theories in the radical margins of the perpetually-aggrieved and victimized martyrs (Finklstein comes to mind).

Re: Noga

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter whether what she writes is absolute fiction. The anti-zionists and anti-semites will buy her books, and spread her lies as truth. Columbia/Barnard are giving her lies even more credibility and sanction by giving her tenure, which will increase her audience even more. This tenure decision is a very bad development.

Unfortunately, I disagree. She has received a lot of support for her work and for her tenure bid. And the opposition she faced has only made others feel more loyal towards her.

If people are positively inclined towards her, and see her as a sort of heroine, they'll overlook any weird stuff she writes. There'll always be enough people in prestigious positions to defend her. And those who have substantive points to make about her work (aside from pro-Israel partisans) will be ignored. I didn't notice any archeologists praising her book, only anthropologists who wouldn't really know how to evaluate it. Yet their judgments held sway.

No, she won't have to be careful. Quite the contrary. She now has Columbia/Barnard's imprimatur. She's been empowered.

The only slight silver lining is that she cannot claim to be a victim of an all-powerful Israel lobby. But, even here, she can say how the Jews tried to stop her and had made her life a misery for awhile. So she still comes out ahead.

Bummer.

When I said I disagree, I meant with the first comment in this thread, the one that said that she'll be more criticized now because she's notorious. The second comment was added in the meantime.

Only time will tell about what will happen to Al-Haj. I'm not sure exactly what Finkelstein's field was. A-H's field is anthropology, but she's wandered into areas where she is thoroughly out of her "expertise" -- i.e. genetics and archeology. The archeologists have slammed her, and not just Jewish or Israeli archeologists. She may, unlike Finkelstein, have secured tenure, but C-B may end up ruing the day they made this deal, especially if A-H keeps up the bad work.

> but C-B may end up ruing the day
> they made this deal

They may. "the schools" have a long history of having their collective heads up their arses, going all the way back to the greeks, which has lead to one academic revolution after another. Now that our modern schools are allowing themselves to be despoiled by these double talking jihadist abettors, I wonder if a fresh revolution will not be far off.

Now people will be able to say that the fact that Jews lived in Judea is controversial idea.

The next step for Columbia is the psychology department: they should give tenure to Muslim para-psychologists who claim that Israel is spreading negative energy. After that, of course, the environmental cause can be taken up: it will turn out that Jews are warming the planet by breathing. It will be hard to revise physics but Columbia will find a way to import Saudis to debunk the theory of relativity by integrating Einstein's Jewish origins.

Sadly, Sara, your vision is not all that far fetched:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N7t19hfeSE

And here is a list of Islamic scientists boasted about by Muslims:

Portraits of Twelve Muslim Scientists in Various Fields

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/islam09.html

It is impossible not to note that the last of them lived in the thirteenth century.

The granting to her of tenure is a stain on Academia.......not that they care, of course, because anyone who is against Israel in any way is in the minds of academics a true hero(ine).

BHG