Thursday, May 29, 2008
So says a short piece at HNN: Joseph A. Massad: Palestinian-American Scholar at Columbia U. Gets 2nd Chance at Tenure
The news appeared in the blogosphere late last fall: Columbia University had reportedly denied the tenure bid of Joseph A. Massad, a Palestinian-American scholar at the university.
"Raise your cup," Paula Stern, a Jewish American who blogs from Israel, wrote last November. "Joseph Massad will not remain at Columbia University."
But six months later, Mr. Massad -- an associate professor of Arab politics in Columbia's embattled department of Middle East and Asian languages and culture -- is still a professor at the university. His third book, Desiring Arabs (University of Chicago Press), just won the prestigious Lionel Trilling Book Award, given by a committee of undergraduates at the university. And Columbia has made no announcement about his tenure status.
So what happened?..
What happened, according to the piece, is that he's being given another shot at consideration following complaints. The Trilling Award, as noted (here, previously), is given by undergraduates. What do they know? Seriously.
[h/t: Adam Holland]
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Bir Zeit-on-Hudson is continuing to earn its name if this report by the Angry Arab is to be believed: Joseph Massad has tenure I have a message to all the Zionist hoodlums out there: for all of you who campaigned... Read More
A broad cross section of Massad's academic works:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Massad
As you can see, this is somebody whose intellectual mentors on subjects like the Middle East and the Holocaust include "academic giants" like Paul Findley, Lenni Brenner, and Norman Finkelstein. That Massad would even cite such non-accredited fringe individuals as his _key_ sources in academic journal articles boggles the mind. That he would opine about subjects about which he has no understanding (like the Talmud, or world Jewish culture) is stunning. That his book on gays in the Middle East would find a proud place on Ahmadinejad's shelf is shocking. And his use of inflammatory but fraudulent quotations of certain prime ministers (and his refusal even to correct the record explicitly) belies his claims of academic professionalism---isn't that academic misconduct?
The fact that anyone is seriously even considering granting Massad a tenure position at an Ivy League university is almost too absurd to imagine, and is clearly a function of ideological politics. And yet people are suggesting with a straight face that he is being _denied_ tenure because of politics? Absurd. Has anyone considered the possibility that Massad is just a second-rate, ideological, academic wannabe who is only where he is right now because of academic back-scratching and because his views happen to be in vogue these days?
And this is how he behaves _before_ getting tenure. Anyone wish to imagine what a headache he’d be for the university _after_ getting tenure?