THE PRESIDENT OF BARNARD COLLEGE, Judith Shapiro, has published an open letter to Alumnae about Nadia Abu El-Haj's book Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society and the tenure controversy surrounding her and it. Excerpt:

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.

This sounds right to me.

(Via the Inside Higher Ed article "Input or Intrusion." Incidentally, contra one commenter, I didn't quite say the book was "daft." I said that if the newpaper article's account of the contents was accurate, it did seem so. I have not read the book. I hope to get around to reading it, but it's not high on my list of priorities right now.)

UPDATE (28 November): In the New York Sun Daniel Pipes also uses the same one-word quote of me without any qualification. I have no interest whatever in defending the book, but I haven't read it and am dependent to no small degree on newspaper reports that I generally don't trust much (and at the time I wrote last week's post that was all I had seen). I do wish people would take the trouble to represent what I actually say, nuance and qualification included. And, by the way, I'm not an archaeologist; I'm a philologist and a historian of religion. But I am an expert on ancient Jewish history.

This episode doesn't increase my faith in what I read in the press. The ironic thing is that I'm quite sympathetic to the concern of Pipes and others about the book, based on what I've heard about it. But I still want what I say to be represented accurately and I'm not going to pronounce on it definitively without actually reading it -- if and when I get time.

I've been fiddling with the exact wording of this update for a few hours, but I think it says now what I want to say.

UPDATE (2 December): More here and here.

UPDATE (28 September 2007): Okay, I've finally had time to read the book and I've posted a review here.