THERE'S A TENURE CONTROVERY regarding a Barnard College anthropologist who has written a controversial book on the historical relationship of Jews to Palestine:

Barnard Alumnae Opposing Tenure for Anthropologist

By GABRIELLE BIRKNER
Staff Reporter of the [New York] Sun

A group of Barnard College alumnae is attempting to stop their alma mater from giving tenure to an assistant professor who minimizes Jews' historical connection to Israel.

In her 2001 book, "Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society," published by the University of Chicago, the professor of anthropology, Nadia Abu El-Haj says Israeli archaeology manipulates evidence to justify a modern Jewish state in the region.

Relying heavily on the input of anonymous archaeologists, tour guides, and tour participants, the book portrays Israeli archaeologists as ideologues who, driven by a desire to "efface Zionism's colonial dimension," have fabricated Jews' territorial claims to Israel.

I haven't seen the book, but the Sun summarizes some points from it as follows:

In "Facts on the Ground," Ms. Abu el-Haj suggests Jerusalem was destroyed not by the Romans, but by the Jews themselves due to rising class tensions among them. Yet, the 1st-century historian and scribe Josephus described in great detail the Roman siege of Jerusalem. Additionally, carvings in the Arch of Titus in Rome depict the Roman General Titus showing off menorahs and other objects looted from the Second Temple.

In another passage, Ms. Abu El-Haj relates how a tourist questions a Jerusalem tour guide's explanation that the Judean King Hezekiah saved the city from an Assyrian conquest in 701 B.C.E. The tourist refutes the statement, claiming that Hezekiah's actions actually led to the destruction of the nearby Israelite kingdom. "Although the tourist's objection would appear to undermine the guide's interpretation … this is a ludicrous claim, since the Israelite kingdom had been conquered twenty-one years earlier!" an archaeology professor at Israeli's Bar-Ilan University, Aren Maeir, wrote two years ago in a University of Chicago journal, Isis.

If this is an accurate representation of what the book says (always a big if in a newpaper article), it does seem daft.

There's an online review by Alexander Joffe in a recent issue of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, but it's behind a subscription wall and I can't get at it at the moment. And I see that I already noted the controversy over the book a little over a year ago.

UPDATE (27 November): More here.

UPDATE (28 November): If you were referred here to see my "daft" quote, please read what I actually said above, which is a little more cautious than was reported, and then read my comments, including in the update, in this post.

UPDATE (28 September 2007): I have now reviewed Abu El-Haj's book here.