MORE ON THE BARNARD TENURE CONTROVERSY: Two items deal with the petition against granting tenure to Nadia Abu El-Haj. From John Gravois at the Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog:

August 15, 2007
Alumni Group Seeks to Deny Tenure to Middle Eastern Scholar at Barnard College

Controversial research on Israel and the Palestinian territories has become the basis of yet another campaign to prevent a professor from winning tenure. A group of Barnard College alumni has drafted an online petition asking their alma mater to deny tenure to Nadia Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor of anthropology whose scholarship, they say, is flawed and skewed against Israel.

[...]

And from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

Petition, donor threats on prof
puts spotlight back on Columbia
Nadia Abu El-Haj, author of "Facts on the Ground," is under fire for the 2001 book's perspective.
By Ben Harris Published: 08/14/2007

NEW YORK (JTA) -- A brewing battle over tenure for a polarizing Barnard College professor is threatening to thrust Columbia University back into the center of a controversy over its academic treatment of the Middle East.

Nadia Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard, is the author
of "Facts on the Ground," a 2001 book that questions archaeological claims regarding the ancient Jewish presence in Israel and argues that Israeli archaeologists legitimize the Jewish state's "origin myth."

An online petition against Abu El-Haj had garnered nearly 1,000 signatures as of Tuesday, the bulk of them from students and graduates of Barnard or Columbia University, its institutional parent.

[...]

Background here.

UPDATE (21 August): More here.