Friday, September 21, 2007
Two good ones in today's Columbia Spectator. First, Barnard Professor Alan F. Segal does a dispassionate examination of Nadia Abu El Haj's work: Some Professional Observations on the Controversy about Nadia Abu El-Haj’s First Book. Lengthy, in-depth, measured in tone. He'll be savaged.
Aren M. Maeir (whose review of El Haj's work I posted way back here) writes: Freedom of Speech or Freedom of Slander? It's one thing to repeat falsehoods, it's another to damage peoples' reputations by doing so.
Bonus: Podhoretz in the NY Post: A Terrorist for Tea (Mentions Rashid Khalidi, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Joseph Massad, Edward Said)
The arguments by Alan Segal and Aren Maeir are really forceful. I'm glad that they're in The Spectator.
A telling point: That those who praise Abu El-Haj's work are anthropologists who know nothing about archeology. How could they even judge her work. I wonder, where are there archeologists, even left-wing archeologists, praising her work?
Funny how Alan Segal comes across in his own article as indeed serious, inbiased and pursuasive...unlike in the New York Times article that quoted him.