The trouble with tenure

The current controversy surrounding Abu El-Haj, an anthropologist at Barnard College in the US, highlights important questions about academic freedom. Essentially, it seems El-Haj’s work suggests that prevailing ideas about the ancient Israelites are the product of modern Israeli politics as much as archaeological or genomic discoveries. Predictably, especially given El-Haj’s Palestinian background, she has come under fire from those who see this as a challenge to the legitimacy of the Israeli state, and the usual polarisation of opinion has ensued. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that there are currently two online petitions, one to deny El-Haj tenure and another to grant it to her.

The situation is complicated by the fact that many of the criticisms are academic: El-Haj is alleged to lack knowledge of Hebrew, for example, and to employ an unscientific ‘social constructivist’ approach. This means her supporters have been caught between a straight ‘academic freedom’ defence, and a substantive defence of her work. Ultimately, it is impossible to separate the two. If someone’s work is entirely without academic merit, there is no meaningful argument for academic freedom: she can be dismissed from a university to pursue her work independently. Things are rarely so clear-cut, though: often academics disagree about what is a worthy line of enquiry, and thus the notion of academic freedom depends on colleagues granting one another the benefit of any reasonable doubt.

Where things get really complicated, as in this case, is when political disagreements take an academic form, and especially when non-academics weigh in, as with the petitions. Fellow anthropologist Paul Rabinow, who is sympathetic to El-Haj, has nonetheless refused to sign the petition in favor of granting her tenure, on the quite reasonable grounds that “Petitions about people’s tenure cases are completely out of order…It’s a breakdown of the standards of debate. I guess the alternative then is demagoguery.” The Chronicle also quotes mathematician and ‘science warrior’ Norman Levitt, who has signed the petition against El-Haj, arguing that “It is wiser to acknowledge that the educated public has something to say about “professional” matters... than to fill the air with pompous resentment when such criticism arises”. Levitt has a point, too, inasmuch as the public has a right to criticize and dispute the merits of academic work. But to suggest that academics should be influenced by public opinion when assessing the work of their colleagues is indeed to open the door to demagoguery.

The whole point of academic freedom, as opposed to simple free speech, is that it is both more demanding (because framed by an academic discipline) and to an extent insulated from the outside world (because criticisms from outside that discipline, however popular, are not relevant). However acrimonious their disagreements might be, academics should have the confidence and integrity to maintain their professionalism amid controversy. As long as El-Haj’s colleagues agree her work has merit - which seems to be the case - she should enjoy full academic freedom. Others are free to challenge her work and disagree with her politics, but the dispute over her tenure is the wrong arena for such arguments.

Dolan Cummings