The descent of most of our most revered institutions of higher edication is accelearting, it seems. How else to explain the hiring of Nadia Abu El Haj, a Palestinian—American as Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Barnard. She openly states that she writes within a scholarly tradition that 'Reject(s) a positivist commitment to scientific methods...' and is 'rooted in... post structuralism, philosophical critiques of foundationalism, Marxism and critical theory... and developed in response to specific postcolonial political movements.' Diana Muir and Avigail Appelbaum write about her and her book (based on her doctoral dissertation) Facts on the Ground; Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self—Fashioning in Israeli Society (University of Chicago Press, 2001) at the History News Network. This post—modern approach empowers Abu El Haj to vaporize the positivist notion that the Jewish people lived in Israel in ancient times. Making such a well—documented...(Read Full Post)