19 בנובמבר 2012

Our Response to the 2005 Annual Meeting

of The Israeli Anthropological Association

 

 

In March 2004, the Ahoti-Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow-Mossawa Coalition Against Apartheid in Israeli Anthropology filed a complaint with Israel’s state comptroller, asking for his clarifications on the following matters: the near-total absence of Mizrahi and Palestinian FTE holders from anthropology departments, the methodic violation of our communal intellectual and cultural rights, and the absence of any code of ethics from Israel’s anthropological research and writing.

We wish to remark that the international pressure on Israel’s Anthropological Association (IAA) probably starts bearing some positive outcomes. We have conducted an in-depth study of this year’s IAA program and participants’ composition, and compared it with previous years’ programs and participants (see http://www.anthropology.org.il/ , Heb. font required). We are pleased to observe that this year, the meeting is largely dedicated to topics dealing with Israel’s non-European disenfranchised population, emphasizing issues of Mizrahi identity.

We have noted the special effort the conference organizers made to locate Mizrahi and Palestinian-Israeli scholars from a variety of disciplines and provide them with a stage to present their research.

Nevertheless, the we regret to inform you that this year’s program does not demonstrate any shift in Israeli Anthropology FTE hiring practices so that these reflect the fact that about two thirds of Israel’s citizenry is not US-European.

We have analyzed the disciplinary and ethnic-gendered-national distribution of the 2005 conference participants. Going over the charts below one cannot but notice that the majority of both untenured and tenured FTE holders participating in the 2005 meetings is of Ashkenazi (Jews originating in Europe).

 

·         Only ONE of the anthropologists participating in the meeting is a Mizrahi tenured FTE, and only recently did he get tenure.

·         The number of tenured Mizrahi women anthropologists is ZERO.

·         The number of untenured anthropologists who are FTE holders, men and women alike, is ZERO.

·         The number of Palestinian-Israeli FTE holders, men and women alike, whether tenured or not, who participate in the 2005 conference, is ZERO.

 

Alas, but this year’s meeting, therefore, does not address the original complaint the Coalition filed with Israel’s State Comptroller in March 2004. Reading the program, one could therefore deduce that the IAA has preferred to fill in its 2005 program with Oriental sounding names rather than remedy its discriminatory recruitment and hiring policies for tenure-track faculty positions and its continuous appropriation of our communal cultural rights.

 

Nurit Hajjaj, CEO, the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow +972-3-524-7702

Ja`afar Farah, CEO, Mossawa-The Advocacy Center for the Palestinian Citizens of Israel +972-4-869-9587

 

 

Disciplinary and Ethnic-Gendered-National Distribution of IAA 2005 Program Participants

Estimated margin of error – 7%

Data was analyzed according to official IAA program and available public records on Israeli university faculty and graduate students

Tenured University FTE-ed Participants in IAA 2005 Program

* The tenured Mizrahi Anthro FTE holder is the recently appointed head of the IAA.

Tenured College FTE-ed Participants in IAA 2005 Program

Israeli colleges differ from universities because college FTE holders are not entitled to research and travel monies. The moneis university FTE staff receive include large sums for traveling abroad and for Hebrew-English translation and editing. Israeli merits and promotions are mainly decided on English language publication record.

Anthropology                2 Ashkenazi women

Communication             1 woman (Jewish, yet ethnicity unclear)

Exception Senior:

1 Mizrahi woman anthropologist, with non-tenured senior position, at a research institute, and therefore, with limited access to students.

 

Untenured FTE-ed Participants in IAA 2005 (both college and university – see above)

Untenured NON-FTE-ed Participants in IAA 2005 (both college and university)

 

MA and PhD Students           

 

Total participants:                       47   (32 women, 15 men)

Out of the 47, only 3 are Palestinian-Israelis, 2 women and 1 man.

Given the unavailability of public records on most, it is difficult to distribute the 44 Jewish Israelis into the categories above.

Nevertheless, our impression is that about half of the Mizrahi students are NOT anthropologists.

Non-Israeli Faculty Participants

 

1 Senior Anthropologist, Ashkenazi Male – Harvard (Plenary Speaker)

1 Junior Anthropologist, Mizrahi Female –  CNRS, France, presently residing in Israel

1 Senior Communication, Asian-American Female – U of Northern Iowa