"[6] Abu El-Haj spent a couple of years in private schools in Tehran, Iran and Beirut, Lebanon, while her father was deployed there for the United Nations.

[2] In it, she uses anthropological methods to explore the relationship between the development of scientific knowledge and the construction of the social imaginations and political orders, using the discipline of Israeli archaeology as the subject of her study.

[14] Abu El-Haj's more recent scholarship explores the field of genetic anthropology through the analysis of projects aimed at reconstructing the origins and migrations of specific populations.

[10] How race, diaspora, and kinship intersect, and how genetic origins emerge as a shared concern among those seeking redress or recognition, are predominant themes in the work.

[20] The Chronicle of Higher Education also wrote that many of Abu El-Haj's supporters said that peer review, and not public pressure, is the appropriate measure of a scholar's work, noting that she has been the recipient of many awards, grants, and academic appointments.

[20] An article in The New York Times in September 2007 reported that many of Abu El-Haj's supporters, particularly those in the field of anthropology, praised her book as "solid, even brilliant, and part of an innovative trend".

[1] In a critique of Facts on the Ground published in the Columbia Daily Spectator, Segal wrote that he opposed Abu El-Haj for professional, and not political, reasons.

[22] William G. Dever, retired professor of Near East archaeology at the University of Arizona, told The New York Sun that Abu El-Haj should be denied tenure because her scholarship is "faulty, misleading and dangerous", and not because she is a Palestinian or a leftist.

[23] Segal and Dever spoke at lectures sponsored by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and LionPAC (a pro-Israel advocacy group at Columbia)[6] aimed at rebutting El-Haj.

[22] In responding to the controversy surrounding Abu El-Haj's work, Barnard President Judith Shapiro said that showing how archaeological research can be used for political and ideological purposes is a legitimate cultural anthropological enterprise.