Hagit Borer

Hagit Borer is a professor of linguistics at Queen Mary University of London,[1] after recently leaving the University of Southern California.[2] Her research falls within the area of Generative Grammar. Her theoretical approach shifts the computational load from words to syntactic structure, and pursues the consequences of such an approach for morphosyntax, for language acquisition, for the syntax-semantics interface, and for syntactic inter-language variation. She initiated the eXoSkeletal framework in Morphology, which implements this idea.

Borer also is an activist for the rights of Arabs in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Life and work

Hagit Borer was born in Israel in 1952. Disillusioned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she went to the United States to study in 1977. She became an American citizen in 1992.[3]

Borer earned her PhD in linguistics in 1981 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was a student of Noam Chomsky. She has held academic positions at University of California, Irvine and University of Massachusetts Amherst prior to her hire at the University of Southern California. She is the author of several books in linguistics, including the two books that detail the eXoSkeletal Model in Morphology.[4]

Politics

Borer has been a member of Women in Black which protests Israeli violations of human rights[5] and of Jews for Justice for Palestinians. In 2007 she wrote a letter supporting professor Norman Finkelstein's bid for tenure which was being challenged because of his critical writings on Israel.[6] She has lectured extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Borer was a passenger on the Audacity of Hope ship which participated in the 2011 Freedom Flotilla II which left from Greece, attempted sailing to break the Israeli Blockade of the Gaza Strip. Fellow passengers included Hedy Epstein and Alice Walker.[7] On hearing of the U.S. warning against participating in the actions she said "Apparently, the State Department subscribes to the view that Israel’s anticipated violence against unarmed protesters is an immutable act of nature."[8] Before the voyage, the Los Angeles Times carried an Op-Ed by Borer in which she explained that her motivation and wrote that "a society built on conquest and dispossession would have to dehumanize the conquered in order to continue to dispossess and oppress them" and "We wish to say to the Palestinians that, yes, there are people in Israel who know that any viable future for the Middle East must be based on a just peace — not the forced imposition spelled out by Netanyahu to Congress — or else we are all doomed."[3]

After the voyage, she stated that the Greek commandos who took the ship and forced it back to a Greek port "arrived with machine guns. It was quite scary. They seemed ready for a fight. The commandos looked threatening, they wore helmets and their faces were covered."[9] In August 2011 the Jerusalem Post printed and opinion piece about the incident by Borer and Ann Wright.[10]

Selected bibliography

External links

See also

References

  1. ↑ Department of Linguistics Hagit Borer profile page, Queen Mary University of London.
  2. ↑ Department of Linguistics Hagit Borer profile page, University of Southern California.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Hagit Borer, Getting on board with peace in Israel, Los Angeles Times, June 26, 2011.
  4. ↑ Hagit Borer, Exo-Skeletal vs. Endo-Skeletal Explanations: Syntactic Projections and the Lexicon, in The Nature of Explanation in Linguistic Theory, John Moore and Maria Polinsky (eds.), CSLI Publications, 203.
  5. ↑ McDonnell, Pat; Twair, Samir, Sharon Supporters Harass Counter-Demonstrators At "Solidarity Rally" for Israel, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 31, 2001, via Highbeam.
  6. ↑ Hagit Borer, June 14, 2007 Letter from Hagit Borer regarding Norman Finkelstein, reprinted at Jews for Justice for Palestinians website.
  7. ↑ Passenger list of the Audacity of Hope.
  8. ↑ U.S. Warns Peace Activists Not to Join Gaza Flotilla, Democracy Now, June 24, 2011.
  9. ↑ Yaron Druckman, Gaza-bound boat: Greek commandos forced us back, Ynet News, July 1, 2011.
  10. ↑ Hagit Borer and Ann Wright, What do 'Flotilla Folk' do and why?, Jerusalem Post, August 1, 2011, via Highbeam.