Tanya Reinhart

Tanya Reinhart ( _he. טניה ריינהרט; July 1943 – March 17, 2007) was an Israeli linguist who wrote frequently on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She contributed columns to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot and longer articles to the CounterPunch, Znet, and Israeli Indymedia websites.

Reinhart studied philosophy and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem as an undergraduate, where she later received an M.A. in comparative literature and philosophy. In 1976 she obtained a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her thesis supervisor was Noam Chomsky.

Reinhart was a former professor of linguistics and literary theory at Tel-Aviv University. She was also a guest lecturer at Duke University [http://news.duke.edu/mmedia/features/mideast/reinhart_1104.html] and at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and ended her international career as Global Distinguished Professor at New York University (NYU).

Professional Work

Noam Chomsky has described Reinhart's contributions to the field of linguistics as "original and highly influential," particularly regarding "syntactic structure and operations, referential dependence, principles of lexical semantics and their implications for syntactic organization, unified approaches to cross-linguistic semantic interpretation of complex structures that appear superficially to vary widely, the theory of stress and intonation, efficient parsing systems, the interaction of internal computations with thought and sensorimotor systems, optimal design as a core principle of language, and much else." [http://www.counterpunch.org/reinhart03192007.html "In Memory of Tanya Reinhart"] Noam Chomsky, 19 March 2007]

Reinhart's academic work also extended well beyond the field of linguistics, to that of literary theory, mass media, propaganda, and other core elements of intellectual culture. [http://www.counterpunch.org/reinhart03192007.html "In Memory of Tanya Reinhart"] Noam Chomsky, 19 March 2007]

Political Activism

Chomsky has noted Reinhart's activism was not limited to words and that she was often on "the front line of direct resistance to intolerable actions, an organizer and a participant, a stance that one cannot respect too highly." [http://www.counterpunch.org/reinhart03192007.html "In Memory of Tanya Reinhart"] Noam Chomsky, 19 March 2007] Commenting on her death, he wrote that Reinhart would be remembered "not only as a resolute and honorable defender of the rights of Palestinians, but also as one of those who have struggled to defend the moral integrity of her own Israeli society, and its hope for decent survival." [http://www.counterpunch.org/reinhart03192007.html "In Memory of Tanya Reinhart"] Noam Chomsky, 19 March 2007]

Reinhart was an outspoken critic of Israel's policies in the 1967-occupied territories. She argued that Israel should abandon the West Bank and Gaza:

:Israel should withdraw immediately from the territories occupied in 1967. The bulk of Israeli settlers (150,000 of them) are concentrated in the big settlement blocks in the center of the West bank. These areas cannot be evacuated over night. But the rest of the land (about 90%–96% of the West bank and the whole of the Gaza strip) can be evacuated immediately. Many of the residents of the isolated Israeli settlements that are scattered in these areas are speaking openly in the Israeli media about their wish to leave. It is only necessary to offer them reasonable compensation for the property they will be leaving behind. The rest — the hard-core "land redemptions" fanatics — are a negligible minority that will have to accept the will of the majority. [ [http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=50&ItemID=2595 Israel/Palestine: How To End The War Of 1948] , Znet, November 08, 2002]

Reinhart pointed out that immediate withdrawal would still leave under debate between six and ten percent of the West Bank with the large settlement blocks, as well as the issues of Jerusalem and the right of return, and maintains that these should be the subject of "serious peace negotiations".

In 2002, Reinhart was heavily criticized in Israel for signing a European petition calling for a moratorium on European support of Israeli academia in protest of Israel's Palestinian policies.

The same year, she also published a book, "Israel/Palestine: How To End the War of 1948", in which she analyzed what she saw as the breakdown during the preceding three years of constructive engagement over the Palestinian issue and the hardening of the Israeli position.

In December 2006, Reinhart moved to New York saying she could no longer live in Israel due to its treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. [ [http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/19/1354224 Israeli Author, Peace Activist Tanya Reinhart Dies at 63] , Democracy Now, March 19, 2007]

Tanya Reinhart was married to Israeli writer Aharon Shabtai. She has been described as a post-Zionist.Fact|date=February 2007

Death

She died in sleep in March 17 2007 in New York. She was buried in Israel.

Further reading

*"Israel/Palestine : how to end the War of 1948", New York : Seven Stories Press, cop. 2002. - ISBN 1-58322-538-2
*"The road map to nowhere : Israel/Palestine since 2003", London ; New York : Verso, 2006. - ISBN 1-84467-076-7

elected publications in linguistics

*1976. "The Syntactic Domain of Anaphora". Ph. D. dissertation, MIT.
*1981. "Definite NP-anaphora and c-command domains". "Linguistic Inquiry" 12:605-635.
*1983. "Anaphora and Semantic Interpretation". London: Croom Helm.
*1993. "Reflexivity" (with Eric Reuland). "Linguistic Inquiry" 24:657-720.
*1993. "The innateness of binding and coreference" (with Yosef Grodzinsky). "Linguistic Inquiry" 24:69-101.
*1995. "Interface strategies". "OTS Working Papers in Linguistics".
*1997. "Quantifier scope: how labor is divided between QR and choice functions". "Linguistics and Philosophy" 20:335-397.
*1998. "Scrambling and the PF interface" (with Ad Neeleman). In: W. Cobler & M. Butt (eds.), "Projecting from the Lexicon". Stanford: CSLI.
*1998. "Wh-in-situ in the framework of the minimalist program". "Natural Language Semantics".
*2000. "Strategies of anaphora resolution". In: H. Bennis, M. Everaert & E. Reuland (eds.), "Interface Strategies".
*2002. "The Theta System: an overview". "Theoretical Linguistics" 28:229-290.
*2006. "Interface Strategies: Reference-set Computation". Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

References

External links

* [http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/ Reinhart's homepage] (Tel Aviv)
* [http://www.let.uu.nl/~Tanya.Reinhart/personal/ Reinhart's homepage] (Utrecht)
* [http://corkpsc.org/cs.php?byauid=18 Date-ordered list of Reinhart's political publications]
* [http://www.sevenstories.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=58322100716180 Book info]
* [http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=50&ItemID=2595 Interview] (November 8, 2002)
* [http://www.CounterPunch.org/reinhart0424.html "Jenin: the Propaganda Battle"] (April 24, 2002)
* [http://www.mediamonitors.net/tanya20.html "The guaranteed failure of the road map"] (May 16, 2003)
* [http://video.google.it/videoplay?docid=-5508519852244774120&q=reinhart.mp4 "The inheritance of Sharon" - An newsgroup of Siena with Tanya Reinhart and Aharon Shabtai.] (10 May 2006)
* [http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2006/1756313.htm Radio interview with ABC Australia LNL] (October 05, 2006)
* [http://www.alternativenews.org/podcasts/podcasts/news-from-within-podcast-elections-occupation-and-solidarity---an-interview-withtanya-reinhart-20070206.html, News from Within PODCAST: Elections, Occupation and Solidarity - An Interview with Professor Tanya Reinhart] (April 2006)
* [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/839031.html Linguist, left-wing activist Prof. Tanya Reinhardt dies age 63] Haaretz obituary, 19 March 2007
* [http://www.counterpunch.org/reinhart03192007.html She Drew Away the Veil on Criminal and Outrageous Conduct] Noam Chomsky, Counterpunch 19 March 2007
* [http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2007%20News%20Archives/March/19%20n/Palestinian%20Organizations%20Mourn%20Israeli%20Academic%20Tanya%20Reinhart's%20Death,%20Calling%20her%20a%20Great%20Indefatigable%20Activist.htm Palestinian Organizations Mourn Israeli Academic Tanya Reinhart's Death, Calling her "a Great Indefatigable Activist"] Al-Jazeerah Information Center, (19 March 2007)
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2038868,00.html Obituary in the Guardian] (21 March 2007)
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/world/middleeast/23reinhart.html Obituary in the New York Times] (23 March 2007)
* [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7162896430434027128 Aharon Shabtai] speaks on Reinhart obituary, March 2007, video