At this point, if Netanyahu appeared on TV with a necklace made from the teeth of Palestinian children, would anybody be surprised? #Gaza
— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) July 20, 2014
Around this time last year, as kids all over the country were heading back to their colleges, a few of their professors were switching jobs as well. One of them,
Steven Salaita had quit his tenured position at Virginia Tech and was moving, along with his family to start a new job at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His wife had quit her job as well so he could take up an
Associate Professorship in the American Indian Studies department at UIUC and he was scheduled to teach two courses that fall. Salaita also had his mind on other things. His parents are from Palestine and Jordan and he was watching the
death toll mount as the Israeli army bombed Gaza last summer.
Then, on August 1, UIUC recinded a job offer. Most media organizations quickly caught on that his offer was revoked due to tweets like this:
Zionists, take responsibility: if your dream of an ethnocratic Israel is worth the murder of children, just fucking own it already. #Gaza
— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) July 19, 2014
Salaita wasn't a stranger to controversy, while at Virginia Tech he got into some hot-water for an opinion piece he wrote at Salon titled
No, thanks: Stop saying “support the troops” (Compulsory patriotism does nothing for soldiers who risk their lives -- but props up those who profit from war.)
Salaita has a Ph.D. in Native American Studies from the University of Oklahoma. Some of his work had drawn parallels between the rhetoric employed during the settler colonization of North America and Palestine. His firing caused an immediate uproar within the academic community. UIUC's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure investigated the incident and issued a report that was very critical of the university administration.
A Storm over Tweets
Most observers quickly pointed out that UIUC acted in response to a deluge of letters (and threats) like these from alumni, students and others:
Having been a multiple 6 figure donor to Illinois over the years I know our support is ending as we vehemently disagree with the approach this individual espouses. This is doubly unfortunate for the school as we have been blessed in our careers and have accumulated quite a balance sheet over my 35 year career.
Yet, with the hiring of Salaita, the University of Illinois is making a great mistake and hiring what I consider a Jihadist. He is an outright Jew-hater and we have no place for this on campus.
I am loyal Illinois alum as is my wife [redacted] and son [redacted] We have been President’s council members for several decades and donors to both academic programs and the I-Fund. [redacted sentence] I have been a relentless promoter of UIUC as the school for the best and brightest Jewish students in Illinois. The beautiful Cohen Hillel helped solidify this effort.
[...]
Mr. Salaita’s hatred of Israel will be detrimental to Jewish life at UIUC. I believe his presence will make Jewish students uncomfortable as he is a smart and outspoken critic of the creation of Israel. He will be front and center at every turn. He is a modern day anti-Semite filled with hate who is careful to use anti-Zionism to defend his opinion.
After Salaita spoke publicly, The Forward
ran an article about the furore:
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that "donors give money and they expect certain things. There’s nothing wrong with them voicing their opinion." Foxman said Salaita’s tweets "border on anti-Semitism." The university said that the decision to rescind Salaita’s appointment was not a result of donor pressure.
A collection of the letters, released by UIUC in response to FoI (Freedom of Information) requests is
available in PDF form. I've created a concordance with his tweets in another diary:
The Salaita Tweets: A Twitter/Outrage concordance.
Wise also met separately with at least one donor who delivered a memo on paper. There were public statements from various organizations including the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
In an interesting twist, Salaita is also suing the donors (the Center for Constitutional Rights is handling the case). His lawyers note that Wise "went out of her way to meet with donors and didn’t bother to consult Salaita himself or the hiring committee that vetted him or the department that hired him".
But, But, But Academic Freedom
Bruce Rosenstock, UI religion professor and president of the Campus Faculty Association explained why the prospect of the University caving in to donors riled so many:
"If any donor told a faculty member in the Jewish Studies program that they will give money but they want veto power over who is hired, we would reject the money no matter how large a sum it is," he said. "I would hope that any university administrator would tell a donor who wishes to influence the university about a hiring decision it has made that it is inappropriate for that individual to attempt to influence in anyway whatever."
As for the emails sent, Rosenstock said he wishes Wise had responded to them all with something like, "It's inappropriate for donors to have any influence on hiring and dismissals. Respectfully, Phyllis Wise."
The University
initially defended Salaita's right to free speech and confirmed he would teach that fall, but that changed a few days later and a quest to find the right way to fire him began. Chancellor Wise initially said she would not forward Salaita's appointment to the Board of Trustees for what should have been a perfunctory vote. Her attempt to grab complete authority over all hirings in this manner did not go over well with faculty. Wise was forced to forward Salaita's appointment to the board and they voted on September 11, 2014. They confirmed the appointment of 120 new faculty members as a package, and voted separately,
8-1 not to confirm Salaita. The lone vote in support of Salaita came from a black member of the Board of Trustees,
James D. Montgomery, who recalled his own vocal activism against housing discrimination on the UIUC campus in the 1950s:
“I guess I was about as vocal as Dr. Salaita,” he said.
Montgomery said Salaita’s comments “were not in the context of the university or of the classroom,” which should make it constitutionally protected and not “in the context of seeking employment at this university.”
University administrators raised public concerns about Salaita's perceived
lack of civility in the context of his dismissal.
What we cannot and will not tolerate at the University of Illinois are personal and disrespectful words or actions that demean and abuse either viewpoints themselves or those who express them.[...] Tenure also brings with it a heavy responsibility to continue the traditions of scholarship and civility upon which our university is built.
Yet,
his lawyers note that:
Tellingly, in 2012, UIUC took no action when a professor made racist comments at a gathering of white supremacists, and in 2010, UIUC reinstated a lecturer who had been terminated for making homophobic comments in an email to a student. The starkly different treatment of Salaita reveals that UIUC’s real motivation was donor pressure to silence unpopular political speech.
To protest Salaita's termination,
16 academic departments at UIUC issued public
votes of no confidence in the administration. They were partly upset because
neither the department which hired Saliata, nor other faculty had been consulted before the Chancellor decided to revoke the offer. As a
later letter from department heads put it:
The concerns raised by the university’s handling of Dr. Salaita’s case fall into two broad categories: (1) concerns about academic freedom and free speech generally, and (2) concerns about shared governance and well-established protocols for hiring, promotion, and tenure.
So what's happening Now?
Salaita sued the University to get his position back. Though this case revolves around tweets, similar attempts have been made in the past to deny tenure or demote outspoken academic critics of Israel and supporters of BDS. In Norman Finkelstein's case, he was subsequently unabale to find teaching positions at any US University once concerted pressure by Alan Dershowitz led to denial of tenure at DePaul. I'm sure Salaita is well aware that no college will want the ADL to descend on their campus when they offer him a job. As the lawsuit has progressed, a number of events have happened.
The first is that Salaita will be teaching this coming year at the American University of Beirut. He's been appointed (for one year) the Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies there.
Golden Parachutes pricked by FoI requests
Chancellor Wise resigned her post as Chancellor on August 7. She had reportedly reached a deal to receive a $400,000 exit package. But the board turned around and decided to dismiss her instead and denied her the 400K golden parachute.
The stated reason is that she is under an ethics investigation:
Certain administrative officials at the University of Illinois used personal email to conduct university business and failed to turn over those documents during Freedom of Information Act requests, a violation of university policy, a UI probe has found.
It appears this was a deliberate attempt to hide these communications and others from disclosure in an investigation:
"I may be getting paranoid," she wrote, "but since someone has FOIed all of the emails that Laura Frerichs has exchanged between herself and the internal and external advisory board members with regards to the COM, I am using my personal email and sending it to (redacted) personal email."
In a September 2014 email regarding the Steven Salaita lawsuit, Wise wrote that campus spokeswoman Robin Kaler "has warned me and others not to use email since we are now in litigation phase. We are doing virtually nothing over our Illinois email addresses. I am even being careful with this email address and deleting after sending,” Wise said.
Wise also enquired about using Dropbox as a means to hide these communications. Corey Robin explains why
no one should feel sorry for Wise and Academe Blog delved into what was
revealed by the e-mails. Wise also seems to have become frustrated with how she was the flashpoint for criticism and in an
e-mail from December about the faculty report, she said:
"What angers me about this report is that they believe that I made the decision and that the BOT followed my recommendation. That is just plain not true. I have been carrying the water since (public relations firm) Edelman said that we have to stay as one voice. I don't think I can do that any longer. I am going to talk with (university counsel) Scott (Rice) about setting the record straight,"
See you in court
Salaita's lawsuit to regain his position at UIUC is working it's way through the courts. The University tried to get the case dismissed, claiming Salaita was never truly an employee. The judge had this to say as he allowed the suit to proceed (full decision here):
If the Board vote was truly a condition to contract formation, then the University would have the Board vote on appointments before the start of a semester and before spending money on a new professor or treating the professor as a full-fledged employee. Finally, the University actually held the Board vote despite its claim that it had no agreement whatsoever. If the University truly felt no obligation to Dr. Salaita, the University could have simply not put the appointment to a vote at all. Instead, the University still went ahead with the vote, which is at least some evidence that it felt obligated to hold a vote according to the terms of the offer letter. Simply put, the University cannot argue with a straight face that it engaged in all these actions in the absence of any obligation or agreement.
Juan Cole has been following the case for some time and his latest post is:
How the Israel Lobbies hurt U of Illinois-UC & 1st Amendment (Salaita Case). This is a
First Amendment issue since the
University of Illinois is a public university and Salaita was pretty clearly fired for his
speech on a public matter. The federal court's ruling continues:
The University’s attempt to draw a line between the profanity and incivility in Dr. Salaita’s tweets and the views those tweets presented is unavailing; the Supreme Court did not draw such a line when it found Cohen’s “Fuck the Draft” jacket protected by the First Amendment. Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 26 (1971).
[...] the Supreme Court has warned of the dangers inherent in punishing public speech on public matters because of the particular words or tone of the speech.
[…] Dr. Salaita’s tweets implicate every “central concern” of the First Amendment. Burson v. Freeman, 504 U.S. 191, 196 (1992) (stating that there are “three central concerns in our First Amendment jurisprudence: regulation of political speech, regulation of speech in a public forum, and regulation based on the content of the speech.”).
Lots more, below the orange elbow-patch on my tweed jacket. A more complete list of Salaita tweets along with letter of protest to UIUC are in the
companion diary.
Last year, from July 8 to August 26, Israeli troops bombed and shelled the dense Palestinian enclave of Gaza causing over 2200 Palestinian deaths, including 551 children. Entire families were wiped out by bombs intentionally targeting their homes, 142 families lost three or more members. The UN estimated at least 67% of the Palestinian fatalities were civilians. Hamas, which rules Gaza was also firing rockets into Israel and fighting IDF troops. 66 Israeli soldiers, 5 civilians including one child lost their lives in the conflict.
Israel was responsible for more civilian casualties from explosive weapons than any other state actor in 2014, over 40% of the total incidents and casualties were ascribed to the IDF. The Syrian government was next at 16% (though reporting was more patchy from Syria).
Salaita took to twitter amid the carnage and was regularly tweeting stuff like this:
Fuck you, #Israel. And while I'm at it, fuck you, too, PA, Sisi, Arab monarchs, Obama, UK, EU, Canada, US Senate, corporate media, and ISIS.
— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) July 20, 2014
And this tweet, three days after the Israeli navy had fired missiles on a beach in Gaza,
killing four young children playing soccer.
According to #Israel, bombing hospitals and murdering kids on a beach are the epitome of civilized behavior. #Gaza
— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) July 19, 2014
This particular incident garnered widespread condemnation in the global media. The Israeli government tried to quelch internal dissent by
banning a radio advertisement which read out the names of dead Palestinian children (it was prepared by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem).
The Daily Caller published a piece: America 2014: University of Illinois Professor Blames Jews For Anti-Semitism which read:
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has continued its bizarre quest to employ as many disgusting scumbags as possible by acquiring the services of Steven Salaita, a leading light in the movement among similarly obscure academics to boycott Israel.
The post quoted a Cronell professor who had
lit into Salaita on his blog earlier in the week in part saying:
Twitter has opened a window into the soul of the anti-Israel boycott movement.
Both articles took particular exception to this tweet:
By eagerly conflating Jewishness and Israel, Zionists are partly responsible when people say antisemitic shit in response to Israeli terror.
— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) July 18, 2014
Reading it as blaming anti-semitism on Zionists. Salaita seems to have been aware that something was up when he tweeted this:
While Israel bombs children in #Gaza, Zionists are busy trying to get #BDS activists fired,"
— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) July 23, 2014
By July 22,
local Illinois media had picked up the story. The University initially defended him, with the campus spokesperson saying: "Faculty have a wide range of scholarly and political views, and we recognize the freedom-of-speech rights of all of our employees,"
But by August 1, Chancellor Phyllis Wise told Salaita his job offer had been rescinded since the administration would not forward his appointment for certification by the Board of Trustees.
The response among academics
Salaita's dismissal garned almost immediate negative feedback from academics across the country. Juan Cole wrote an forceful post: Is Zionism/ Jewish Nationalism a Political Cult? The Salaita Firing and recalled similar incidents where concerted efforts were made to unsuccessfully fire Vijay Prashad from Trinity and successfully deny Norman Finkelstein tenure at DePaul.
Michael Rothberg, Head of the English Department at UIUC wrote an open letter to Chancellor Wise:
The colleagues with whom you are meeting possess much of this relevant expertise, but I would have wanted to speak to you as a scholar working in Holocaust studies and Jewish studies as well as literary studies. Having published work relevant to this case on antisemitism, racism, and the Israeli/Palestinian issue, I feel I might have offered some insight into the nature of Steven Salaita’s tweets, which apparently lie at the core of this case.
While I continue to believe that political speech—no matter how controversial or extreme it might be considered—is protected by the First Amendment and the core values of Academic Freedom, I have also observed many interpretations of Professor Salaita’s protected speech about the Israeli bombing of Gaza that I consider misguided and that deserve to be refuted. I strongly believe that neither Professor Salaita himself nor the tweets that are at issue are antisemitic. I say this as someone personally and professionally sensitive to expressions of antisemitism. Indeed, Professor Salaita has stated repeatedly in numerous tweets and writings that have not been cited by his detractors that he opposes antisemitism and racism of all kinds. I find these writings to be sincere and observe that nobody has brought a single piece of evidence to bear that would contradict Professor Salaita’s explicit personal opposition to antisemitism. The tweets that have been reproduced again and again in reports on this case are not expressions of antisemitism but criticism of how charges of antisemitism are used to excuse otherwise inexcusable actions.
Nor do I believe that the tweets are—as some have claimed—incitements to violence. Such interpretations derive from poor readings of the record and also carry the additional irony of ignoring (or denying) that his tweets were written at a moment when the Israeli army—the IDF—was inflicting considerable violence on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza. I would not deny that Professor Salaita’s tweets are frequently expressed in strong language, and I share what I imagine is your preference for a civil tone in public discourse. But there are moments—like the recent bombing campaign—when we may need to expand our notion of what constitutes an acceptable tone so that it is commensurate with the events at stake. When we witness outrages, it may be more honest to express that outrage in our language than to pretend that we can maintain a calm and composed style.
There were a few people though who seemed to
shift their views on academic freedom when it came to Salaita and his condemnation of Israel:
Cary Nelson, an English professor and a former president of the American Association of University Professors, who has been an outspoken advocate of academic freedom in the past, gave strong support to the university’s decision. Mr. Nelson told Inside Higher Ed that he knew of “no other senior faculty member tweeting such venomous statements — and certainly not in such an obsessively driven way.”
“There are scores of over-the-top Salaita tweets,” he added.
Corey Robin
called Nelson out on his about face:
Once upon a time I wrote an essay for an anthology Nelson edited on unions in academia. When I was the leader of the grad union drive at Yale, he came to campus and spoke out on our behalf. I thought of him as not only a champion of academic freedom but as an especially acerbic — some might even say uncivil—commentator willing to throw a few elbows at his fellow academics. One time, he even compared a fellow English professor to a vampire bat, and proceeded to make fun of his bodily movements and facial gestures. In an academic publication subject to peer review.
But in recent years Nelson has become an outspoken defender of the State of Israel and a critic of the BDS movement. A man who once called for the boycott of a university now thinks boycotts of universities are a grave threat to academic freedom. A man who serially violates the norms of academic civility — urging fellow academics to “give key administrators no peace. Place chanting pickets outside their homes. Disrupt every meeting they attend with sardonic or inspiring public theater” — now invokes those same norms against a critic of Israel. A man who once wrote that “claims about collegiality are being used to stifle campus debate, to punish faculty, and to silence the free exchange of opinion by the imposition of corporate-style conformity,” now complains about an anti-Zionist professor’s “foul-mouthed presence in social media.” A man who once called the movement against hostile environments and in favor of sensitive speech on campus “Orwellian,” now frets over a student of Salaita’s fearing she “would be academically at risk in expressing pro-Israeli views in class.”
[...]
But I bring up Nelson’s case for another reason. And that is that his hypocrisy is not merely his own. It is a symptom of the effects of Zionism on academic freedom, how pro-Israel forces have consistently attempted to shut down debate on this issue, how they “distort all that is right.” Nelson’s U-Turn demonstrates that we’re heading down a very dangerous road. I strongly urge all of you to put on the brakes.
Nelson had also
vigorously defended Kenneth Howell, the UIUC adjunct who was briefly terminated over homophobic remarks and e-mails.
The American Association of University Professors disavowed Nelson's statement:
We feel it necessary to comment on this case not only because it involves principles that AAUP has long defended, but also because Cary Nelson, a former president of the Association and a current member of our Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, is quoted as approving the Illinois Chancellor's action. Professor Nelson is entitled to his opinions. Indeed, one of AAUP's great strengths is our ability to bring together many differing viewpoints and ideas, including about the meaning of academic freedom. However, we wish to make clear that Professor Nelson's comments do not reflect an official position of AAUP or of its Committee A.
Moreover, the AAUP has long objected to using criteria of civility and collegiality in faculty evaluation because we view this as a threat to academic freedom.
The AAUP has since
voted to censure UIUC over the Salaita affair and Juan Cole argued this was a
defeat for Israel Lobbies.
Robert Weissberg (the UIUC Political Science professor who speaks regularly at white-supremacist conferences) incidentally wrote an article in favor of Salaita's dismissal because he thinks Salaita's work wasn't evaluated according to the "right" standards:
The Salaita incident illustrates how an otherwise effective system can easily be manipulated if professors stand shoulder-to-shoulder to insist that expertise on Sheik Abdulla Ben Geronimo qualifies one to teach about American Indians.
Salaita, has a Ph.D. in Native American Studies and the department was hiring him partly
because of his comparative analysis of American Indian and Palestinian experiences. But Weissberg thinks something else is at work here:
administrators close their eyes to iffy appointments to keep the peace, particularly in departments (e.g., Native American Studies) on the periphery of the school’s core mission (for the University of Illinois it is science, engineering, and agriculture).
I guess his particular field, Poli Sci is in keeping with the core mission because it's a "Science". But this is the professor who
purged his American government course of slavery, criminality and the 3/4 compromise to make it "relatively undemanding" and avoid a "misinformed" discussion of racism.
Thankfully, UIUC also employs some sane professors. Over 30 UIUC department heads also wrote an open letter to the incoming President on Salaita's appointment laid out the various issues the university was facing in response to the firing:
More than 5,000 academics from across the country and around the world have expressed their disapproval by boycotting UIUC. More than three-dozen scheduled talks and multiple conferences across a variety of disciplines – including, for example, this year’s entire colloquium series in the Department of Philosophy – have already been canceled, and more continue to be canceled, as outside speakers have withdrawn in response to the university’s handling of Dr. Salaita’s case. [...]
Most troubling of all, the ability of many departments to successfully conduct faculty searches, especially at the senior level, has been seriously jeopardized. While the possible negative effects on even junior searches remain to be seen, the Department of History has already abandoned a previously authorized senior search in U.S. history this year in recognition of the bleak prospects of attracting suitable applicants in the current climate. An open rank search in Philosophy attracted 80% fewer applicants at the rank of associate or full professor than a senior search in the same area of specialization just last year.
A number of other academics have signed petitions in support of Salaita, including
here,
here and
here.
A closing note on the Gaza conflict
Israeli forces fired 14,500 tank shells and 35,000 other unguided artillery shells into Gaza. The UN reported Israeli forces had also fired 5,830 missiles from aircraft. Hamas fired roughly 5,000 rockets and 2,000 mortar rounds at Israel, statistical estimates suggest Israel's "Iron Dome" destroyed about 5% of the rockets many of the rest were partially intercepted but likely went on to explode on impact.
Low Israeli casualties were the result of an early warning system which prompted timely evacuation to shelters or interior spaces, coupled with the small size of Hamas rocket warheads (most are 10-20 lbs). In contrast, Israeli missiles often carry 1,000 or 2,000 lb warheads which are capable of damaging most shelters and often destroy entire buildings. The IDF's standard artillery shell has a 15 lbs explosive charge and is designed to detonate into 2,000 fragments on impact.
It's important to note that many of the missiles and shells the IDF used are made and supplied by the US, as part of an annual $3Bn package of military aid.
There are a lot more of Salaita's tweets and excerpts from the e-mails UIUC received in the companion diary: The Salaita Tweets: A Twitter/Outrage concordance
Note: All emphasis in quotes above is mine.