[Peace-discuss] NYT: University's Rescinding of Job Offer Prompts an Outcry

Mon Sep 1 11:58:21 EDT 2014

Dave Blacker, live like him: dare to struggle, dare to win. :)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/education/illinois-university-prompts-outcry-for-revoking-job-offer-to-professor-in-wake-of-twitter-posts-on-israel.html

University's Rescinding of Job Offer Prompts an Outcry
By SYDNI DUNN | THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION | AUG. 31, 2014

WASHINGTON — Several weeks ago, the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign abruptly revoked a job offer to Steven G. Salaita in the
wake of controversial Twitter posts by Mr. Salaita, a former professor of
English at Virginia Tech, about Israel.

Now, two scholars have signaled their protest by pulling out of speaking
engagements at the campus, while a program that was set to host a national
gathering there has called its conference off. Meanwhile, the American
Indian studies program, which Mr. Salaita had been set to join, is
scrambling to make up for his absence.

Mr. Salaita had been offered a job as a tenured professor of American
Indian studies, but his appointment was contingent upon approval by the
university’s Board of Trustees. Earlier this month administrators told Mr.
Salaita in a letter that they would not bring his appointment before the
board after all. An affirmative vote, they said, was unlikely.

The decision, which raised questions about contractual loopholes and
academic freedom, almost immediately drew pushback from the academic
community. Thousands of scholars in a variety of disciplines signed
petitions pledging to avoid the campus unless it reversed its decision to
rescind the job offer. A number of prominent academic associations also
urged the university to reconsider.

In the past few days, several people have followed through on promises to
boycott the institution. Two scholars declined invitations to speak at the
prestigious Center for Advanced Study/MillerComm Lecture Series this fall,
and a campus-based project called off a four-day national conference that
it was scheduled to host there in October.

David J. Blacker, a professor of philosophy and legal studies at the
University of Delaware, notified the Center for Advanced Study on Aug. 20
that he no longer wanted to participate. His lecture had been scheduled for
Sept. 29.

“Instead of choosing education and more speech as the remedy for
disagreeable speech,” he wrote to the committee, the University of Illinois
“has apparently chosen ‘enforced silence.’ It thus violates what a
university must stand for — whatever else it stands for — and therefore I
join those who will not participate in the violation. In my judgment, this
is a core and nonnegotiable issue of academic freedom.”

Mr. Blacker added that he “would be delighted to reschedule my talk” if the
university should decide to reinstate its offer to Mr. Salaita.

The following day, Allen F. Isaacman, a professor of history at the
University of Minnesota, also pulled out of the series, offering a similar
message. His talk had been scheduled for Oct. 30.

“The University of Illinois’s recent decision to disregard its prior
commitment to appoint Professor Salaita confirms my fear of the
administration’s blatant disregard for academic freedom,” Mr. Isaacman
wrote in a letter to Wayne Pitard, a professor of religion and head of the
lecture-series committee. “I do hope that the university administration
will reverse its decision before it does irreparable harm to your great
institution.”

That same day, the Education Justice Project, which is part of the
department of education policy, organization, and leadership at
Urbana-Champaign, announced that it was canceling the National Conference
on Higher Education in Prison, which it had been scheduled to host.

“This decision has not been easy,” Rebecca Ginsburg, an associate professor
in the education policy department, said in an announcement posted on the
project’s webpage. The project’s leaders reached the decision only after
speaking with would-be presenters and attendees, she wrote. “We concluded
that for EJP to host the conference at this time would compromise our
ability to come together as a national community of educators and
activists.”

Ms. Ginsburg could not be reached for comment Friday; university
administrators also did not respond to calls for comment.

On the campus, tensions are just as high.

The chancellor, Phyllis M. Wise, said in a message to the campus on the
afternoon of Aug. 22 that she and other administrators remained
“absolutely” committed to academic freedom and to open debate that welcomed
and encouraged differing perspectives.

The decision regarding Mr. Salaita was not influenced by his criticism of
Israel or his views about the conflict in the Middle East, she said.

“What we cannot and will not tolerate at the University of Illinois,” she
wrote, “are personal and disrespectful words or actions that demean and
abuse either viewpoints themselves or those who express them.

“We have a particular duty to our students to ensure that they live in a
community of scholarship that challenges their assumptions about the world
but that also respects their rights as individuals,” she added.

The university system’s president and members of the Board of Trustees also
issued a statement reinforcing the chancellor’s comments and saying that
she had their “collective and unwavering support.”

That evening, however, faculty members in the American Indian studies
program, a unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, cast a
unanimous vote of no confidence in Ms. Wise’s leadership, criticizing her
handling of the last-minute withdrawal of the offer to Mr. Salaita.

“In clear disregard of basic principles of shared governance and unit
autonomy, and without basic courtesy and respect for collegiality,
Chancellor Wise did not consult American Indian studies nor the college
before making her decision,” reads a statement posted on the program’s
webpage.

“With this vote of no confidence, the faculty of UIUC’s American Indian
studies program also joins the thousands of scholars and organizations in
the United States and across the world in seeing the chancellor’s action as
a violation of academic freedom and freedom of speech,” the statement says.

The note goes on to encourage other departments to do the same, and to
question whether the chancellor deserves the confidence of Illinois’s full
faculty.

“Our faculty are deeply dismayed at the actions of the campus leadership,”
Robert Warrior, director of the American Indian studies program, said in an
interview.

With less than a week left until the first day of class, he added, the
small program had been scrambling to cover the two courses Mr. Salaita had
been expected to teach this fall.

“We are in the process of canceling sections, shifting resources around,
and making do,” Mr. Warrior said. “We’re such a small unit that getting
from Point A to Point B can be complicated.”

In fact, the program, which has just seven tenure-track professors and one
untenured faculty member serving on a fixed term, was already down one full
professor: Another scholar had recently left for an endowed professorship.
“We’re really hurting, just in terms of the people we have around to
shoulder the load,” Mr. Warrior said.

For now, all sections of Mr. Salaita’s classes have been covered by other
faculty members in the program, Mr. Warrior said. But in order to assure
that those high-demand classes were salvaged, the program had to trim
sections of other, less-popular courses instead.

“In the end, it’s a matter of us having to ask faculty to take on some
tasks we normally wouldn’t want them to do,” he said. “That means some
people are teaching classes they aren’t necessarily prepared to teach.
We’re really just trying to fulfill our goal of teaching students. We don’t
want to turn them away. And we wouldn’t punish students in order to prove a
point.”

===

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1
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