[Peace-discuss] Holocaust scholar cancels prestigious Illinois lecture over Steven Salaita firing

[David Green]

Although I would add that there's no reason to even imply that it is at all debatable that Salaita is anti-Semitic, or that his scholarship or teaching  (i.e., job qualifications) are of dubious merit in the context of his field. This should not be framed as a matter of protecting "despised" speech, although that is the standard. Nor is there any reason to downplay the substantive nature of the BOT's actions in terms of the I/P conflict and profitable relationships with Israel, and perhaps in the larger context of the relations of academia with USFP and the military-industrial complex. Once the academic freedom/civil liberties issue is addressed, those issues will remain and should also be addressed. As long as academia is part and parcel of all of these wealth/power relationships, then the primary context of these outrages will remain. I appreciate liberal ethics when applied consistently, but that should be the absolute minimum to expect.  DG 


     On Wednesday, April 15, 2015 12:44 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
   
 

 I have to say that I have been impressed and even surprised by the principled reaction of many, many Jewish liberals in academia to the Salaita case. Cary Nelson is an outlier. Most Jewish liberals in the academy who have spoken out seem to see it as a clear-cut free speech and academic freedom case. Which, of course, it is. 



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

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 12:08 PM, Stuart Levy <stuartnlevy at gmail.com> wrote:

  What a beautiful letter.   Congratulations to Prof. Presner.   And thanks Robert for passing it along to us.
 
 
 On 4/15/15 12:01 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote:
  
        http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/holocaust-scholar-cancels-prestigious-illinois-lecture-over-steven-salaita-firing
  ------------------------------snip
 A prominent Holocaust scholar has canceled a prestigious lecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in protest over the firing of Professor Steven Salaita. Professor Todd Samuel Presner, the director of Jewish studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), wrote to UIUC Chancellor Phyllis Wise to tell her he would not visit the campus as long as she was in charge. His letter, dated 28 March and addressed to Wise and UIUC trustees, was publicly released today (full text and a PDF copy are below). Presner had been scheduled to deliver the 2014-15 Rosenthal Lecture, titled “A Message in a Bottle: Holocaust Testimony and the Jewish Future,” on 27 April. He said a workshop also planned during his visit would not be canceled, but would be moved off campus and he would not accept any funding or payment from UIUC.   
     
  
  
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