[Peace-discuss] L'ordre regne (as was said in Paris in '68) in Illinois

[C. G. Estabrook]

University of Illinois settles Salaita suit; News-Gazette editorializes

The local daily is typically tendentious in its editorial comment on the matter - even managing to justify in passing Israel's 2014 assault on Gaza - but it arrives at an accurate conclusion, if perhaps not in the way it's meant:

"The Salaita controversy was the result of a highly unusual set of circumstances not likely to be repeated.”

The unusual set of circumstances was that the university hired a scholar who was willing to use his purported academic freedom to condemn official crimes. Most academics have learnt since Vietnam not to do that.

The university in this settlement wants to makes sure that's not repeated. What new faculty hire (or old faculty, for that matter) at UIUC will now take the chance of condemning Israel/US war crimes? The lesson has been taught, however ineptly.

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A comment from my lawyer brother, David McC. Estabrook, of Arlington VA:  

The most important finding in the case is that Defendants have attempted to destroy or hide communications that it was their obligation to preserve. The finding that Defendants destroyed and hid communications about how they intended to trash Salaita convicts Defendants on the civil rights conspiracy case. The emails predate the filing of both cases and demonstrate the conspiracy with acts in furtherance thereof: the old delete after sending trick, worthy of Maxwell Smart. The settlement does not address the issue of punitive damages, which are due under the circumstances of a civil rights conspiracy among the faculty of a state university receiving federal funds who conspired to ruin Salaita because of what he said in the exercise of free speech. The Court should have made the individual Defendants write essays about a citizen's obligation to the Court and the importance of free speech under the First Amendment in academia. 

If defense counsel had known their case and their client, their response in federal court would have been an apology, agreed reinstatement, compensatory damages and attorney's fees.  Look at Plaintiff's legal bill for handing the million dollar lawyers their ass! Early in the case the Plaintiff's attorney's fees would have been half what they were awarded. With a more candid and forthcoming legal strategy, the university would have redeemed itself and saved a million dollars. My guess is that Salaita could have built a premier department in his field for the university…

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