[Peace] An opinion regarding the campaign to reinstate Prof. Salaita

Wed Sep 10 12:37:35 EDT 2014

Dear comrades,

Judging from several recent events, especially the pro-Wise center-spread
ad in today's Daily Illini, impending vote of support for the chancellor
from the student senate, and Wise's renewed combativeness (after a week of
faux contritions), the administration's counter-offensive is gathering
steam.

We may do well to analyze where the support for Wise is coming from. I made
a back-of-the-envelope analysis of the names on the ad. While it isn't
surprising that the majority of the faculty and few students who signed
onto the Daily Illini ad are from pro-big business colleges and
departments, such as engineering, ACES,  Physics, Computer Science,
Chemistry, Business, Biology, Music and Law, which generally tend to have
an uncontroversial approach to scholarship, I was surprised to see names
from psychology, education, political science, linguistics and foreign
languages, anthropology, gender and women studies, English, Communication,
history, media and cinema studies, and even African studies! Indeed, the
bulk of non-science and business signatures appear to be from education!

As we go forward, I think it is important to recognize that part of the
university administration's strategy both now and for the longer term is to
divide and conquer/rule the university community by peeling off the
majority of faculty (and hopefully students) from the so-called larger and
financially well-endowed departments from the "trouble-maker" units. There
is an element of class division and class warfare in how this thing is
playing out. Their tactics obviously revolves around emphasizing that there
is growing support for Chancellor Wise from the university community and
dismissing or marginalizing the opposition to her decision on unhiring
Prof. Salaita as a fringe, radical and unproductive undertaking. Case in
point: Prof. Michael Leroy, a pro-Chancellor faculty, was quoted
unfavorably comparing the vote of no confidence votes from several
departments to their side's petition in support of Wise. "The petition
looks at the body of work as a whole that the chancellor's produced," he
said. "A no confidence vote doesn't accomplish anything constructive or
positive." (http://tinyurl.com/kp27vc9). Monday's Daily Illini carried a
news item about the growing support for Wise (http://tinyurl.com/kymvfc5).
To the best of my knowledge, there has been no comparable news updates
reflecting that more departments (a total of 11 as of yesterday, if I
remember correctly) have cast a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Wise.

Whether the administration and its supporters succeed in doing this depends
on how we proceed with our Pro-Salaita campaign. Up to now, I have been
largely responding to calls for action from groups such as SJP, GEO, and
AWARE. I trust you guys are all doing your homework in regards to
anticipating, countering or even pre-empting the administration's
maneuvers. But having directly experienced in 2007 how faculty and students
at DePaul were outflanked by that university's administration when it
denied Prof. Norm Finkelstein tenure, it is very important to pursue our
goals with all due diligence and all the tools available to us. As some of
you may be aware, Norm was forced to accept a financial settlement, whose
details are undisclosed to this day.

The best outcome for academic freedom advocates is a reversal of the
decision to unhire Salaita. But Wise and company hope to outsmart or simply
out-sit us and get off with a financial settlement and a gad on Salaita. To
the corporate university, such undisclosed payments are the cost of doing
business, much to be preferred to a victory by our side.

Aluta Continua/Mapambano Inaendelea!

Vukoni

PS. I apologize for cross-posting.

On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 6:50 PM, SJP UIUC <sjp.uiuc at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> ****First. and foremost*, we apologize for not bcc-ing in the last email.
> It was a careless mistake and we guarantee it will never happen again.
>
> *UPDATE*: The second general body meeting will be on *Thurs. Sept. 11th
> at 6 pm*, NOT WEDNESDAY. Same location.
>
>
> *Also*, the Council on American-Islamic Relations asked us to relay a
> message regarding an activist workshop they are hosting.
>
> "Whether it's the advent of free speech and academic boycotts on campus,
> racial tensions in Ferguson, or the rise of militant terrorist groups
> half-way across the globe, the world we live in is constantly changing and
> the components that make up our identity - (race, socioeconomic status,
> gender, religion, culture) become the driving force behind the politics of
> this nation.This interactive workshop aims to create a thought-provoking
> discussion on identity politics and the importance of activism and will be
> facilitated by CAIR-Chicago's outreach coordinator, Gerald Hankerson.
>
> The event will be on *Wednesday, September 10 at 6:00 PM at the Asian
> American Cultural Center."*
>
> *For more details:* https://www.facebook.com/events/842222545796463/
>
> *Lastly*, if you are no longer a UIUC student (whether you have
> graduated, transferred, or whatever it may be) or simply choose to not be
> involved with SJP UIUC anymore, send us an email/reply to this email in
> order to be removed from our list serv. We appreciate all that you may have
> done with us and we're glad you were a part of our organization.
>
>
>
> Thank you,
> SJP UIUC
> --
>
> *-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*
> *Students for Justice in Palestine *
> *University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign*
>

-- 
"You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of
madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn
your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future." Thomas
Sankara
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