University of Illinois emeritus professor Robert Weissberg published an essay this week with the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, a right-wing think tank, in which he argues about the Salaita case: “The trustees are not guilty of violating free speech; their sin is cowardice in overseeing the faculty. They did not perform their job.” It certainly takes some hubris for an openly racist professor who was never punished by the University of Illinois to complain that the trustees have failed to punish offensive left-wing faculty.
I want to refute Weissberg’s attacks on Salaita later on in this blog, but first I should state that the Pope Center had invited me to submit an essay along with Weissberg, and I wrote one for them.
Noting that Weissberg had spoken at a conference of white supremacists, I wrote in that essay: “I think that Weissberg’s views are far more clearly racist than anything Salaita ever tweeted…but nevertheless I do not believe that Weissberg should be punished by the University of Illinois for his bigoted views.” In the editing comments I received from the Pope Center on my essay, it was written, “this ad hominem attack is inappropriate” and the whole section was struck through.
I did not wish to censor an obviously relevant argument to my essay on the question of whether allegations of bigotry could justify firing a University of Illinois professor, and Jane Shaw, president of the Pope Center, declined to publish my article without the censorship.
In fact, I think Weissberg’s racism is highly relevant. It reveals some of the double standards found in the Salaita case, and certainly dispels some of the arguments that Salaita would never have had a chance to hold a job at the University of Illinois if he had been accused of racism rather than anti-Semitism.
I do not casually accuse Weissberg of racism, nor would I ever argue that all conservatives who share his political views are racist. There is, in fact, very strong evidence that Weissberg is racist. Most notably, he has attended and been an invited speaker at many conferences of American Renaissance, a well-known racist organization. The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights has noted Weissberg’s “repeated participation with a white nationalist outfit, American Renaissance, and his explicitly racist writings.”
This is a sentiment about Weissberg shared by some prominent conservatives. National Review editor Rich Lowry wrote in 2012, “Unbeknowst to us, occasional Phi Beta Cons contributor Robert Weissberg (whose book was published a few years ago by Transaction) participated in an American Renaissance conference where he delivered a noxious talk about the future of white nationalism. He will no longer be posting here.” Being too racist for National Review is, in fact, pretty damn racist.
A summary of the 2012 American Renaissance conference on its website reveals what Weissberg discussed:
The first speaker Saturday morning was the always stimulating Robert Weissberg, Emeritus professor of University of Illinois at Champagne, who proposed “A Politically Viable Alternative to White Nationalism.” He argued that any movement that is explicitly based on white racial identity is “dead on arrival,” and must be repackaged in order to win successful recognition. The reality—that racial nationalism “is intuitive and written in our genes” and that even children are conscious of race—is a huge advantage for those who want to build a racial movement, but any white movement today that takes an explicitly racial stand will fail: “We are considered just above child molesters.”
Let’s be clear here. Weissberg rejects white nationalism not because he disagrees with racism, but only because he thinks it will be ineffective in an anti-racist political culture. He fully supports the cause of white nationalism as “intuitive” but believes it must be re-packaged in order to win.
The summary of the conference continued:
Prof. Weissberg argued that an “80 percent solution” would be one that enforced the “First-World” standards of excellence and hard work that attract and reward whites. He pointed out that there are still many “Whitopias” in America and that there are many ways to keep them white, such as zoning that requires large houses, and a cultural ambiance or classical music and refined demeanor that repels undesirables. This approach to maintaining whiteness has the advantage that people can make a living catering to whites in their enclaves.
It’s hard to see anything but racism in admiring “Whitopias” and outlining methods to “keep them white.”
Then, according to the conference summary,
Prof. Weissberg went on to argue that liberals are beyond reason when it comes to race, that explaining the facts of IQ or the necessity of racial consciousness for whites “is like trying to explain to an eight-year-old why sex is more fun than chocolate ice cream.”
I’m going to hope that Weissberg never actually tried to explain to eight-year-olds why sex is fun or why whites are the superior race.
According to the conference summary,
In answer to questions about the adequacy of his “enclave” solution for poor whites who cannot afford to live in them, Prof. Weissberg expressed the hope that less financially successful whites could draw on their sturdy, warrior heritage to protect their own enclaves.
I’m not fluent in the language of white supremacy, but it certainly appears that Weissberg was arguing the poor whites who can’t afford a “Whitopia” should instead shoot minorities they regard as threatening.
This was not Weissberg’s only speech to the white nationalist group. In a 2000 speech about blacks and Jews at the American Renaissance conference, Weissberg wondered why Jews worry about white Christians: “Why not concentrate on where the real enemy is, the blacks?” Weissberg declared, “Jews cherish education, they are obsessed with it. Blacks, on the other hand, destroy it. Anybody who’s gone to schools in the inner city knows that not only do they hate the idea of learning, but they physically destroy the schools and assault their teachers. (Chuckle) I could go on forever on this point.”
This speech occurred when Weissberg was still a full professor teaching at the University of Illinois, as did a 1999 essay he wrote for American Renaissance in which he declared: “Black-white co-existence is a little like having an incurable medical condition.” And in what might be Weissberg’s most racist claim, he wrote: “Blacks generally have a well-deserved reputation for hair-triggered collective violence.”
In fact, Weissberg’s racial fear-mongering about black violence was so extreme that the white supremacist founder of American Renaissance, Jared Taylor, wrote that Weissberg was promoting a “false fear”: “I believe Prof. Weissberg is mistaken about the likelihood that blacks would react violently to changes in public policy.”
The fact that Weissberg is a white supremacist does not, however, refute any of his arguments against Steven Salaita. Fortunately, the evidence does that.
According to Weissberg, Salaita is unqualified for a job in American Indian Studies:
Actually, even the American Indian Studies Program tacitly admits this lack of qualifications. In an on-line petition to reverse the chancellor’s decision he is described as “a leading scholar in comparative ethnic, Arab American, indigenous, and American studies, whose path breaking and prolific scholarship has put him at the forefront of these fields and led to the offer of employment at UIUC.” Notice the absence of a specific scholarly record in Native American Studies.
Weissberg apparently is unaware that the petition he links to has nothing to do with the American Indian Studies Program, so the program can hardly be admitting (tacitly or otherwise) any lack of qualifications. Weissberg’s belief that comparative scholarly research should be dismissed for lacking a “specific scholarly record” in Native American Studies is nonsense. Weissberg may believe that comparative studies should not be allowed as a part of Native American Studies (which would be like arguing that comparative politics shouldn’t be allowed as a subfield of Political Science), but he shouldn’t get to dictate ignorant prejudices about academic fields.
According to Weissberg, “Killing the appointment should have been about scholarly qualifications and why the American Indian Studies Program failed to uphold high standards. Deans and trustees should have asked why somebody who wrote six books on Arab and Middle Eastern politics but not a single opus on Native Americans is hired in American Indian Studies.” But Weissberg is wrong: Salaita’s 2006 book, The Holy Land in Transit: Colonialism and the Quest for Canaan, according to the book description, “compares the dynamics of settler colonialism in the United States related to Native Americans with the circumstances in Israel related to the Palestinians…”
Weissberg also claimed about Salaita, “surely a trustee could have said that a web search for his vita uncovered just a single journalist rant about Native Americans—a plea that the United States should return all Indian land.” Let’s hope that a trustee would not be as incompetent at web searches as Weissberg is. A quick web search reveals that Salaita has an article in the new Journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and was one of the affiliated faculty in American Indian Studies at Virginia Tech.
Weissberg declares, “I personally would love to see how the Illinois Indian American Studies Program finessed the question of how Salaita compares to comparable scholars in American Indian studies at this stage in his career.” Considering that Weissberg gets the name of the program wrong (it’s American Indian Studies), he may not be the best judge of the scholarship in this field.
In reality, the University of Illinois Associate Chancellor Reginald Alston had nothing but high praise for Salaita’s academic qualifications in his report recommending the job offer:
The uniqueness of his scholarship on the intersection of American Indian, Palestinian, and American Palestinian experiences presents a rare opportunity to add an esoteric perspective on indigeneity to our cultural studies programs on campus…..Again, I support offering Dr. Salaita a tenured position because of the obvious intellectual value that his scholarship and background would bring to our campus. His presence would elevate AIS internationally and convey Illinois’ commitment to maintaining a leading academic program on the historical and sociopolitical intricacies of American Indian culture.
Of course, a racist like Weissberg can’t resist the opportunity to blame dark-skinned people for Salaita’s appointment:
a dirty little secret well known in university life: rigorous scrutiny is less likely to happen when the candidate is a member of “an historically under-represented group” or is hired to fill a position in a department dedicated to such a group, in this case, Native Americans.
Weissberg expressed a similar sentiment in 2012 about black and Hispanic academics: “many those [sic] currently admitted to graduate school or hired are barely qualified.”
But in addition to Weissberg’s racism and his complete ignorance about the field he is judging here, there’s another reason to doubt Weissberg’s invocation of “academic standards” to justify Salaita’s firing: Weissberg’s own history reveals that he is a professor with extraordinarily low academic standards.
One of Weissberg’s former colleagues, Greg Diamond, has written about his experience taking over the large Political Science lecture class with 1200 students that Weissberg had taught (to great personal profit, since Weissberg assigned his own textbook) but where only a tiny fraction of students had bothered showing up for class. Weissberg was so infamous for his low academic standards that when Diamond showed up with a much more intellectually ambitious syllabus, “I believe that I set a world record that may still stand today. About 300-400 students dropped my class in the first two weeks.”
As Diamond noted,
It turned out that Poli Sci 150 had been a scam in more respects than I had thought: it was the “gut” class for which coaches would sign up their athletes…so that they would not have to waste time actually attending a class.
Weissberg himself admitted that to avoid criticism from students, he removed some important topics from his lecture class: “Rather than risk being accused of covering up racism or telling lies, I dropped the topic [the three-fifths compromise] altogether. I similarly removed all discussion of slavery…” Weissberg added that he also removed “most references to crime (no small accomplishment in a course covering the Supreme Court)” and “anything else that might remotely prove an ideological fire hazard.”
Here we have a tenured professor who is so gutless that he intentionally dumbs down his courses (and even removes all discussion of slavery from an American Government class) in order to avoid controversy, and admits to giving his students “incomplete educations.” Weissberg confessed that laziness was one of his prime motivations: “Purging the course is hardly fool-proof, but it is relatively undemanding…”
So, Weissberg’s ruminations about low academic standards seem a bit comical coming from the king of the “gut” class at the University of Illinois. As for Weissberg’s devotion to his academic work, Diamond noted: “he had started a clothing store and so far as I could tell spent most of his time managing it.”
Weissberg summarizes the Salaita case this way: “it’s about the failure of the top University of Illinois administrators to defend intellectual standards against a faculty on the political march. Yes, the trustees eventually behaved correctly but for the wrong reasons.” Weissberg only cares that the trustees are more likely to embrace his values than faculty members, so he wants trustees to intervene on his side by purging leftists. After years of keeping his job despite openly racist declarations, Weissberg wants to simply abandon academic freedom.
I still defend Weissberg’s academic freedom. But I find it difficult to understand how the University of Illinois could employ a white supremacist for decades without ever once criticizing his racism, but then justify firing a critic of the Israeli government.
Johm,
A very thorough documentation. And I might note that the use of the term “ad hominem” in demanding you strike part of your piece if you wanted it accepted seems to me a totally inappropriate application of that term. Had you attacked Weissberg for being prejudiced against Salaita because as a Jew (in fact Weissberg is a Jew) he was critical of of Salaita’s criticism of the Israeli government, that MIGHT be an appropriate application of the term.
In this case what the charge you are level at both Weissberg and the Chancellor is hypocrisy. Salaita is being denied the appointment because of statements that should be considered protected speech, that are not part of his teaching per se. By that standard one would think that a public university in a state with a large African-American population and an increasing Hispanic population could be justly outraged at the speeches given and writings offered by Weissberg – except they too are protected First Amendment speech.
Independent of the question of academic freedom, the University of Illinois is a PUBLIC institution and thus is restricted the same way ANY government institution is with respect to rights protected under the Bill of Rights, in this case speech. Besides a violation of academic practice long established, for which AAUP is rightly calling the Chancellor and the University to account, one might well argue that that there are violations of Salaita’s rights under both the US and Illinois constitutions. If nothing else, by demonstrating UI’s not having taken any actions against Weissberg for his racist speeches and writing (which in fact they should not have done) while denying a qualified appointment for Salaita, one might well argue that represents a prima facia violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Thanks for this piece.
See “tu quoque”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Thank you for writing this. I wonder if there are people who can be persuaded still by calling out the hypocrisy. Let’s find out. Sharing widely.
Robert Weissberg is a race-ist in that he’s honest enough to admit races exist and racial differences exist. Ism means belief and race-ism should mean belief in races and racial differences. Look at sports and crime. Why do blacks dominate? Because they are bigger and stronger. Why is most interracial crime black-on-white or black-on-non-black? Because blacks are stronger and more aggressive. If crime is only about poverty, why are poor blacks more likely to attack, rape, rob, or murder poor whites, poor Asians, poor Hispanics, etc?
In the realm of IQ, some groups tend to be more advantaged, just like blacks are advantaged in physical prowess. Ashkenazi Jews have the highest IQ. Whites and East Asians are comparable. Blacks have the lowest IQ. Blacks also have the most aggressive, unruly, and disruptive temperaments. Weissberg took notice of these racial differences. He believes in racial differences. So what? He’s honest, unlike most politically correct professors who believe in the utter falsehood that races don’t exist and try to have all race-ist professors fired and blacklisted. For every professor like Weissberg, a true anomaly in the academia, there are a 1000 PC-pushing opportunists and drones in the academia, like the person who penned this slanted bogus article.
As for American Renaissance, it is a white interest organization. If blacks have NAACP, Hispanics have LA RAZA, Jews have AIPAC, and etc, why shouldn’t there be a white interest organization, esp when the media and academia are so filled with anti-white vitriol that blames the white race for all the problems in the world?
Jared Taylor at AR makes a lot of good sense.
I had a great deal of trouble inside my head before approving the comment by Andrea above. These generalizations just are not true. I know this as one who teaches in a widely diverse college and who lives in a diverse neighborhood in a diverse city, I see people from all sorts of “racial” backgrounds daily–and interact with them hourly. Furthermore, as a white person who lived for four years in sub-Saharan Africa, I know with certainty that your claim that people of African descent are “bigger and stronger” is simply nonsense in Africa as much as it is here in Brooklyn.
Your question about “interracial” crime is based on a false assumption; certainly, it ignores the realities of “racial” divides and numbers. So the question is meaningless. If you look into IQ tests, you will see that they test little more, ultimately, than ability to complete crossword puzzles. Such tests have cultural biases that have been long apparent. All comparative group scores indicate is how well integrated the group is with the assumptions of intelligence of the test creators.
Blacks are more “aggressive, unruly, and disruptive”? Please step into one of my classrooms–do it any time. The evidence of experience (mine) shows that you are wrong.
In answer to your question about why or why not have a “white interest organization,” please read (and read about) Steve Biko in South Africa. He explains clearly why it is necessary for oppressed (and even formerly oppressed) groups to have their own organizations: The dominant group is used to ruling; the others are used to doing what they are told. The only way once-oppressed people can learn to take control (or even share in the control) is through avenues that don’t include those who have traditionally had all the control. Whites in America don’t need that.
I decided to approve your comment, though I find it ignorant and offensive, in the interest of free discussion. Before you post further, though, please spend some time within a black community. I think your views will change quite quickly.
I agree Andrea has a lot of over generalizations. Blacks crime against whites is higher but that is probably due to whites having wealth to take. However, blacks don’t dominate track and other athletics due to just wanting a “better” life. You don’t run a 9 plus 100 because you want it bad enough you run it because you got the genes for it. Plus any group has the right to form organizations that benefit themselves as a people or culture so long as they do not try to degrade or rob the rights of others to do the same. To label it just as something about power is disingenuous.
Aaron, you confuse rights and reasons. Just because one has the right to do something it does not follow that doing it is reasonable. As to athletics, I once knew a seven foot white man who chose to be an artist and not a basketball player. He had the ability to choose. Many poor people do not.
Andrea, I used to think a lot like you until I had the good fortune to spend a few years living in the less-than-desirable parts of Philadelphia as a student. I had a roommate who refused to go on buses because he thinks blacks are dirty, despite the fact that neither one of us had a car. He used to admonished me for playing chess with my black neighbors in nearby parks. “They are dangerous, stupid, and smelly,” he used to say. It was such a funny, awkward, and enlightening experience. I highly recommend spending a few years living in a racially-mixed community with a roommate who thinks very much like yourself: Introspection is a good way to learn about yourself and the world around you. Perhaps do some community volunteering on the side, it will open up your eyes and mind to the racial-issues in US.
My wife and I agreed when our children were still very young that it was important not to expose them to members of other groups so that they could preserve the egalitarian attitudes required for acceptance into the best circles.
Thanks for this illuminating article, John. I could tell Weissberg was sketchy when he wrote about Salaita’s “expertise on Sheik Abdulla Ben Geronimo.”
And though the National Review ceased publishing Weissberg in 2012, it nevertheless posted an approving link to Weissberg’s Salaita article yesterday: http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/386931/salaita-affair-continues-jane-s-shaw
Thanks for posting this information re: Weissberg and the John Pope Institute. The hot mess of contradictions surrounding Salaita is amazing. It seems that the Salaita firing is an enactment of anti-Palestinian racism in which a perfect storm of right wing Mid-Western distrust of academia, the turning of public universities into corporations, the policing of social media and prohibition of robust and specifically Palestinian criticism of Israeli policies have all coalesced, and this may be why there is such strong push back from academics as well.
Reblogged this on Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist and commented:
This racist pig was a classmate at Bard College although I never said one word to him.
Reblogged this on theumiverse and commented:
On academic freedom … and unfreedom.
How many more qualified American Indian scholars were not considered for this position? Given the low number of American Indian professors in academia, that could be where the proof of American Indian racism rests.
Do you, John, understand why you didn’t link to or name the article? The article that’s named Inter/Nationalism from the Holy Land to the New World: Encountering Palestine in American Indian Studies
When you’re part of a cult, it can be so very hard to get clarity until you break out.
(Getting the word order of “Indian American” is how important?)
And that quote from Reginald Alston:
Just freaking WOW. Jaw dropping commisar-speak of the first degree.
I’m afraid that I don’t understand at all why you think that title indicates that academia is a “cult” or why the overwhelmingly positive evaluation of Salaita by a top administrator is “commisar-speak.” I’m not a big fan of academic styles, but it doesn’t indicate a cult or a dictatorship, and it certainly doesn’t show that Salaita was unqualified for this job. As for the word order, it’s symbolic of Weissberg’s ignorance. If you are claiming to be an expert on a field’s academic standards, the fact that you get the name of the field wrong (twice in one essay) is a pretty good indication that you don’t really know what you’re talking about.
“Indian American”, is analogous to terms like “Chinese American” or “German American”, and is virtually universally understood to refer to U.S. persons from India, or whose ancestors are from India and not to the people called “Native Americans” or “American Indians”. Somebody in the U.S. who doesn’t understand that difference shouldn’t presume to opine about either group.
How old is Weissberg? Is he senile?
Weissberg obviously isn’t senile, and these kinds of ageist comments are just idiotic.
I was a graduate student in poli sci at Illinois when Robert Weissberg was a professor there. I had a class with him (required), was his TA one semester (by departmental assignment), and did a little bit of work for him running regressions and formatting some tables, graphs, etc., (for pay, not credit). He had commissioned some survey that he paid for himself—he was independently wealthy—and wanted a bunch of analysis done. It was pretty straightforward American political behavior stuff, nothing controversial as I recall. He actually had done work as a bona fide scholar earlier in his career.
He’s reasonably old now, (checked… he’s 73), and even back when I knew him he was a crank, but not out in the open about it. He was definitely speaking “code words” to recruit and I recall he thought I might be a fellow traveler as I wasn’t clearly an academic leftist nor a member of an obvious minority. I had a somewhat uncomfortable conversation at one point when I was doing the analysis. He wasn’t so out about things when he was a serving professor, though the last time I saw him he was clearly trying to show off work that was provocative, to say the least. He also tried recruiting a friend of mine who had a military background before going to school, but was also rebuffed. (My friend is actually a staunch liberal Democrat.)
I doubt it’s age per se. Unfortunately, soaking in the racist marinade for long periods of time tends not to do one’s thinking any good, nor does being the kind of histrionic attention grabber that he definitely was throughout the time I knew him. Nobody who knew him would ever accuse him of being *stupid*, though.
I think he retired to come out of the racist closet and also to not have to teach anymore, but I was gone by then so I really can’t say. Now that he’s emeritus he has no formal connection with the university aside from collecting a retirement check from the state, and he hasn’t since 2003.
You don’t have to be senile to be racists or in agreement with racists. Racism is a gift that keeps on giving.
If these white racists believe that (1) there is a gene, or combination of genes, that make people more “intelligent”, and (2) that this genetic advantage is more common among people with the genes for “whiteness”, why don’t they look at it in a reverse way: that there is a race of people defined by this “intelligence” gene and that members of this “intelligence race” are, on average, “whiter” than non-members of this race? That way they wouldn’t have to include less “intelligent” “white” people in their “nation” and could include “intelligent” non-white people instead. The fact that they define their collective selves by the functionally unimportant quality of “whiteness” rather than by the functionally important quality of “intelligence” reveals the irrational, atavistic nature of their racism.
Regarding your comment that “there is, in fact, very strong evidence that Weissberg is racist…”: I wholeheartedly agree and, if we want to locate White Nationalists within the broader category of racism (which I would certainly endorse) Weissberg considers himself one. Cf. his quoted statement from the 2012 AR conference: “We are considered just above child molesters.”
I did some research and this man retired in 2003- over a decade ago. Why does this article make it sound like he is still teaching there?
The first line refers to him as “emeritus” and later on it refers to his racist writing back “when Weissberg was still a full professor teaching at the University of Illinois.”
“I still defend Weissberg’s academic freedom. But I find it difficult to understand how the University of Illinois could employ a white supremacist for decades without ever once criticizing his racism, but then justify firing a critic of the Israeli government.”
This final statement ruins the article. If the point is to illustrate that bigots are granted tenure and enjoy academic freedom in academia, then perhaps it should read: “But I find it difficult to understand how the University of Illinois could employ a white supremacist for decades without ever once criticizing his racism, but then justify firing an anti-Zionist bigot.” It would still illuminate a terrible double standard.
Racist dehumanization of Zionists and the Israeli people through hate speech is not criticism of the Israeli government, nor is it Palestine advocacy – and the inability or unwillingness to recognize this indicates that this whole debacle is either partisan posturing or worse – tacit approval of hate speech.
Salaita deserves his academic freedom, just like Weissberg, and should not have been fired. But please stop trying to whitewash hate speech.
I agree that the above article falls apart in the last sentence. Something about it bothered me all through the piece, and not just the disgusting views of Weissberg. The final sentence states clearly what the rest of the article implies: that the University of Illinois knew Weissberg was a vicious racist before his retirement in 2003 and never punished him for it.
But the evidence given does not support that. Most of the citations of Weissberg’s racist writings are from the late 2000s and early 2010s, after his retirement. It is not at all clear that anyone at UIUC knew about his racist views before 2003. He had the article in 1999, but most things were not posted on the web at the time and so it is probable that no one at the university knew of the publication by the time Weissberg retired. Certainly I wouldn’t expect anyone at the university had a print subscription to that magazine.
So if it turns out that UI did not know about Weissberg until after his retirement, how exactly would one go about punishing a retired faculty member if they chose?
TLDR; fails to make its case that UIUC would have treated Weissberg differently than Salaita.
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I am an alumnus of the University of Illinois and the son of a long-time former UI faculty member. There are a few things people should be aware of concerning the several recent “academic freedom” controveries at the UI – to understand where the faculty and administration really stand.
The UI had no problem employing Bill Ayers and now James Kilgore, both unrepentant terrorists who were members of radical leftist organizations that murdered innocent people. Of course there are no former radical right-wing terrorists on the UI faculty (nor should there be). The leftist social sciences faculty have come out in support by the hundreds at UIUC to support Kilgore.
Kilgore robbed a bank with the SLA where they murdered an innocent women customer with a shotgun blast that tore her apart. Of course he and the SLA kidnapped Patty Hearst and “turned her” (also repeatedly raping her). He then escaped to Africa and took on a false academic identity, where he was eventually arrested, serving only six years of his sentence for the robbery and the felony murder. Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn (a faculty member at Northwestern) were both members of the terrorist Weather Underground, which bombed and murdered in the 1960s in support of socialism. Ayers later co-authored a book on his terrorism dedicated to the murderer of Robert Kennedy. (Google it all ; there’s lots of information.) And yes, they are unrepentant in that they have never made actual repentant apologies for their crimes or attempted to compensate their victims or their families in any way. In fact Ayers, said that he wished they had done more – whatever that means. Kilgore says equally silly things about his crimes.
The leftist UI faculty have no problem with these criminal terrorists teaching our youth because, after all, their terrorism was for the cause of socialism and communism. When I found out about what was happening to the social sciences at the UI, I decided never to give the University general fund another dime. Too bad the taxpayers can’t do the same, but they are forced to pay for the leftist drivel that now comes out of the much of the “south of Green Street” campus. Thank God they can’t destroy agriculture, the sciences, or engineering. Those are the only respected colleges left at the once-great UI. (Alumni can give to these colleges and their scholarship funds separately from the University. )
And an interesting note on the race and crime comments: Several years ago the city of Urbana (home to UIUC) passed a “Human Rights Ordinance” that prohibited “discrimination” on the basis of ANY criminal history in rental housing and employment. (That includes violent rapists and killers who get out after their light Illinois sentences.) They also required landlords to accept Section 8 housing vouchers, and built a public housing project in a once-wonderful family neighborhood in southeast Urbana. The twin city of Champaign now has similar ordinances. The result was a mass migration of criminals from Chicago to Urbana and Champaign. These used to be two wonderful family-oriented communities. Now the towns and campus are no longer safe. There are rapes, robberies and assaults every week of students and faculty on campus. The campus police issue constant e-mail crime alerts to students and faculty. And to go along with it, there is now a silly, loud-mouthed leftist organization right in downtown Urbana that protests everything in town, like building a badly-needed new county jail.
And yes, 90% of the criminals who are destroying these two formerly wonderful towns are black gang members affiliated with the big Chicago South Side gangs. If they were Japanese Yakuza or Russian Mafia, I’d tell you that. But they are not. Leftist government programs have destroyed the black family as well as the urban public school systems, with the direct result of hundreds of thousands of unemployed, violent, black gang members.
In so many ways, the once-great University of Illinois and the people of Champaign-Urbana are victims of the leftist faculty and their comrades on the city councils. Truely sad. My recent visit there for a reunion will be my last.
I was privileged to be a freshman student in Robert Weissberg’s Political Science 150 in Fall of 1987 at the University of Illinois. Far from being a “gut” class as described by this author, it was entertaining and demanding, and the great Foellinger Auditorium was filled to the max with students who had eagerly endured the trial of on campus registration lines at the Armory to get a chance to participate.
I was delighted to learn in later years that Robert was a fellow paleo-conservative. He is as entertaining to read and listen to as ever as I learned from listening to some of his recent lectures on I-tunes.
In response to those commenters who encouraged Andrea Letania to move to a black area to develop anecdotes contrary to her views regarding race, I suggest they avail themselves of the extensive body of scholarly literature demonstrating conclusively that there are real differences in exactly those areas both she and Dr. Weissberg cite such as IQ, aggression, etc. that are linked to genetics and to race. No amount of personal anecdotes relating to unusual examples should convince the academic of the validity or falsity of scientifically and rigorously collected and analyzed statistics. Holding these type of views honestly should not be subject to moral criticism. Facts may be inconvenient things to your own worldview, but ones honestly held beliefs about truths are beyond moral criticism. The only meaningful question regarding the moral acceptability of a person’s views on race is not a question of what they believe about the characteristics of the races of man, but rather the question of whether they hold hostile views or wish evil to their fellow man based upon race. I do not believe that Dr. Weissberg has expressed any hostility toward any racial group. He seems to me to be a wholesome man with a healthy sense of humor who expresses goodwill toward all. The fact that blacks generally have a lower IQ than whites is neither a criticism of blacks nor an excuse to mistreat them. It’s just the truth.
The university seems to have been unaware of Weissberg’s activities while he taught there. As soon as they saw Salaita was bringing, they made the right decision and rescinded their offer to him.
But no matter how vicious an anti-Semite the man is, he was not qualified to be a professor in the first place.
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/183813/steven-salaita-academic-work