The sudden resignation yesterday by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign chancellor Phyllis Wise now has a clear explanation: the U of I announced today that Wise and other administrator were using personal email accounts to engage in secret discussions about sensitive matters, and released new emails about the Salaita case.
In one email to a law professor, Wise admitted what the administration was doing: “We are doing virtually nothing over our Illinois email addresses…I am even being careful with this email address and deleting after sending.”
It’s difficult to convey just how stupid and unethical this was. Even if nothing in the personal emails about the Salaita case reveals anything significant, the very fact of hiding her email destroys Wise’s credibility.
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The communications over the phone are next?
Wise went to her personal email account in early 2014, from the reportage that was a direct consequence of my filing FOIAs over the proposed medical school and specifically Laura Frerichs’s email traffic about it. Frerichs is head of the Research Park, an incredible center of petty cronyism which Frerichs would seem to promote to the benefit of her buddies and her former boss, Peter Fox, the multi-billionaire who built the Park.
Speculation, but with plenty of facts to support that speculation.
More to the point, what this further shows is what I’ve been saying for months now, that the Salaita decision had everything to do with the COM and Wise’s obsession with it, and nothing to do with rich donors opposing Salaita. Again, Wise went undercover in early 2014 because I was filing on the COM; they shook down a Daily Illini reporter who I was working with, and university counsel threatened my law license for my expressing concerns about what Laura Frerichs was doing.
All of that was LONG before Salaita, and as I wrote at length elsewhere, Salaita happened during a critical time in Wise’s getting the COM approved.
QED.
Actually I just finished reading the Salaita emails UIUC released, I wonder if Kennedy agreed to let Wise keep the College of Medicine in exchange for Wise firing Salaita? There’s a really embarrassing email near the end of that document compendium from Wise’s son, Andrew (no relation), in which the son talks about Kennedy’s not telling the truth.
Would be funny if it didn’t hurt so many people and waste so much money and do so much damage to UIUC.
They should have offered Mr. Salaita his job back. It doesn’t sound like they are in good shape for the trial.
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