The new issue of the Journal of Academic Freedom was released yesterday, including Cary Nelson’s much-anticipated essay. As an argument for firing Salaita, Nelson’s essay is a complete failure. Robert Warrior writes a response, but it’s unnecessary because nothing Nelson writes provides any evidence to justify Salaita’s dismissal. The bulk of the essay is devoted to Nelson’s unconvincing argument that Salaita as a scholar deserved a position at a lower-tier university, but not the University of Illinois. Who cares what Nelson thinks? I’m sure there are many scholars hired whom Nelson might regard as underqualified upon deep analysis, and many academic positions he feels should not exist. But none of those scholars are being dismissed for their political opinions, and Salaita was. The record is absolutely clear that Phyllis Wise and the Board of Trustees never read a word in Salaita’s books before deciding to fire him. So all of Nelson’s musings about Salaita’s books have nothing to do with the academic freedom case.
Instead, I want to focus on one deeply misguided aspect of academic freedom found in both Nelson’s essay and the essay by Don Eron. Eron and Nelson separately argue that expression related to one’s academic expertise is excluded from the AAUP’s protection of extramural utterances. This is very, very wrong.
Nelson writes, “I differ with the current leadership over the definition of extramural speech.” According to Nelson, “If he were tweeting about global warming, given his areas of research, the tweets would be extramural, effectively just public opinion. But Salaita’s tweets about Israel, says Nelson, are not extramural utterances because his academic work is about Israel.
Nelson claims, “The AAUP has also long made an exception where public statements are clearly related to a faculty member’s areas of teaching, research, and disciplinary expertise.” Nelson adds, “In jettisoning the long tradition of recognizing public statements based on academic expertise as part of a faculty member’s profile, AAUP’s current leaders are breaking with AAUP precedent.”
But Nelson doesn’t cite any examples of “AAUP precedent” or how it’s “long made an exception” for extramural utterances related to academic work. His only evidence is this: “As the quotation from Matthew Finkin and Robert Post that opens this essay argues, such statements are not properly considered extramural. And they are not protected from academic consequences because they are part of a faculty member’s professional profile. In hiring and promotion decisions, activity in social media related to a candidate’s teaching and research can be a component in decision making.” Even if Finkin and Post agree with Nelson, their personal views have nothing to do with AAUP policies.
According to Eron, “Whether Salaita’s speech is extramural is also significant because if he is making his statements outside the parameters of his job, he has the legal protections of the First Amendment.” That’s not true. He has legal protections of the First Amendment within the parameters of his job as well. Eron’s assertion that “First Amendment protections do not generally apply to the workplace” is not quite right. According to Eron, “That’s the main reason why academic freedom is so important—it provides teachers and scholars with protections for speech within the workplace that do not exist elsewhere.” Eron is simply assuming that academic freedom is not a right under the First Amendment, which the Supreme Court rejected in Keyishian and continues to reject.
Eron quotes the AAUP’s 2004 statement On Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications, which was revised in 2013 and had this line added to it: “the fundamental meaning of extramural speech, as a shorthand for speech in the public sphere and not in one’s area of academic expertise, fully applies to the realm of electronic communications, including social media.”
The context of this line is a defense of extramural utterances. The report rejects a literal distinction between “extramural” and “intramural,” in the sense that it argues for extramural utterances to be protected even if they occur on campus grounds.
But, yes, the segment of one sentence that says “not in one’s area of academic expertise,” is just wrong. I don’t know who tossed in that line, but it’s contrary to all AAUP doctrines, albeit not glaringly apparent in this context. However, it cannot be viewed as a meaningful amendment to AAUP doctrines. The line clearly refers to this idea as “shorthand” (meaning, an informal summary), and in that sense it’s not completely wrong. Typically, extramural utterances are indeed in the public sphere and not related to one’s academic expertise. However, this statement nowhere asserts that extramural utterances related to a professor’s academic expertise are not protected as extramural utterances.
Eron argues that another statement endorses this view of “intramural”:
Similarly, the most significant recent AAUP document that addresses extramural speech, the 2011 statement Ensuring Academic Freedom in Politically Controversial Academic Personnel Decisions argues that academic freedom, particularly when exercised through social media, must extend beyond intramural utterance, which “directly relates to an academic’s particular area of study.”
This is an inaccurate reading of that statement’s meaning. The full quote from the document is, “Nor would it make sense to permit on-campus freedom of expression only to the extent that it directly relates to an academic’s particular area of study.” The argument here is that colleges must allow full freedom of speech on and off campus, with the assumption that speech directly related to academic work is already protected on campus. This is an argument for fully protecting extramural speech, not an assertion that extramural speech related to an academic’s area of study should be limited.
It is simply wrong to claim that the AAUP has historically excluded extramural utterances related to academic work. In my essay for the Journal of Academic Freedom, I write about the case of Leo Koch, a biology instructor fired in 1960 by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for writing a letter to the student newspaper about student sexuality. The Koch case deeply divided traditionalists who believed that academic standards should be applied to extramural utterances, and free speech advocates who believed in total freedom for those utterances (whose views soon prevailed in the AAUP). But nobody ever doubted that Koch’s letter was an extramural utterance, even though human sexuality is arguably part of the academic work of a biology professor. I argue that the Koch case led to one of the greatest advances in academic freedom in the history of the AAUP, by declaring that extramural utterances don’t need to meet professional standards for excellent teaching or research. This freed professors to publicly express their opinions without fear of retribution. Eron and Nelson want to turn back the clock and make professors scared to open their mouths on anything they’re knowledgeable about.
Eron is notably the lead author of the important Colorado AAUP report on the firing of Ward Churchill. But if Eron’s theory of extramural utterances was accepted, then Churchill could have been fired solely for his idiotic blog post about 9/11 victims, since the issues of economic imperialism in that post were clearly related to Churchill’s academic work.
Historically, Eron and Nelson are dead wrong. The 1915 AAUP Declaration of Principles rejected the idea that for extramural utterances, “their freedom of speech, outside the university, should be limited to questions falling within their own specialties.” The AAUP took it for granted that ideas related to one’s academic work were protected under extramural utterances; they were arguing to expand it to all extramural utterances, even without academic expertise.
Most of the leading early academic freedom cases dealt with extramural utterances, and virtually all of them involved speech directly related to a professor’s academic expertise. Economist Edward Ross was fired by Stanford because of his extramural views about economics, and the same happened to Edward Bemis at the University of Chicago. Scott Nearing was fired by the University of Pennsylvania’s business school because of his extramural utterances about railroad interests, which were directly related to his academic field of economics.
The 1916 AAUP report on the Nearing case declared,
The committee is accordingly compelled to conclude that at least a contributory cause of Dr. Nearing’s removal was the opposition of certain persons outside the University to the views, upon questions within his own field of study, expressed by him in his extra-mural addresses.
I think this is definitive in proving that the original intent of the AAUP in protecting extramural utterances was to include utterances within the professor’s area of expertise. “Extramural” for the AAUP refers to utterances outside of one’s teaching and research work, not to the content of those utterances.
One aim of the AAUP was to make the professoriate more influential in public policy debates by protecting them from punishment for expressing their views on legislation and social issues. Although the AAUP wanted to protect all extramural utterances by professors, their primary concern was to defend the right of faculty to speak publicly on matters related to their academic expertise. Nelson and Eron’s theory, if adopted, would be the worst disaster for academic freedom in the AAUP’s history because so many cases where professors are fired involve extramural utterances related to their academic area, and it would have a terrible chilling effort on faculty speech.
“But none of those scholars are being dismissed for their political opinions, and Salaita was.”
Is hate speech against other minorities also viewed as political opinions and hence not grounds for a board to not approve an offer the faculty made?
Whether someone has engaged in hate speech is almost always a political opinion, as the Salaita case clearly reveals. That’s why the accusation of “hate speech” should not be grounds for boards to overturn faculty offers.
Gee. Is that your view of what blacks and other minorities say about hate speech about them? There are many complaints here on this blog about hate speech from random and unimportant Hindus. Are they not also political opinions? Is it fair for an elite to make those kinds of decisions based on their own ideas about politics and what is true?
Hate speech in the US system of civil liberties, unlike in Europe, is not the same thing as yelling “fire” in a crowded theater which is incitement to act. And I agree with you that the charge of hate speech is almost always subjective.
“The record is absolutely clear that Phyllis Wise and the Board of Trustees never read a word in Salaita’s books before deciding to fire him.”
Does that prove no one who talked to them about it had read his books and other things he had written? Should any of that be relevant?
I don’t know if any trustees were contacted early on by opponents of Salaita. None of the emails sent to Wise before she decided to fire Salaita indicate that any complainer had read his books. And, of course, the decision about scholarly worth of a professor is decided by academic experts in the field, not merely the existence of critical opinions made as ex post facto rationalizations to support firing a person whose tweets they disliked.
I like to get all the facts and make things as clear as possible. People use means of communication which do not leave a digital trail. I am talking about information available before the decisions were made. The initial AAUP story was that bad but powerful Jews forced the university to fire a very good man. I think that story is still being pushed by Salaita and others.
What “initial AAUP story” are you talking about? I’ve never seen anything from the AAUP that blamed “bad but powerful Jews” or that called Salaita “a very good man.”
As the chair of Committee A and the chair of the investigating committee that wrote the AAUP’s report on the Salaita case I want to make two comments.
First, for someone who claims he “likes to get all the facts” davem1962’s slander that the AAUP has blamed “bad but powerful Jews” for forcing UIUC to fire “a very good man” is outrageous. Nowhere in our investigative report nor in any other public statement on this case from the AAUP can one find reference to Jews either good or bad, powerful or powerless. This case, as we have repeatedly emphasized, is not about Israel, Zionism, or Judaism; it is about academic freedom and due process. Period. And nowhere has the AAUP labeled Salaita “a very good man” or anything of the sort. In our view he was simply a tenured faculty member whose academic freedom and due process rights were violated. If davem1962 believes that all tenured faculty are very good men and women, that’s his right, but it is not AAUP’s position.
Second, I want to clarify that the phrase that John discusses from our report on Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications, which seemed to define extramural expression as “speech in the public sphere and not in one’s area of academic expertise,” was by no means intended as a redefinition of AAUP policy. Moreover, in my personal opinion, including the words “and not in one’s area of academic expertise” was a mistake and an oversight for which I take responsibility. To be honest, despite the Committee’s usually diligent vetting (and revetting) of its statements somehow we simply missed this. Had someone pointed out the problem with that phrase and had the Committee discussed it, I doubt it would have remained in the document, but our attentions were largely elsewhere. But even so, as John argues, in the context of AAUP’s more extensive policies on extramural expression the line “cannot be viewed as a meaningful amendment to AAUP doctrines.”
It’s interesting but not surprising that Nelson and Eron are looking for ways to find words to interpret AAUP policy in the way that they do.
I did not say that was an official position. It was the story told by members of the AAUP who were upset about what happened. The story that has been told is as I said which can be checked. And it is still being told. So your cavil about that not being the official position simply avoids the issue. I love the way you claim people’s thoughts about Israel and Jews did not enter into the thinking of anyone in the AAUP involved in this.
So, people who don’t like AAUP’s position and then mischaracterize it are somehow the responsibility of AAUP? Not only is your slanderous characterization not an “official” position it is not a position at all in any sense of the word. AAUP has over 40,000 members. If a few of those members paid no attention to what we said and decided to distort and misconstrue our position for whatever reason, that is not our responsibility and they do not represent the association. Their opinions about our position are simply not our position.
As for your final sentence, I have never claimed that anyone’s “thoughts about Israel and Jews” did not enter into their thinking (or their actions) for the simple reason that I have no way of knowing what people’s thoughts are unless they express them. And I can say that during all the many hours of discussion of this issue in Committee A, in other AAUP leadership bodies, and in the annual membership meeting I heard only one person express anything at all about Israel and Jews, and that was Cary Nelson, who opposed our motion to censure the UIUC administration for its actions and who, like you, baselessly and irresponsibly charged unnamed individuals with prejudice, without even a single shred of evidence. But perhaps you have some extraordinary superpower that allows you to read people’s minds and motives without even talking to them or even meeting them.
“So, people who don’t like AAUP’s position and then mischaracterize it are somehow the responsibility of AAUP?”
No. I am talking about people who like the official position, which says the university wrongly fired Salaita. I am talking about what was said by people who are members of the AAUP before the official statement.
“I have never claimed that anyone’s “thoughts about Israel and Jews” did not enter into their thinking (or their actions) for the simple reason that I have no way of knowing what people’s thoughts are unless they express them.”
“who, like you, baselessly and irresponsibly charged unnamed individuals with prejudice,”
Wow. I pointed out what has been said by people who are members of the AAUP and who started complaining very publicly as soon as the decision was made. You seem to be saying the people who put together the official position knew none of those people and paid no heed to all the discussion about the connection between wealthy Jews and the decision and whether what Salaita said about Jews and Israel should be a consideration by the university. The problem is that the issue of whether talking about
I note the you are avoiding talking about the full picture as well as misrepresenting what I have said. I think you are protesting too much and playing the victim card to avoid dealing with what I am saying about the campaign to show Salaita has been wronged.
“Finally, Salaita’s continuing rejection by the Illinois administration has turned him into an undeserving hero, while obscuring the truly vile nature of his tweets about Israel and Jews. Quite understandably, university professors value academic freedom very highly, and tend to rally around any figure whom they perceive to have been abused or mistreated. This is precisely what has happened in the Salaita case. His actual words — which revived ancient anti-Jewish memes — would have been broadly condemned if he had not become the avatar of faculty independence. For example, Salaita accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of ritual child murder, and he compared “Zio-trolls” to scabies.
Ordinarily, no educated person would overlook the historical resonance of these statements — especially the characterization of Jews as vermin — but they have been ignored or excused by Salaita’s defenders, who identify more strongly with his plight as the victim of an intrusive administration.
The great irony is that Salaita himself is no champion of free expression. He has advocated excluding Hillel, the Jewish student organization, from minority group activities on campus, and he supports the boycott of all Israeli academic institutions and the barring of Israeli deans and rectors from scholarly conferences. His lawsuit against the University of Illinois included alumni and donors as defendants, on the spurious ground that they were not entitled to express their anti-Salaita views to Chancellor Wise. (Even when ruling mostly in Salaita’s favor, Judge Leinenweber dismissed this claim as contrary to the First Amendment.)”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-steven-salatia-urbana-champaign-university-illinois-tweets-israel-perspec-081-20150810-story.html
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