Steven Salaita spoke tonight at the University of Illinois at Chicago before a supportive crowd of 150 about his new book, Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom, which Aaron Barlow reviewed and I also reviewed last week. Salaita will be speaking on Oct. 13 in Urbana.
He wondered about the controversy that got him fired, “Why was it such a big deal?” As Salaita noted, “it is absolutely remarkable to me that so many people got together to discuss behind closed doors an associate professor who was tweeting criticism of the war crimes of a foreign government.”
Salaita said, “I don’t consider myself to be an angry person,” and added, “I’m terribly shy and introverted.” He was shocked at the “angry and manaical” version of him painted by critics who didn’t know him. Salaita was also surprised at how angry his enemies were: “These folks got me fired, they took away my livelihood, …and then they acted like I had done something to them.”
But he decided, “I’m going to own the anger.” As he put it, “When I see 521 children bombed to death” and “toddlers blown to smithereens” that response is appropriate: “Yes, I was angry. Yes, I was offensive.”
I asked Salaita about how he would view an angry pro-Israel professor, and the possible desire of some leftists to fire a professor like that.
Salaita noted, “free speech is an easy concept to problematize.” But he said, “I take a pretty traditional view that whatever problems that exist with the inconsistency of its practice….It’s the most useful tool we have available to us to do this organizing work”
Salaita said about the idea of free speech, :”I find in it a sort of indispensibility.” He noted, “I don’t like the idea of someone with a differing political view facing some kind of censure.”
As Salaita said, “I’m deeply skeptical of adminsitrators reacting to a public outrage using the discourse of student well-being as their rationale. I think we should all be suspicious of that structure.” Although he is not an absolutist, Salaita said: “I would tend toward more free speech absolutism.”
But Salaita said, “notions of American exceptionalism around academic freedom and free speech are nonsense.” As he put it, “I went to the Arab world to get free speech.”
“As he it it, “When I see 521 children bombed to death” and “toddlers blown to smithereens” that response is appropriate: “Yes, I was angry. Yes, I was offensive.””
That is sort of like a line drawn. People placed on different sides of the line will see things differently. Line drawers don’t allow for complex and nuanced ideas about causation. Everyone gets put on their side or the other side.
Actually, Barbara Ransby, who introduced Salaita at UIC, responded to my question by saying she would “warn us against oversimplfiying complex questions” and added, “I’m always uncomfortable when we decontextualize the power embedded in who gets to speak and who doesn’t.” I disagree with those who worship at the altar of nuance. We need complex and nuanced analysis, but we also need to make moral judgments. And often “complex and nuanced” ideas (such as Cary Nelson’s approach to Salaita’s firing) are a cover for wrong judgments. If you say that firing people you like is wrong, and firing people you dislike requires nuanced ideas, I think you’re missing some key principles. The reality is that all of us draw lines, and all of us are also capable of nuance. You don’t get to condemn line drawing as simplistic by simplistically dividing the world into line drawers and people with nuance.
Wow does this guy have nerve. “These folks got me fired, they took away my livelihood, …and then they acted like I had done something to them.” The bombings, the stabbings and other the harassment of Jews all over the planet he works to further. No reason at all his critics should be upset. After all its not like Julius Streicher wasn’t executed for crimes against humanity for writing pretty much the same stuff he’s writing.
“I don’t consider myself to be an angry person”. Your critics are fine with granting that. Your hate comments about Jews reflect your true feelings about them and the only product of anger was the fact that you expressed them in such graphic language.
This guy is such a piece of work.
What a truly disgusting comment. Now you’re blaming Salaita for every bombing and stabbing around the world, and suggesting that he deserves to be executed like Nazi leaders for his tweets. You are such a piece of work.
The anger, CD-Host, is all yours.
It is misplaced and inappropriate.