August 23, 2015 Dear President Killeen and Acting Chancellor Wilson, We the forty-one undersigned Executive Officers and campus leaders from departments and academic units across the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign urge you to help end the crisis that has plagued our university for more than a year. It has increasingly become clear that the…
Discussion, at least via social media, is growing relating to the evolving caste system in higher education and the real meaning (that is, the actual impact) of academic freedom. Many of the basics—the shrinking tenure-track/tenured faculty, the contractual limitations to codified academic freedom—have been bandied about so much that they are now almost clichés. The…
Just over a month after being censured by the AAUP annual meeting, the administration of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center took steps toward instituting a shared governance model and improving academic due process. The Cancer Letter reported this past Friday that UT System Chancellor William McRaven directed MD Anderson President Ronald DePinho in a July 23 letter…
This afternoon, the University of Illinois trustees’ Executive Committee voted to reject Phyllis Wise’s negotiated settlement and $400,000 payout to resign last week, effective today. The Executive Committee is made up of Chair Ed McMillan and trustees Karen Hasara and James Montgomery (the lone trustee who changed his mind about Salaita and voted against dismissing him). All…
David Palumbo-Liu, a professor at Stanford University and one of the most insightful commentators on issues related to education that I know of, ends an article posted yesterday on The Nation website, “Steven Salaita, Professor Fired for ‘Uncivil’ Tweets, Vindicated in Federal Court,” with this admonition: As we see the case against the university gathering…
Northwestern law professor Steven Lubet has an op-ed in today’s Chicago Tribune with the headline, “The writing is on the wall, U. of I.: Offer controversial scholar Steven Salaita a job.” It’s a well-written piece expressing Lubet’s previously expressed opinion that Salaita an anti-Semite and an idiot, but arguing that the U of I’s fight…
What are the most important revelations in Phyllis Wise’s secret personal emails that were uncovered on Friday? Perhaps the key fact is that these emails existed at all. Using a personal email address to evade FOIA requests is clearly unethical and possibly illegal. And confessing that this was the purpose, as Wise did, is remarkably stupid.…
“Who is Aaron Barlow?” wrote Robin Kaler, Associate Chancellor for Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in an email to colleagues last October. She asked this in one of the emails relating to Chancellor Phyllis Wise and the Steven Salaita case that were “dumped” last week in response to a FOIA request, emails…
I have read the entire fifty-six page opinion of Judge Harry D. Leinenweber, United States District Court, for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, who ruled that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign could not sustain an argument for dismissal of many counts brought by Steven G. Salaita’s lawsuit. The judge has a rhetorical grace that not only…