Guest blogger David Kaloustian is a professor of English and Modern Languages at Bowie State University in Maryland. An Unfortunately Chosen Metaphor I note that the White Paper (see 4.b. here), which formed the basis of the Board of Regent’s change of course for higher education begins the history of UMUC with a rather unfortunately…
The News–Gazette reported that Steven Salaita’s lawsuit against the University of Illinois will proceed. The University of Illinois had argued, since the lawsuit had been filed by the professor’s lawyers, the Center for Constitutional Rights (C.R.C.), and not specifically by Professor Salaita, that the plaintiff did not have legal standing. Judge Chase Leonhard, a Champaign County state judge, issued…
The following talk by Michael Rothberg, Head of the Department of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, was prepared for a Campus Faculty Association forum on shared governance and academic freedom at the University of Illinois in Urbana on February 13, 2015.…
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty Senate has approved a resolution recommending that the administration “promptly” adhere to and implement the recommendations of the December 23, 2014 released Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure (CAFT) report on the Steven Salaita firing. The vote was 51-41 at the February 9, 2015 Senate meeting. We had…
The Hiring Policies and Processes Review Committee is a faculty committee impaneled last October by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty senate and Provost Phyllis M. Wise. It has recommended the University of Illinois System Board of Trustees no longer approve new faculty hires and cease all personnel decision-making below the position of an…
I would like to add a few items to John Wilson’s fine summary of the law suit filed in US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on behalf of Steven Salaita. The Center for Constitutional Law and the Chicago civil rights law firm Loevy and Loevy have been providing legal counsel to Professor Salaita. The…
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise fired Steven Salaita for extramural utterances on Twitter. She gave an interview for the influential The News-Gazette: no other paper has pipelines to the university administration as does the Champaign-Urbana paper. In her interview she rather cavalierly dismissed the impact of a possible American Association of University Professors censure. She…
New FSU President John Thrasher is taking a stance on controversy surrounding the Koch-funded faculty positions at the university that echoes the stance now being taken by those at the University of Illinois who have rescinded the offer letter to Steven Salaita and those who support that decision. Now that they have expressed their determination…
The University of Illinois Board of Trustees has issued its “final” ruling on the firing, summary dismissal and suspension of Dr. Steven Salaita for solidarity tweets with the civilian population during the latest Israel/Gaza conflict last summer. It explicitly rejected the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure report. While I found that report to be…