Below is an open letter from Department Heads at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to incoming president Timothy Killeen about the Salaita case. A UIUC faculty committee report on the case is expected later this month, and on Dec. 3 a forum on the Salaita case, academic freedom, and civility will be held at…
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) co-counsel in Chicago, Loevy & Loevy, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (PDF) today against the University of Illinois, accusing it of failing to release emails between administration officials and trustees about the dismissal of Steven Salaita. According to the CCR, “The University initially denied the FOIA request…
By Sharon Ann Musher In the aftermath of the board of trustees’ vote at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to terminate Steven Salaita’s conditional job offer, the scholar of Arab-American literature is pursuing two options. He has engaged the Center for Constitution Rights to sue the university. And he has requested that the American…
By Michael Rothberg [An earlier and shorter version of these remarks was first presented at the forum “Academic Freedom and Political Dissent,” which was sponsored by Illinois Faculty for Academic Freedom and Justice and took place on September 18, 2014 in Urbana’s Independent Media Center. The forum featured a lecture by Katherine Franke from Columbia Law School about…
InsideHigherEd today features an essay I wrote about Kenneth Howell, an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois who was fired, and then re-hired, in 2010, after a complaint about an email he sent to his Catholicism class which included some rather bizarre anti-gay views. Last month, I wrote about a white supremacist who is a…
By Jillian York, Director for International Freedom of Expression, Electronic Frontier Foundation Plenty has been written on the unceremonious “un-hiring” of Steven Salaita, a professor who gave up tenure at Virginia Tech to take a more suitable position at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The revocation of Salaita’s job offer—a day before he was set…
Christopher Kennedy, chair of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees has never responded to my request for him to debate me when I speak on Monday in Urbana (Sept. 22, 7pm, Allen Hall, 1005 W. Gregory), but he has spoken to the Chicago Tribune and now the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette about his decision. His interview…
Eric Zorn, a liberal columnist for the Chicago Tribune, argues today that Steven Salaita’s First Amendment rights “remain intact” and “academic freedom is not under assault.” He is wrong. Here’s why: The argument that hiring decisions have no First Amendment protections is ludicrous. Zorn might wish that public employers could refuse to hire people on…
The following is the text of an open letter to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees from Safiya Umoja Noble, Assistant Professor, UCLA, and former faculty member, student, and development staff member at UIUC. The letter appeared on Noble’s blog. Dear University of Illinois Board of Trustees Members, I spent the last eight years…
The University of Illinois Board of Trustees just concluded a meeting at which they formally voted to reject the appointment of Steven Salaita. However, the vote was not unanimous. Trustee James Montgomery, who had earlier signed the letter endorsing the dismissal of Salaita, changed his mind: “I think I made a mistake, and I don’t…