Freedom to offend


In this posting: 1) Chronicle of Higher Education gives a history of the dispute; 2) Michelle Goldberg compares and contrasts the treatment of Salaita and Ayaan Hirsi Ali; 3) Corey Robin stands up for the freedom to be outspoken.


Protesters at the University of Illinois Board of Trustees meeting. Photo: Facebook

What’s Next in the Steven Salaita Dispute?

By Peter Schmidt, Chronicle of Higher Education
September 12, 2014

Thursday’s 8-to-1 vote by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees to deny a tenured professorship to Steven G. Salaita over his inflammatory Twitter posts about Israel hardly settles the controversy over the university’s dealings with him.

In fact, by denying Mr. Salaita a position at the university’s Urbana-Champaign campus in response to his tweets, the Illinois board might have helped raise the temperature of debates elsewhere over shared governance and the boundaries of academic freedom and free speech on college campuses.

What might the future hold for key figures in the Illinois dispute and other players in academe? Here’s a look at some of the possibilities.

At a news conference on Tuesday and in a news release issued after Thursday’s board vote, Mr. Salaita expressed a willingness to sue the University of Illinois for denying him a position in the American Indian studies program at Urbana-Champaign. He has not actually committed to filing such a lawsuit, however, and it remains unclear whether he has a solid case.

To recap key events that any court would need to review, administrators at Urbana-Champaign told Mr. Salaita last October that he had been picked for the job, with his appointment subject to approval by the university board. At Illinois, that process generally is seen as such an inevitable rubber stamp that many faculty hires have gone to work before the board’s vote on them. Mr. Salaita’s appointment, however, became contentious after a popular conservative blog, The Daily Caller, published an article in July calling attention to some of his incendiary tweets about Israel and its military actions in Gaza.

Phyllis M. Wise, chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus, and other university officials were barraged with emails opposed to Mr. Salaita’s hiring, some from donors threatening to withhold gifts. Last month Ms. Wise told Mr. Salaita she would not be forwarding his proposed appointment to the trustees because she viewed its approval as unlikely. She stood by her decision in the face of criticism from his supporters, but she admitted some procedural missteps in her dealings with Mr. Salaita. Ms. Wise sent his appointment to the board when it became clear that state law allows for board votes on faculty appointments that chancellors oppose.

A statement issued on Thursday by Christopher Kennedy, the board’s chairman, suggests that the trustees’ vote on Mr. Salaita was intended to head off any legal claim that the university had denied his appointment the full consideration that the law requires. If such logic holds, any lawsuit by Mr. Salaita probably would hinge on the question of whether he was entitled to the academic-freedom and free-speech protections of the university’s faculty members. The answer to that probably will come down to contract law and whether he had gained any employee protections by virtue of being offered a job.

Top University of Illinois Officials

Chancellor Wise sought at Thursday’s meeting to reassure faculty members angry over her handling of Mr. Salaita’s case. She pledged to learn from the controversy, to “work hard to bring the campus together,” and to reaffirm her commitment to shared governance and engage in more consultation with deans, departments, and faculty members.

It remains unclear, however, whether she can repair her relations with the faculty. Several academic departments have voted no confidence in her leadership in response to the case.

By speaking out in opposition to Mr. Salaita’s appointment on Thursday, Robert A. Easter, the university’s president, and Mr. Kennedy and other board members might have similarly incurred the wrath of supporters of Mr. Salaita, who accuse them of caving in to big donors and trampling academic freedom.

American Professors
Mr. Kennedy’s statement argued that several of Mr. Salaita’s tweets about Israel “can be easily interpreted as basically anti-Semitic.” The Chicago Tribune, in an editorial supporting the board’s vote, asserted on Thursday that Mr. Salaita had crossed the line into hate speech with tweets that said Zionists had been “transforming ‘anti-Semitism’ from something horrible into something honorable” and “I wish all the [expletive] West Bank settlers would go missing.” The newspaper suggested that no faculty member would be given license to direct similar comments at black people, gay people, or women.

Many of Mr. Salaita’s supporters, however, argue that such comments are not anti-Semitic but fair, if emotional, expressions of opposition to Israel’s actions and to those who allege anti-Semitism in response to criticisms of the Israeli government.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has yet to issue clear guidance on when criticism of Israel amounts to anti-Semitism that violates federal antidiscrimination laws. Some supporters of that nation contend that anyone who is more critical of Israel than nations with worse records, in whatever area they are discussing, betrays an anti-Semitic bias. One advocacy group, the Amcha Initiative, issued a statement this month arguing that the more than 200 Middle East scholars who have signed a petition calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions by people in their field have displayed enough bias to raise doubts about their ability to fairly teach about Israel or the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Given the contentious debate over such speech, the University of Illinois board’s vote on Mr. Salaita is almost certain to be seen as chilling faculty speech on Israel. Academic associations that had rallied behind him by boycotting the University of Illinois or otherwise protesting its actions were still deciding Thursday afternoon how to respond to the day’s developments, but they appear likely to keep up, or even escalate, their fight.

Other Colleges
In arguing that Mr. Salaita’s undoing was not his criticisms of Israel but the incivility he displayed in making them, University of Illinois officials have helped feed suspicions among many faculty members that calls for “civility” are, in reality, veiled attacks on academic freedom.

Both Nicholas B. Dirks, chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, and Roderick J. McDavis, Ohio University’s president, recently found themselves dealing with faculty defensiveness when their pleas for civility provoked unexpected backlashes that appeared to be motivated partly by the Salaita controversy. Other university leaders now might have a tougher time calling for civility without being accused of stifling speech.

The Program Trying to Hire Salaita
Robert Warrior, director of American Indian studies at Urbana-Champaign, said on Thursday that the board’s vote against Mr. Salaita was going to leave his program down one faculty member. He said that Mr. Salaita had been selected last fall to fill a job search authorized in the spring of 2013 and that no new search had been authorized.


Steven Salaita, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Academic Freedom

By Michelle Goldberg, The Nation
September 15, 2014


Steve Salaita, a professor who lost his job offer at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, speaks at a press conference. Photo by Seth Perlman / AP

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born feminist known for her ferocious hatred of Islam, is scheduled to give a talk at Yale tonight, though many campus groups object. Thirty-five student organizations, including the school’s J Street branch and its Women’s Center, have co-signed a letter from the Yale Muslim Students Association saying that they feel “highly disrespected by the invitation of this speaker.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s comments on Islam, they say, “have been classified as hate speech.” Further, they argue that she lacks the requisite qualifications. “Our concern is that Ms. Hirsi Ali is being invited to speak as an authority on Islam despite the fact that she does not hold the credentials to do so,” they write.

It’s striking how much these arguments echo those that have been made against Steven Salaita, the Palestinian-American professor who was de-hired from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign over his vitriolic tweets about Israel. “It is important to have an institution where people are not afraid to apply or attend because they feel their views are not respected,” University of Illinois trustee Patrick Fitzgerald—the former US Attorney—said about joining the 8-1 vote against Salaita last week. The Chicago Tribune praised the trustees’ decision, saying that Salaita’s tweets had crossed the line into “hate speech.” Some have claimed that the real issue isn’t the professor’s Tweets but his shoddy academic work. “Devoid of any real understanding, context, or nuance, stupidly dogmatic, and frequently given to hyperbolic fits of hatred, it should not qualify as scholarship,” Liel Leibovitz argued on Tablet.

Clearly, the similar rhetoric used against the two figures—coming, of course, from very different political camps—doesn’t mean that the two cases are identical. Ali’s supporters could point out that the standards for hiring a professor are much higher than those for letting someone speak on campus. (Last year, when Brandeis revoked its offer of an honorary degree for Hirsi Ali, many people, myself included, argued that she had a right to speak, though not to be honored for what she said.) Salaita’s could counter that much more is at stake for him, since both he and his wife had quit their previous positions at Virginia Tech and begun the process of moving in preparation for a job that he had every reason to believe was his. Further, the fact that the school seems to have bowed to pressure from pro-Israel donors will have a chilling effect that goes far beyond his individual case.

Still, it’s worth recognizing that arguments privileging “respect” and civility above freedom on campus are always double-edged. If you believe that Hirsi Ali shouldn’t be allowed to speak because she denigrates Islam and makes many students uncomfortable, then it’s hard to see how you can simultaneously claim that Salaita, a professor who has tweeted, “Zionists: transforming ‘anti-Semitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948,” deserves a place in the classroom.

Simultaneously, if, like many conservatives, you think the value of Salaita’s work is negated by his febrile remarks about Zionism, then it’s hard to explain how Hirsi Ali should be excused her eliminationist language about Islam. As she told Reason in 2007, “I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself.… There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that.… There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.”

The fact is, both Salaita and Hirsi Ali are complicated, inflammatory figures who have, in the face of shocking moral outrages, said outrageous things. They will make some students intensely and understandably uncomfortable—some might even say “triggered.” If you’re going to argue that students have a right not to be so discomfited, then you’d have to take a stand against both of them, which would be a stand in favor of a grimly censorious, anodyne university climate. The alternative is to defend free speech and academic liberty, and not just for those whose views seem righteous.


Another Professor Punished for Anti-Israel Views

By Corey Robin, blog
August 06, 2014

Until two weeks ago, Steven Salaita was heading to a job at the University of Illinois as a professor of American Indian Studies. He had already resigned from his position at Virginia Tech; everything seemed sewn up. Now the chancellor of the University of Illinois has overturned Salaita’s appointment and rescinded the offer. Because of Israel.

The sources familiar with the university’s decision say that concern grew over the tone of his comments on Twitter about Israel’s policies in Gaza….

For instance, there is this tweet:

At this point, if Netanyahu appeared on TV with a necklace made from the teeth of Palestinian children, would anybody be surprised? #Gaza. [Or this one]: By eagerly conflating Jewishness and Israel, Zionists are partly responsible when people say antisemitic shit in response to Israeli terror. [Or this one:] Zionists, take responsibility: if your dream of an ethnocratic Israel is worth the murder of children, just fucking own it already.

In recent weeks, bloggers and others have started to draw attention to Salaita’s comments on Twitter. But as recently as July 22 (before the job offer was revoked), a university spokeswoman defended Salaita’s comments on Twitter and elsewhere. A spokeswoman told The News-Gazette for an article about Salaita that “faculty have a wide range of scholarly and political views, and we recognize the freedom-of-speech rights of all of our employees.”

I’ve written about a number of these types of cases over the past few years, but few have touched me the way this one has. For three reasons.

First, Steven is a friend on Facebook, and we follow each other on Twitter. I don’t know him personally but I’ve valued his unapologetic defense of the rights of Palestinians. Often he posts articles and information from which I’ve learned quite a bit.

Second, I have no doubt that an easily rattled administrator would find some of my public writings on Israel and Palestine to have crossed a line. If you’re in favor of Salaita being punished, you should be in favor of me being punished. And not just me. On Twitter, many of us—not just on this issue but a variety of issues, and not just on the left, but also on the right—speak in a way that can jar or shock a tender sensibility. We swear, we accuse, we say no, in thunder. That’s the medium. Though I’ve never really thought twice about it, it’s fairly chilling to think that a university official might now be combing through my tweets to see if I had said anything that would warrant me being deemed ineligible for a job. Or worse, since I have tenure, that an administrator might be doing that to any and every potential job candidate.

Third, Cary Nelson, who was once the president of the American Association of University Professors, has weighed in in defense of this decision by the University of Illinois Chancellor.

I think the chancellor made the right decision [he said via email]. I know of no other senior faculty member tweeting such venomous statements — and certainly not in such an obsessively driven way. There are scores of over-the-top Salaita tweets. I also do not know of another search committee that had to confront a case where the subject matter of academic publications overlaps with a loathsome and foul-mouthed presence in social media. I doubt if the search committee felt equipped to deal with the implications for the campus and its students. I’m glad the chancellor did what had to be done.

Asked if he feared that the withdrawal of the job offer could represent a scholar being punished for his unpopular political views, Nelson said he did not think that was the case. “If Salaita had limited himself to expressing his hostility to Israel in academic publications subjected to peer review, I believe the appointment would have gone through without difficulty,” he said. Nelson added that harsh criticism of Israel is widespread among faculty members. “Salaita’s extremist and uncivil views stand alone. There is nothing ‘unpopular’ on this campus about hostility to Israel.”

Once upon a time I wrote an essay for an anthology Nelson edited on unions in academia. When I was the leader of the grad union drive at Yale, he came to campus and spoke out on our behalf. I thought of him as not only a champion of academic freedom but as an especially acerbic—some might even say uncivil—commentator willing to throw a few elbows at his fellow academics. One time, he even compared a fellow English professor to a vampire bat, and proceeded to make fun of his bodily movements and facial gestures. In an academic publication subject to peer review.

But in recent years Nelson has become an outspoken defender of the State of Israel and a critic of the BDS movement. A man who once called for the boycott of a university now thinks boycotts of universities are a grave threat to academic freedom. A man who serially violates the norms of academic civility—urging fellow academics to “give key administrators no peace. Place chanting pickets outside their homes. Disrupt every meeting they attend with sardonic or inspiring public theater”—now invokes those same norms against a critic of Israel. A man who once wrote that “claims about collegiality are being used to stifle campus debate, to punish faculty, and to silence the free exchange of opinion by the imposition of corporate-style conformity,” now complains about an anti-Zionist professor’s “foul-mouthed presence in social media.” A man who once called the movement against hostile environments and in favor of sensitive speech on campus “Orwellian,” now frets over a student of Salaita’s fearing she “would be academically at risk in expressing pro-Israeli views in class.”

I bring this up not to pick on Nelson, but to ask him, and all of you, a simple question: Should Nelson be deemed ineligible for another job at a university simply because of these statements he has written? Should l be deemed ineligible for another job at a university simply because of some “foul-mouthed,” perhaps even intemperate, tweets that I’m sure I have written?

But I bring up Nelson’s case for another reason. And that is that his hypocrisy is not merely his own. It is a symptom of the effects of Zionism on academic freedom, how pro-Israel forces have consistently attempted to shut down debate on this issue, how they “distort all that is right.” Nelson’s U-Turn demonstrates that we’re heading down a very dangerous road. I strongly urge all of you to put on the brakes.

Notes and links

From an interview with Steven Salaita in Jadaliyya by Noura Erekat

Steven Salaiata served the American Studies Association’s Community and Activism Caucus that successfully put forward the recent boycott resolution and is one of the leading Palestinian voices on this successful initiative. Salaita was born in West Virginia; his mother was born and raised in Nicaragua, but her parents are from Palestine. His father is Jordanian, from the Old Testament town of Madaba. For the past six years he has taught English at Virginia Tech, but starting in the fall he’ll join the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He writes regularly for Electronic Intifada and Salon. His most recent published book is Israel’s Dead Soul, but he’s working on a project that compares neocolonial narratives in the New World and Palestine.

ASA votes to boycott Israeli academic institutions by more than 2:1, December 2013.

Attack on ASA boycott misses the point, Peter Beinart, Open Zion
December 17 2013

Steven Salaita’s Books
“The Uncultured Wars: Arabs, Muslims and the Poverty of Liberal Thought – New Essays”

Anti-Arab Racism in the USA: Where it Comes From and What it Means for Politics Today 

Modern Arab American Fiction: A Reader’s Guide 

The Holy Land in Transit: Colonialism and the Quest for Canaan 

Arab American Literary Fictions, Cultures, and Politics 

Israel’s Dead Soul 

Arab American Literary Fictions, Cultures, and Politics. American Literature Readings in the 21st Century 

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