Update 9/11: at the noon rally today we got the announcement that the (appointed, unelected) Board of Trustees voted against Professor Salaita. I think there was one for and the rest against his appointment.
It was a Unity protest, lots of issues as well as Salaita, "Union Now", "want our contract", and "don't penalize us for voting for a Union". Everyone emphasized the connecting threads.
The next action(s) I'm expecting is Salaita filing a lawsuit and more Unity BOT protests have been promised.
Original diary:
-- that’s the title of a good summary here.
Professor Salaita was hired by the American Indian Studies program at University of Illinois, a state institution. He accepted the position in October 2013. Two weeks before classes were to start the chancellor wrote to tell him not to come.
Quote from Salaita:
Even more troubling are the documented revelations that the decision to terminate me is a result of pressure from wealthy donors – individuals who expressly dislike my political views. As the Center for Constitutional Rights and other groups have been tracking, this is part of a nationwide, concerted effort by wealthy and well-organized groups to attack pro-Palestinian students and faculty and silence their speech. This risks creating a Palestinian exception to the First Amendment and to academic freedom.
Just as there is a “anti-abortion exception for assault” so the anti-abortion groups can harass all they want outside of women’s health clinics and police departments are afraid to arrest because their town budges will get bled with lawsuits.
Just as there is a “bill of rights exception for the War on (Some) Drugs”, see Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow; ditto exception for the War on “Terror”.
There are probably other examples people can add. More Salaita below.
The reason why Wise says she sent her letter to Salaita:
“My first reaction was, ‘Oh my goodness, this man must be packing, I can’t let him risk the fact of bringing his whole family from Virginia all the way to Urbana-Champaign and then not really have a position,’” Wise said. “So I didn’t do very much consultation.” link
and preemptively made the decision his appointment wouldn’t go to the trustees. Which is BS.
At the press conference, people also got introduced to Robert Warrior who is in charge of the American Indian Studies program, who made the hiring decision. That program also had to do a lot of shuffling in short notice (2 weeks before classes started!) to cover the classes Salaita was going to be teaching. He said, “What have I gotten my friend Steve into?” From the start, he was embarrassed for Salaita.
The one conversation Warrior had with Wise, he reported she said his Twitter account would be monitored, & what he did on university property and equipment. (Lots of groans & hisses at that.) She did not say she was considering [refusing the hire] [I forget the exact words]. Therefore there was no consultation with the faculty who did the hiring decision. That faculty and 11 other departments or programs have made a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Wise.
The trustees are meeting tomorrow, I think there might be a vote after all. Lots of solidarity is happening.
There’s going to be a big rally tomorrow. A lot of people going to protest. The campus administration is doing a lot of nasty union-busting crap. AFSCME negotiations are not going well. There’s a new faculty union for non-tenured faculty. There is organizing happening for tenured faculty.
There are alternatives-to-incarceration activists already angry at the News-Gazette which not only spearheaded shit-stirring to get Salaita fired, but spearheaded shit-stirring to prevent an academic professional having his contract renewed because of his activism to prevent a jail expansion.
There are a lot of converging factors why this incident won't quiet down.