Corey Robin's Blog, page 77

Over 5000 Scholars Boycotting the UIUC

Tomorrow is Steven Salaita’s day. Just so that he—and the rest of the world—will know how many of us in academe are standing with him, there are now 5098 scholars boycotting the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until the University reinstates Salaita.

Here’s the breakdown:

General, non-discipline-specific, boycott statement: 1819*
Philosophy: 567
Political Science: 306
Sociology: 292
History: 93*
Chicano/a and Latino/a Studies: 78
Communications: 105
Rhetoric/Composition: 63
English: 360
Contingent academic workers: 295
Anthropology: 177
Women’s/Gender/Feminist Studies: 54*
Library and Information Science: 180
Natural sciences: 34
Graduate students: 675

*These are numbers I have had to pull from older reports; they could be higher.

 

Salaita to Speak at Press Conference Tomorrow at UIUC

Steven Salaita will be speaking tomorrow, Tuesday, September 9, at 12:30 pm, at a press conference at the University YMCA in Urbana, Illinois. Two days before the Board of Trustees meets.

Salaita will be joined by Robert Warrior, chair of the American Indian Studies department at UIUC; Michael Rothberg, chair of the English department at UIUC, Maria LaHood, a senior attorney from the Center for Constitutional Rights, and two UIUC students.

This is the first time Salaita will be speaking publicly about his situation.

His legal team includes the Center for Constitutional Rights and Anand Swaminathan of Loevy & Loevy in Chicago

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, “For those unable to attend the press conference in person, a copy of Prof. Salaita’s comments will be sent around afterwards and the speakers will be available for interview by phone beginning at 2 p.m. CDT.”

The University YMCA is located at 1001 S Wright Street in Urbana. The number is 217-337-1500.

If you’re in the area, please come and show your support.

Civility, One Chair to Another

Jean O’Brien, professor of history and chair of the American Indian Studies department at the University of Minnesota, sent an email to Chris Kennedy, chair of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees and son of Bobby Kennedy, about the Salaita affair.

I reproduce the exchange here, unedited.

———- Forwarded message ———-

From: Chris Kennedy

Date: Sun, Sep 7, 2014 at 3:27 PM

Subject: Re: Steven Salaita

To: Jean O’Brien

You were not brief enough

Christopher G. Kennedy

E – chris@nbandw.com / chris@northbankandwells.com

O – (312) 527-7503

C – [REDACTED]

————

On Sep 7, 2014, at 2:37 PM, “Jean O’Brien” wrote:

Dear Trustee Kennedy:

I will be brief: please reverse your cowardly decision to “un-hire” Steven Salaita in the name of justice, humanity, civility, and in defense of academic freedom. Your actions have already damaged your great University so deeply that it is difficult to imagine reversing that damage, but this would be one small step. The world is watching. If you take seriously your capacity as a trustee, then please act in compliance with the expectation such a position demands of you.

On a personal note, several years ago, I was offered the position of Director of Native American Studies at Illinois that Robert Warrior now performs so ably. The actions of the University demonstrate in no uncertain terms that I never made a better decision than to turn that offer down. I only hope that the stellar program he has painstakingly built will not be completely undone.

Jean O’Brien

Professor, Department of History

Chair, Department of American Indian Studies

University of Minnesota

Co-Founder, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association

Co-Editor (with Robert Warrior) of Native American and Indigenous Studies

Civility, one chair to another.

This is not the response of a highly professional administration in control of itself. This is the bitter voice mail of a peevish lover drunk-dialing in the middle of the night.

As I’ve been saying, the leadership of the University of Illinois is unraveling.

Update (9:50 am)

Henry Farrell emails Chris Kennedy this morning:

I understand you like brief emails so just one sentence – you have a chance to mitigate the terrible damage that is being done to your university’s academic reputation, and I respectfully suggest you take it.

The Reason I Don’t Believe in Civility is That I Do Believe in Civility

Civility is the academic flavor of the month. As we head back to school, university leaders are calling for it, and, as Ali Abunimah shows, Salaita’s critics—and defenders of Israel more generally—are especially hot on it.

I have complicated feelings about civility. On the hand, it’s perfectly clear to me, as these various links, particularly Ali’s, demonstrate, that the call for civility is little more than an effort to muzzle critics, to turn vibrant campuses into intellectual morgues.

On the other hand, my mother brought me up to be polite, to be considerate of other people’s feelings, to listen, to wait my turn when I speak, not to be over-bearing, not to crowd someone with my speech but to give her the space to voice hers. And occasionally my mother will send me an email or tell me in a phone call—politely, of course—that perhaps I could be a little gentler in my comments.

Now, as readers of this blog will know, and as my mother sometimes will point out—politely, of course—I don’t always live up to my mom’s standards.

But, and this is a big but, I do try, whenever I am entering someone else’s conversation—whether it’s on Twitter, a blog, Facebook, wherever—to be civil. Because I’ve still got this bourgeois thing where I feel like if it’s their conversation, or their blog or Twitter feed or Facebook page, it’s kind of like their home. And I’m their guest. So, inevitably, I preface my remarks with a series of coughs and throat clears, with a “You may have already covered this” or “I know I’m late to the conversation, so forgive me if someone has pointed out this already,” and so forth. And if I don’t know my host or her guests personally, I invariably begin with an apology along the lines of “Hi, you don’t know me, but my name is Corey, I’m a professor of political science, and I realize I’m crashing your conversation, so forgive me for the intrusion. But….” And not just as a mode of politeness, but as way of interacting intellectually and politically: I try to make sure I understand where people are coming from, I try not to impose my beliefs, and so on.

Because that’s how my mom raised me. I’m one of those of people who always feels slightly embarrassed on a picket line or in a demonstration—simply because I’m making noise. And that’s not polite. Or nice.

But here’s the thing about the people who call for civility on the internet, particularly the people who are now raising such a ruckus about Salaita and about Israel more generally: they’re completely uncivil. As in rude.

Often, they just show up on my blog or my FB page or in my Twitter feed, out of nowhere. I’ve never heard of them; they make no effort to introduce themselves. And worse, they make no effort to even understand the conversation. They just plop into the house, like Aunt Agatha on Bewitched, clambering down the chimney and making a mess, and start yelling at me or my interlocutors. Possessed by what seems to be a usually unearned confidence in their own intelligence and perspicuity, they assume they know exactly who I am, what I think, and just barrel on. Actually, I don’t sense that they’ve given me even one thought. They just plow on. And then, after I or my interlocutors make some attempt to explain where we’re coming from, to insert ourselves into the monologue, they just keep going, or disappear. Without ever saying goodbye or thank you.

Me, I would be mortified to act like this. Because that’s how my mom raised me. Because I actually, kinda, sorta, in my upper-middle-class heart of hearts, believe in civility. Them? They seem utterly incapable of embarrassment or shame. Because they don’t.

To be honest, that’s why I’m really skeptical about the call for civility: not because it’s a tool to silent dissent, but because the people who call for it almost never practice it themselves.

Academic Mores and Manners in the Salaita Affair

I’m noticing that some people, all hardcore defenders of Israel, including some academics, are now taking pot shots at Salaita’s work. Some flack on Twitter even called Salaita “the ersatz professor.” I won’t link to any of it; it’s just shabby and shoddy and needs no further audience.

I wonder about the academics, in particular, who are dabbling in this business of drive-by assassination.

On the one hand, I firmly believe we should be able to get into substantive discussions of people’s work, and should be able to evaluate what is good work and what is not, even across disciplines and fields. No one’s work is or should be immune from that kind of critique.

On the other hand, I would remind my colleagues in academe of two things.

First, it takes a long time to familiarize yourself with a literature and a field, to understand its debates, its ins and outs. I deeply resent it when someone thinks they can just dive-bomb into a discussion I’m a part of without having done some background work of his (and it is, almost always, a dude) own: not because I have a fetish for expertise or academic authority but because I respect the work of intellectual labor, the amount of dedication, effort, and stamina that is required to truly understand and master a set of arguments. I respect people who’ve done the work—and expect that respect in turn. That some academics, who have no background or demonstrated record in Salaita’s field (indeed, can’t even bother to figure out what his field of expertise actually is), think they can now just hunt around his books and articles in order to draw fatal conclusions about his talents shows a profound disrespect for our collective enterprise. Indeed, a profound disrespect for themselves.

Second, and related to this, we are now in a heated political battle. This is no longer an academic or scholarly give-and-take; it’s more akin to the skullduggery of Congress, or the fuckery of capital. You would think the fact that one of the progenitors of these attacks on Salaita is a professor of video games—or in the past, that one of the mocking critics of the ASA and its boycott edited a book on presidential doodles—would give these critics pause. Would make them wonder whether or not their research, which I have no reason to doubt is anything less than outstanding, could not be painted in an equally preposterous light.

But of course they don’t worry about that because they’ve picked the right side of power in this debate.

But here’s the thing about the right side of power: sides, like the sands, can shift, power can become powerlessness. That’s something that intellectuals, even the house intellectuals of power, used to know. Just read Machiavelli’s dedication to Lorenzo de’ Medici in The Prince.

Who is Steven Salaita?

The News-Gazette has a long profile of Steven Salaita. Though many of us have argued this case on the grounds of academic freedom and free speech, it’s also important to point out just how cartoonish is the portrait Salaita’s critics have drawn of him, that the substance of the man is nothing like the surface strokes his critics have painted. The victims of witch hunts like this one don’t need to be perfect and they don’t need to be angels in order for us to come to their defense. But when it comes to his students, Salaita does seem to go the extra mile, and it’s worth mentioning that.

The article contains many other details I didn’t know about: not only is Salaita Palestinian on his mother’s side, but his grandparents were forced out of Israel. His doctorate is in Native American Studies. He is at the forefront of a move to internationalize all aspects of American Studies. While other scholars in American Studies and American History do this without drawing any scrutiny or criticism (indeed, they are encouraged to do so), Saliata has made the quite logical inference that if we’re going to internationalize American Studies, perhaps we should also internationalize our analysis of American indigenous studies. When it comes to Israel/Palestine, however, logic can get you into trouble.

Here are just some highlights; read the whole piece yourself. And then write the trustees.

Among the hundreds of emails sent to the University of Illinois in response to the un-hiring of Steven Salaita was one from a former student at Virginia Tech University.

The student recounted the terror that followed the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech.

Salaita was the one professor who was able to keep her on campus and in school, helping her find a way to turn a terrible experience into something she could face, said UI Professor Robert Warrior, director of the American Indian Studies Program.

…

According to friends and information posted by Salaita online, he was born in Bluefield, W.Va., the son of a Jordanian father and Palestinian mother who had both emigrated to the United States (his mother via Nicaragua). His mother’s parents were forced out of what is now Israel…

…

Salaita earned his undergraduate degree in political science from Radford University in Virginia, and then a master’s in English, before completing his doctorate in Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma in 2003. It was there he met Warrior. Salaita’s primary focus was Native American literature but he also studied Palestinian and Arab-American literature.

He then taught American and ethnic American literature at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater until 2006, when he was hired by Virginia Tech’s English Department. He earned tenure three years later, teaching English and writing about Arab-Americans, Indigenous peoples, race and ethnicity, and literature.

In an item for the English Department newsletter in 2006, Prof. Virginia Fowler said Salaita’s writing reflected his parents’ immigrant experience, with “themes of immigration, American-ness, dislocation, cultural multiplicity, xenophobia and racialization.”

…

Critics have questioned why an academic who has written so much on Israel and Arab American literature would be hired by American Indian Studies.

Kauanui and others said those critics are missing a huge aspect of his work. Salaita is a comparative scholar, Kauanui said, and the field itself is changing.

American Indian Studies wants to broaden its framework, comparing the Native American experience to that of other indigenous people around the globe, Kauanui said, The UI program, in fact, has hired scholars who focus on Native issues in Guam and the Pacific islands, she said.

Salaita has done research on Native North America, she said, and his training is in Native American studies. His early work focused on comparing colonialism by settlers in North America to those in Israel and the occupied territories. His 2006 book “The Holy Land in Transit: Colonialism and the Quest of Canaan,” based on his doctoral dissertation, examines how settlers in the Holy Land and the Americas used a “theological narrative to justify their occupation of foreign lands,” she said. “It’s a path-breaking book.”

…

A Virginia Tech English student last year called him “super friendly, very engaging, hilarious.”

“You feel less like you’re in a class and more like you’re at a book club and having enjoyable, intelligent literary discussion without having to worry about anyone disagreeing with your views or grading you on what you say,” the student wrote.

In 2011, a Virginia Tech student who took his “Renaissance Revenge Tragedy” class said Salaita is “not afraid to argue his views but he’ll also never make you feel unwelcome for giving your own. His tangents are amazing, and you’ll find yourself with so many new ways of looking at the world you might just explode. Plus … it was easy as hell.”

I have little doubt that Salaita’s critics will seize upon that last line as proof positive that he should have been dehired by the University of Illinois. It’s just one more sign of their desperation. They’ve gone from apoplexy over his tweets to fretting over his Amazon reviews. Now it’ll be that he’s an easy grader. Well, if being an easy grader is enough to get you fired from academe, there’s an Ivy League university I’d like to introduce you to. Perhaps you should start there first.

Please write your emails to the Board of Trustees. Here again are their addresses.

Christopher G. Kennedy, Chair, University of Illinois Board of Trustees: chris@northbankandwells.com

Robert A. Easter, President: reaster@uillinois.edu

Hannah Cave, Trustee: [the one we had doesn't work, though a commenter claims this one is correct: hcave2@uis.edu.]

Ricardo Estrada, Trustee: estradar@metrofamily.org

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Trustee: patrick.fitzgerald@skadden.com

Lucas N. Frye, Trustee: lnfrye2@illinois.edu

Karen Hasara, Trustee: hasgot28@aol.com

Patricia Brown Holmes, Trustee: pholmes@schiffhardin.com

Timothy N. Koritz, Trustee:  tkoritz@gmail.com

Danielle M. Leibowitz, Trustee: dleibo2@uic.edu

Edward L. McMillan, Trustee: mcmillaned@sbcglobal.net or mcmillaned@msn.com

James D. Montgomery, Trustee: james@jdmlaw.com

Pamela B. Strobel, Trustee: pbstrobel@comcast.net

Thomas R. Bearrows, University Counsel: bearrows@uillinois.edu

Susan M. Kies, Secretary of the Board of Trustees and the University: kies@uillinois.edu

Lester H. McKeever, Jr., Treasurer, Board of Trustees: lmckeever@wpmck.com

More Procedural Violations in Salaita Case (Updated)

In addition to possibly violating Articles 1 and 9 of the University of Illinois Statutes (see update), Chancellor Wise may have violated Article 3 as well.

The Chancellor informed Prof. Steven Salaita on August 1, 2014, that she would not forward his case to the Board of Trustees. The University Statutes (Article III, Section 3) spell out how to handle such cases:  “In case a recommendation from a college is not approved by the chancellor/vice president, the dean may present the recommendation to the president, and, if not approved by the president, the dean with the consent of the Board of Trustees may present the recommendation in person before the Board of Trustees in session.”

A Dean cannot exercise this statutory option if the Chancellor keeps him in the dark and instead announces her decision directly to the candidate. Which is exactly what the Chancellor did in this case. Brian Ross, the Interim Dean of LAS, learned of the Chancellor’s actions only three days later, on August 4. Who knows when the Chancellor might have seen fit to inform him – he found out only because Robert Warrior (Director of the American Indian Studies Program) wrote to the Dean to inquire what was going on. See the correspondence on pages 361-362 of the publicly available documents.

Four members of the Board of Trustees are lawyers by training, and one of them, Patrick Fitzgerald, is the famed federal prosecutor who brought down former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Scooter Libby. Even if the trustees don’t care about these procedural irregularities on the merits, surely the irregularities should make the trustees nervous should this case go to court.

Perhaps that’s worth mentioning to them when you send your emails.

In the past month or so, this blog has attracted, on average, six thousand visitors per day (in addition to its more than 4700 subscribers)—and 20,000 visitors on our highest day of traffic. If just ten percent of those readers sends an email…

Here again are the addresses:

Christopher G. Kennedy, Chair, University of Illinois Board of Trustees: chris@northbankandwells.com

Robert A. Easter, President: reaster@uillinois.edu

Hannah Cave, Trustee: [the one we had doesn't work]

Ricardo Estrada, Trustee: estradar@metrofamily.org

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Trustee: patrick.fitzgerald@skadden.com

Lucas N. Frye, Trustee: lnfrye2@illinois.edu

Karen Hasara, Trustee: hasgot28@aol.com

Patricia Brown Holmes, Trustee: pholmes@schiffhardin.com

Timothy N. Koritz, Trustee:  tkoritz@gmail.com

Danielle M. Leibowitz, Trustee: dleibo2@uic.edu

Edward L. McMillan, Trustee: mcmillaned@sbcglobal.net or mcmillaned@msn.com

James D. Montgomery, Trustee: james@jdmlaw.com

Pamela B. Strobel, Trustee: pbstrobel@comcast.net

Thomas R. Bearrows, University Counsel: bearrows@uillinois.edu

Susan M. Kies, Secretary of the Board of Trustees and the University: kies@uillinois.edu

Lester H. McKeever, Jr., Treasurer, Board of Trustees: lmckeever@wpmck.com

Update (10 pm)

That information about a possible violation of Article 3 comes the Campus Faculty Association at the University of Illinois, which is trying to organize a union for the faculty there, as we have at CUNY. I know a lot of faculty, including some who’ve been very outspoken in support of Salaita and academic freedom, have misgivings about unions in the academy. I hope this entire controversy has made clear to the skeptics that preventing these sorts of arbitrary power grabs by the Chancellor and/or the Trustees is one of the reasons we have unions and why we need more of them.

 

Political Scientists: Boycott UIUC!

Two hundred political scientists have now joined the boycott of UIUC, including scholars from Princeton, Chicago, Oxford, Hopkins, and more. That’s good, not great (philosophy is nearing 600 signatures!) Since poli sci is my discipline, I’d like to see that improve. If you haven’t signed, please do so. If you have, get a friend or colleague (in poli sci) to do so.

If you want to sign, you can do so here. (For the statement you’ll be signing and the list of signatories, see below.) With every new set of 25 signatures or so, I’ll update the list.

I’ll be moderating the comments heavily here; anything tangential to the mechanics of the boycott will not be allowed.

• • • • • 

Dear Chancellor Wise:

We the undersigned political scientists will not visit the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus until Professor Salaita is reinstated to the position offered him by the faculty and which he had accepted in good faith.

Sincerely (affiliations listed for identification purposes only),

 

Joseph Lowndes, University of Oregon

Stephen A. Nuño, Northern Arizona University

Jessica Blatt, Marymount College

Corey Robin, Brooklyn College

Romand Coles, Northern Arizona University

George Cicciarello-Maher, Drexel College

Bruce Baum, University of British Columbia

Joe Soss, University of Minnesota

Adolph Reed, University of Pennyslvania

Nancy Wadsworth, University of Denver

Jack Turner, University of Washington

Edmund Fong, University of Utah

James Johnson , University of Rochester

Bella Mirabella, New York University

Meredith Theeman, New York University

Anne Norton, University of Pennsylvania

Jane Bennett, Johns Hopkins University

Shang Ha, Brooklyn College

Anna Law, Brooklyn College

Bonnie Honig, Brown University

Paisley Currah, Brooklyn College

Jakeet Singh, Illinois State University

Jodi Dean, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Alexander Livingston, Cornell University

Aziz Rana, Cornell University

Kevin Bruyneel, Babson College

William Roberts, McGill University

Jason Frank, Cornell University

Robyn Marasco, Hunter College

Jeannie Morefield, Whitman College

Anna Marie Smith, Cornell University

Mark Major, Pennsylvania State University

Onur Ince, Cornell University

Christopher Skeaff, University of Michigan

William Connolly, Johns Hopkins University

Zillah Eisenstein, Ithaca College

Arash Abizadeh, McGill Universty

Heike Schotten, University of Massachusetts Boston

Andrew Dilts, Marymount Loyola University

Myles Jackson, New York University

Barbara Cruikshank, University of Massachusetts

Robert Nichols, University of Alberta

Nathan Widder, University of London

Kristin Horton, New York University

Melissa Michelson, Menlo College

Arang Keshavarzian, New York University

John Ehrenberg, Long Island University

Jacob Levy, McGill University

William Simmons, University of Arizona

Jennie Ikuta, Brown University

Mark Ungar, Brooklyn College CUNY Graduate Center

Jeanne Theoharis, Brooklyn College

Jennifer Lobasz, University of Delaware

Kathy Ferguson, University of Hawai’i

Cedric Johnson, University of Illinois at Chicago

Daragh Grant, University of Chicago

Banu Bargu, New School for Social Research

Renee Cramer, Drake University

Anne Harrington, American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow

Neil Roberts, Williams College

Jason Kosnoski, University of Michigan, Flint

Phil Klinkner, Hamilton College

Lori Marso, Union College

Asma Abbas, Bard College at Simon’s Rock

Elizabeth Anker, George Washington University

Sanford Schram, Hunter College

Dan Mulcare, Salem State University

Aletta Norval, University of Essex, UK

Priscilla Yamin, University of Oregon

James Rowe, University of Victoria

Meredith Weiss, SUNY Albany

Sean Parson, Northern Arizona University

Ed Taylor, Missouri Western State University

Nina Katchadourian, New York University

Srirupa Roy, University of Goettingen, Germany

Liza Featherstone, Brooklyn College

Charmaine Chua, University of Minnesota

Amalia Pallares, University of Illinois at Chicago

Jonneke Koomen, Willamette University

George Shulman, New York University

Ian Zuckerman, Stanford University

Stuart White, Jesus College, Oxford University

Jennifer Gaboury, Hunter College

Daniel Butt, Oxford University

Shirin Deylami, Western Washington University

Scott Greer, University of Michigan

Jon Hultgren, Northern Arizona University

Vasuki Nesiah, New York University

Anita Chari, University of Oregon

Scott Lemieux, College of Saint Rose

 

Lida Maxwell, Trinity College

Simon Glezos, University of Victoria

Yves Winter, McGill University

Robert Geroux, DePauw University

Andrés Fabián Henao Castro, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Vijay Prashad, Trinity College

Christiane Wilke, Carleton University

Sean Jacobs, New School University

Susan Kang, City University of New York

Uday Mehta, CUNY Graduate Center

Dara Z. Strolovich, Princeton University

Michelle Smith, Barnard College

Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim, University of Hawai’i

Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome, Brooklyn College

Aaron Greenberg, Yale University

Heather Pool, Denison University

Harry Hirsch, Oberlin College

Dennis Kobray, Rutgers University Newark

Simona Sharoni, SUNY Plattsburgh

Preston Smith, Mount Holyoke College

Mark Rupert, Syracuse University

Alex Gourevitch, Brown University

Samuel Farber, Brooklyn College

Myisha Priest, New York University

Lisa Wedeen, University of Chicago

Ming Chee Ang, Lund University, Sweden

Althea Sircar, University of California at Los Angeles

Shampa Biswas, Whitman College

Tariq Thachil, Yale University

Ayten Gundogdu, Barnard College

Laleh Khalili, School of Oriental and African Studies, UK

Kouslaa Kessler-Mata, University of San Francisco

Sankaran Krishna, University of Hawai’i at Manoa

Harshit Rathi, University of Minnesota

David Watkins, University of Dayton

Tareq Y. Ismael, University of Calgary

Rex Troumbley, University of Hawai’i

Andrea Teti, University of Aberdeen

Francois-Xavier Plasse-Couture, University of Hawai’i at Manoa

Biana Isaki, University of Hawai’i

Nolan Bennett, Duke University

Daniel Levine, University of Alabama

Jack Jackson, Whitman College

Glenn Mackin, Eastman School of Music

R.W. Hildreth, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Lara Slatkin, New York University

Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, University of Hawai’i, Manoa

Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University

Dorian Warren, Columbia University

Robbie Shilliam, Queen Mary University of London

Smita Rahman, DePauw University

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Northwestern University

Polly Pallister-Wilkins, University of Amsterdam

Martin O’Neill, University of York

Stephen Shalom, William Paterson University

Benjamin McKean, Ohio State University

Jenny Peterson, University of British Columbia

Michael J. Thompson, William Paterson University

James Martel, San Francisco State University

Polly Pallister-Wilkins, University of Amsterdam,

Adam Jones, University of British Columbia

David Kahane, University of Alberta

Adam Dahl, University of Minnesota

Jonathan Havercroft, University of Southampton

Juan Wang, McGill University

Henry Farrell, George Washington University

Iqra Anugrah, Northern Illinois University

Jimmy Casas Klausen,  Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Rex Bryan, McGill University

Christopher Brooke, University of Bristol

Wendy Brown, UC Berkeley

Mark Sawyer, UCLA

Kam Shapiro, Illinois State University

Christopher Buck, St. Lawrence University

John Robey, University of Texas, Brownsville

Melisa Casumbai-Salazar, Whitman College

Nandino Deo, Lehigh University

Ashley Biser, Ohio Wesleyan University

Peter Kolozi, Phd CUNY–Bronx Community College

Teri Caraway, University of Minnesota

Sarah Maddison, Columbia University

Jonathan Graubart, San Diego State University

Enzo Rossi, University of Amsterdam

Kristofer Peterson-Overton, Lehman College, CUNY

Jennifer C. Rubenstein, University of Virginia

Ryan A. Schowen, The Union Institute and University

Robert Farley, University of Kentucky

Nicholas Kiersey, Ohio University

Joshua Sperber, CUNY Graduate Center

Lee Jones, Queen Mary, University, London

Anthony Langlois, Flinders University, Australia

Paul Kirby, University of Sussex, UK

Katrina Forrester , Queen Mary, University of London

Adam McMahon, CUNY Graduate Center

Carla Yumatle, Harvard University

Craig Murphy, Wellesley College

Sohini Guha, University of Delhi

Navine Murshid, Colgate University

Davide Panagia, UCLA

Niall Ó Murchú, Western Washington University

Robert Mickey, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

John Medearis, University of California, Riverside

John Krinsky, City College of New York

Jennifer Pitts, London School of Economics

Janelle Wong, University of Maryland

David Pion-Berlin, University of California, Riverside

Vijay Prashad, Trinity College

Robert Geroux, DePauw University

Andres Fabián Henao Castro

John P. McCormick, University of Chicago

Lucy McGuffey, University of Colorado, Denver

 

A UI Trustee Breaks Ranks! We Have an Opening!

In another bombshell, UI trustee James D. Montgomery tells Ali Abunimah, well, I’ll just quote from Ali’s piece:

A trustee of the University of Illinois has added to public criticism over the decision to fire Palestinian American professor and Israel critic Steven Salaita.

“I think it would have been far better had it been dealt with differently and had it been done with more consultation with faculty,” James D. Montgomery told The Electronic Intifada today.

He also acknowledged the “adverse” impact that a growing boycott was having on the university’s ability to function.

Montgomery, a prominent Chicago attorney, echoed the regrets expressed by Chancellor Phyllis Wise over her own role in the affair.

Montgomery was careful, however, to say that he was undecided about the merits of the case, but he sounded far less certain and more circumspect than a public statement he signed last month along with other trustees forcefully backing Wise’s decision.

…

Montgomery laid out some of the issues that the board would be faced with at its upcoming 11 September meeting.

“Obviously there’s a lot of uproar on both sides of the issue from the perspective of students and alums who are offended by the manner in which Salaita spoke,” Montgomery said.

“And there are folks who are claiming that is a violation of the right to academic freedom. It’s a difficult decision in terms of what is right and what is wrong,” he continued.

“I know we’re going into executive session and obviously there are people who are seeking to pressure the university to reverse its decision. It’s coming from very significant places. It’s had an adverse impact because people are declining to participate in university activities and there have been a number of events canceled.”

…

“How it will turn out is anybody’s guess and I would not hazard one at this point,” Montgomery now says, adding he personally has not made up his mind about the issues the board would have to decide.

Here’s the take home:

First, and most important, this is not a done deal. Montgomery very clearly says that he has no idea how or what the Trustees will decide, and how he will vote. So keep up the pressure (more below).

Second, a member of the BoT has now admitted that the faculty should have been involved in this decision.

Third, that a trustee would be willing to go on the record like this, again, it shows a university that is not in control of itself.

Fourth, as Bonnie Honig pointed out to me, the UI Board of Trustees is very small. There are twelve members, and two of them (students) can’t vote. That means at least one out of ten of the trustees is undecided. Believe it or not, that’s huge.

Fifth, when we went through a similar battle over BDS at Brooklyn College, this is how it happened. One cracked, and then they all fell down. No predictions, no guarantees. But this could be the beginning of the end.

Sixth, and again most important, email the Board of Trustees. We have an opening, so let’s take it. Be polite, be firm, reach out to them as people. All of you have gotten us to this point. Now take us all the way there.

Again here are the emails:

Christopher G. Kennedy, Chair, University of Illinois Board of Trustees: chris@northbankandwells.com

Robert A. Easter, President: reaster@uillinois.edu

Hannah Cave, Trustee: hcave2@illinois.edu

Ricardo Estrada, Trustee: estradar@metrofamily.org

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Trustee: patrick.fitzgerald@skadden.com

Lucas N. Frye, Trustee: lnfrye2@illinois.edu

Karen Hasara, Trustee: hasgot28@aol.com

Patricia Brown Holmes, Trustee: pholmes@schiffhardin.com

Timothy N. Koritz, Trustee: timothy.koritz@gmail.com or tkoritz@gmail.com

Danielle M. Leibowitz, Trustee: dleibo2@uic.edu

Edward L. McMillan, Trustee: mcmillaned@sbcglobal.net or mcmillaned@msn.com

James D. Montgomery, Trustee: james@jdmlaw.com

Pamela B. Strobel, Trustee: pbstrobel@comcast.net

Thomas R. Bearrows, University Counsel: bearrows@uillinois.edu

Susan M. Kies, Secretary of the Board of Trustees and the University: kies@uillinois.edu

Lester H. McKeever, Jr., Treasurer, Board of Trustees: lmckeever@wpmck.com

Breaking: Chancellor Wise Disavows Her Own Decision as Her Administration Unravels

From Illinois Public Media:

The chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana campus Thursday expressed regret about the way she came to a decision to withdraw a job offer to a professor who posted inflammatory comments on Twitter – a decision she said was “pretty unilateral.”

Chancellor Phyllis Wise said members of the Board of Trustees told her in July that they likely would not approve the appointment of Professor Steven Salaita. A week later, Wise sent a letter to Salaita rescinding the job offer.

“The judgment I made in writing him was to convey the sentiment of the Board of Trustees, it was not mine.” She said. “And I did it because I thought I was doing something humane for him.”

Humane, she said, because she didn’t want Salaita to move his family to Urbana only to learn his appointment was not approved.

Earlier today I reported on a meeting Wise had with students on Wednesday, where she said, “I, in hindsight, wish I had been a little bit more deliberate and had consulted with more people before I made that decision.”

But now she goes further, claiming her decision was “pretty unilateral.”

And then she drops this bombshell: that in dehiring Steven Salaita, Wise was expressing “the sentiment of the Board of Trustees, it was not mine.”

So not only did her decision not reflect any of the academic voices on campus; it didn’t even reflect her own opinion.

I’m speechless: I don’t think I’ve ever seen an administration, or a decision, unravel quite like this.

In other news, the department of anthropology and the department of comparative and world literature today took votes of no confidence in the leadership of UIUC. That makes for a total of eight votes of no confidence.

But with the Chancellor herself now seeming to take a vote of no confidence in the University’s leadership, including her own, I have to wonder whether the other side hasn’t simply outpaced us in their criticism and condemnation of their terrible decision.

Update (9 am)

Patchen Markell makes an interesting observation on Facebook:

Actually, it’s not the responsibility of the Board of Trustees to decide whether or not to approve the hire. Article 1, section 1 of the University of Illinois Statutes says: “The Board of Trustees formulates university policies but leaves the execution of those policies to its administrative agents, acting under its general supervision. It is the responsibility of the board to secure the needed revenues for the University and to determine the ways in which university funds shall be applied.” The relevant section about appointments says that “All appointments, reappointments, and promotions of the academic staff, as defined in Article IX, Section 4a, shall be made by the Board of Trustees on the recommendation of the chancellor/vice president concerned and the president.” As at most universities, what this means in theory is that the Trustees retain a kind of formal executive supremacy, but delegate substantive judgments in particular cases to the academic staff and the administration — sort of like the Hegelian monarch who “merely dots the i’s and crosses the t’s.” This is why, in practice, new faculty at Illinois ordinarily start teaching before even having their appointments signed and sealed: everyone knows it’ll go through, and there is no substantive review left. And that’s why, if this was in fact the result of a substantive judgment on the part of the Board, it is arguably an even worse crisis of academic freedom and independence than if the judgment had been Wise’s: it represents a breakdown of the division of labor between the business side and the academic side of the university that Article 1, section 1 carefully establishes.