Top legal scholars decry ‘chilling’ effect of dehiring scholar Salaita

Editor’s note: The following piece about reactions in the academic world to the dehiring of Steven Salaita over his criticism of Israel is a combination of two posts on Corey Robin’s blog. 

Scholars from law schools at Columbia, Cornell, Berkeley, Georgetown, and other universities have come out with a very strong letter condemning the decision of the University of Illinois to dehire Steven Salaita. Here are some excerpts:

As scholars of free speech and constitutional law, we write to express alarm at your decision to revoke a tenured offer of appointment to Professor Steven Salaita to join the American Indian Studies program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on account of his statements on social media criticizing Israel’s conduct of military operations in Gaza.

In our view, the decision to withdraw an appointment to a prospective faculty member because of his statements on a matter of public concern raises serious concerns under established principles of academic freedom. Those principles are enshrined in Illinois law, in the U.S. Constitution, and in the written principles of the American Association of University Professors.

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American universities have been the home of vigorous political debate and disagreement for many decades….In connection with these and other issues faculty, students and staff have engaged a range of tactics and strategies to express their political views including demonstrations and sit-ins, taking over university buildings, calling for divestment or boycott, and condemning public policies and laws. More recently, with the rise of social media, faculty and student expression on matters of public concern have taken place on Twitter, Facebook, and other internet fora.

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What is more, the constitutional problem underlying the withdrawal of an offer of employment to Professor Salaita on account of his opinions on the Middle East affects not only him individually, but all current and prospective faculty at the University of Illinois insofar as it will have the predictable and inevitable effect of chilling speech–both inside and outside the classroom–by other academics. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s website currently lists 27 open academic searches. It is reasonable to conclude that any person considering applying for any of those positions would be very concerned about any opinions they might have expressed, either in their scholarship or in their private capacity, on the conflict in the Middle East or on other controversial questions. The University has sent a clear message to all prospective job candidates that their suitability for employment at the University of Illinois may turn on the views they have voiced on this or some other complex matter of public concern.

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Tragically, the University of Illinois’s decision to rescind a job offer to Professor Salaita on account of his views on the Middle East evokes similarly unconstitutional litmus tests applied to educators in Illinois in the past when public officials sought to impose upon the academy a particular orthodoxy on a matter of public concern. As a website set up by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Student Life and Cultural Archival Program Illinois well documents, Illinois has unfortunately distinguished itself in its efforts over the years to purge from its teaching ranks faculty who held views that were deemed un-American or otherwise controversial.

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The withdrawal of the offer of employment to Professor Salaita threatens to punish a colleague who has participated in a rich, and at times heated, climate of debate on the issue of justice in the Middle East, and it will surely chill debate by other scholars in the future.

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We recognize that universities may consider a wider range of factors in deciding whether to hire a potential faculty member than in deciding whether to dismiss a current faculty member. However, that principle is irrelevant here. Even as a technical legal matter, Professor Salaita was already a de facto member of the University of Illinois faculty under the principle of promissory estoppel as articulated by the Illinois Supreme Court. Moreover, the timing and manner of Professor Salaita’s dismissal strongly indicate the sort of viewpoint discrimination that would violate the First Amendment even at the hiring stage.

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We urge you in the strongest of terms to submit to the University’s board of trustees the appointment of Professor Salaita to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s American Indian Studies program.

If you are a professor or scholar of law, please email Professor Katherine Franke at the Columbia Law School. Her email address is kfranke@law.columbia.edu.

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1. As of 5 pm, 1518 academics have declared that they will not engage with the University of Illinois until it reinstates Steven Salaita. I have the specific details below. But first I wanted to highlight a report that came out yesterday.

2. The indefatigable Phan Nguyen has posted a monumental analysis of Salaita’s tweets and Cary Nelson’s treatment of those tweets. If I didn’t hate the phrase “game-changer” so much, I’d say this is a game-changer.

Nguyen shows that Salaita actually has a long history of not only denouncing anti-Semitism in general but also confronting specific instances of it on Twitter. Such as when the rapper Macklemore wore a disguise that was anti-Semitic. Among other statements, Salaita tweeted these four in response to Macklemore’s costume:

Macklemore wasn’t mocking Jewish stereotypes. He was performing them.

His costume, even if random (yeah right), IS a stereotype; stupidity doesn’t mitigate ignorance.

That particular look has been used to dehumanize Jews for many centuries, to nefarious ends.

It dredges up bad memories and people know how problematic the image is in Western history.

Nguyen also discovered that Salaita has consistently made statements like these:

I believe that Jewish and Arab children are equal in the eyes of God.

Equal rights for everybody, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, etc.

I refuse to conceptualize ‪#‎Israel‬/‪#‎Palestine‬ as Jewish-Arab acrimony. I am in solidarity with many Jews and in disagreement with many Arabs.

Seeing so many Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Hindus join to oppose sectarianism gives me great hope.

None of this changes the legal argument that Salaita should not have been fired for his tweets. But it sure does make those who tried to mount or defend the claim that Salaita’s an anti-Semitic hate-monger look kinda irresponsible.

3. Back to the campaign on behalf of Salaita. As I said, 1518 academics have declared that they will not engage with the University of Illinois until it reinstates Steven Salaita.

Here are the specific reports: This general statement, which is not discipline-specific, has 744 signatures. The philosophy statement has 108 signatures. Thepolitical science statement has 144 signatures. The English statement has 214 signatures. The sociology statement has 136 signatures. The history statementhas 52 signatures. The women’s studies statement has 27 signatures. Therhetoric/composition statement has 20 signatures.

There are now two new statements of refusal.

The first is from communications scholars:

In a global context where we attend to the powerful role of social media as catalysts for democratic participation as witnessed in various parts of the globe, to censor a faculty member because of his social media posts is a reflection of authoritarian censorship that is antithetical to the fundamental notions of communication and democracy.

We request you to sincerely reconsider your decision and also change hiring practices so that future individuals may not fall victim to such discriminatory hiring practices. Until then, we will not engage in any relationship with the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Make sure to sign that statement if you’re a professor or scholar of communications. Twenty-one people already have.

The second, and my personal favorite, is a statement to be signed by contingent academic workers, the academic precariat who work as adjuncts, part-timers, and generally insecure teachers.  The critical passage reads:

For us, in practice, this lack of academic security already compromises our teaching and scholarly endeavors, and we find it deplorable that Steven Salaita’s case might usher in an era of even stricter limitations on expression, for colleagues at any rank.

Our professional insecurity clouds even this moment; many of us do not feel we have the luxury of signing our own names or institutional affiliations to this petition, and/or the professional leverage to meaningfully participate in otherwise circulating calls to refuse our intellectual services to UIUC. Despite this, we simply demand, even if anonymously, that the decision to break a commitment to hire Steven Salaita be reversed.

If you’re a contingent academic worker, please sign. Even anonymously. Fifty-two people have already signed it.

4. The News-Gazette, the local paper for the University of Illinois and its surroundings, has posted several key documents in the case, including the UI’s offer letter to Salaita and their rescission email.

5. In yesterday’s post on that Chicago Tribune piece, I neglected to mention this quote from Cary Nelson:

A lot of people have been disturbed by the character of his social media because it is in the same areas that he does his scholarship. If it was a musician saying that global warming is a bunch of nonsense, who would care? It is because the tweets are an extension of his publication, they are central to his work…

This is a theme that Nelson’s been adumbrating all week. Since Salaita’s tweets are connected to Salaita’s research, says Nelson, they can be legitimately taken into consideration by the Chancellor when she hirefires him. If an academic publicly comments on political matters about which she has no expertise, says Nelson, that’s of no interest; it is protected by academic freedom and not subject to review. In other words, the more ignorant and ill-informed your speech, the more it is protected by academic freedom. Now I can see why Nelson in particular might hold that position, but surely the rest of us can see just how preposterous it is.