[News] University of Illinois fires professor Steven Salaita after Gaza massacre tweets

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  University of Illinois fires professor Steven Salaita after Gaza
  massacre tweets

Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Wed, 08/06/2014 - 17:35

*http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/university-illinois-fires-professor-steven-salaita-after-gaza-massacre-tweets*

Steven Salaita <http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/steven-salaita> was 
fired from his position as associate professor in the American Indian 
studies program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) 
apparently over views critical of Israel, especially its current 
massacre in Gaza <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gazaunderattack>.

Meanwhile, Cary Nelson <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/cary-nelson>, 
former president of the American Association of University Professors 
(AAUP), who has publicly supported the university's decision to remove 
Salaita, gave frank comments to The Electronic Intifada revealing the 
extent of his own pro-Israel views.

Nelson acknowledged that he had been monitoring Salaita's social media 
use for months.

This indicates Salaita may be the victim of a retaliation campaign. 
Salaita is the author of /Israel's Dead Soul/ 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/salaita-skewers-liberalism-israels-dead-soul/10071> 
and /The Uncultured Wars, Arabs, Muslims and the Poverty of Liberal 
Thought/ 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/book-review-orientalism-and-islamophobia-american-left/3559>, 
as well as a contributor to a number of publications including /Salon/ 
<http://www.salon.com/writer/steven_salaita/> and The Electronic Intifada.

He was a prominent campaigner for the American Studies Association's 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/american-studies-association> 
decision to boycott Israeli academic institutions last December.

In May, Salaita wrote a post for The Electronic Intifada called "How to 
practice BDS in academe 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/steven-salaita/how-practice-bds-academe>."


    Fired not "revoked"

This morning, /Inside Higher Ed/ reported 
<http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/08/06/u-illinois-apparently-revokes-job-offer-controversial-scholar> 
that Salaita had merely had a job offer "revoked."

Salaita was "recently informed by Chancellor Phyllis Wise that the 
appointment would not go to the university's board, and that he did not 
have a job to come to in Illinois, according to two sources with 
knowledge of the situation," /Inside Higher Ed/ said.

"The sources familiar with the university's decision say that concern 
grew over the tone of [Salaita's] comments on Twitter about Israel's 
policies in Gaza," it added.

Neither the university nor Salaita have commented on the matter. Salaita 
did not respond to requests for comment.

But a source with close knowledge of the situation, who asked not to be 
named because they were not authorized to speak publicly, disputed 
/Inside Higher Ed's/ version. The source told The Electronic Intifada 
that Salaita had actually been "fired."

The source said they had seen documentation indicating that Salaita's 
appointment had been through all the ordinary procedures for hiring 
faculty, up to and including the scheduling of new faculty orientation.

Salaita had already resigned from his position as associate professor of 
English at Virginia Tech, according to /Inside Higher Ed./ It would not 
make sense for Salaita to resign from a secure position without already 
having been fully and properly hired to a new one.

Even though /Inside Higher Ed's/ sources say the opposite, the 
publication's own analysis supports The Electronic Intifada's reporting 
that Salaita has actually been fired.

"As recently as two weeks ago, the university confirmed to reporters 
that he [Salaita] was coming," /Inside Higher Ed/ reported. "The 
university also declined to answer questions about how rare it is for 
such appointments to fall through at this stage."


    Target

Salaita's exact status at the university is likely to be important to 
the outcome of his case.

If a job offer was merely "revoked," as /Inside Higher Ed's/ sources 
claim, then Salaita would likely have far fewer protections than if he 
had already been hired, and then fired.

Opponents of Palestinian rights are already seizing on this distinction 
to spin and legitimize the decision to remove Salaita for his opinions 
expressed in public forums.

According to /Inside Higher Ed/, AAUP past president Cary Nelson, who is 
also an English professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 
said that "it was legitimate -- at the point of hiring -- to consider 
issues of civility and collegiality. In this case, [Nelson] said, that 
would lead him to oppose Salaita's appointment."

Nelson's views are important because his former role at AAUP means he is 
often cited as an authority on academic freedom issues, though his own 
anti-Palestinian biases are rarely examined.

In a telephone interview with The Electronic Intifada from his 
Urbana-Champaign home, Nelson went even further, claiming that Salaita's 
supposed social media transgressions "are more serious than collegiality 
and civility."

Nelson accused Salaita of "incitement to violence" for retweeting a 
tweet <https://twitter.com/djkilllist/status/486166701587722240> by 
another Twitter user, stating: "Jeffrey goldberg's story should have 
ended at the pointy end of a shiv."

Goldberg, a former Israeli prison guard 
<http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/some-second-thoughts-and-reader-feedback-about-the-middle-east-and-social-media/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0> 
who personally beat and tortured Palestinian prisoners, and now a writer 
for /The Atlantic/, is one of the most prominent defenders of Israel's 
bombardment that has killed more than one in every one thousand 
Palestinians in Gaza over the last month.

While Salaita is known for an acerbic sense of humor -- a likely reason 
he would have retweeted the tweet -- it is an oft-stated norm of Twitter 
that "a retweet does not equal an endorsement."

When pressed, Nelson could provide no example of any tweet written by 
Salaita that "incited violence."

Nelson acknowledged, however, that he has been closely monitoring 
Salaita's Twitter account for months. "There are scores of tweets. I 
have screen captures," he said. "The total effect seems to me to cross a 
line."

Salaita has "always tweeted in a very volatile and aggressive way," 
Nelson asserted, but "recently he's begun to be much more aggressive."

Another example Nelson gave was an 8 July tweet by Salaita, at the 
beginning of Israel's current massacre in Gaza, stating 
<https://twitter.com/stevesalaita/statuses/486718092933099520>, "If 
you're defending #Israel right now you're an awful human being."

Nelson claimed that this might mean that students in one of Salaita's 
classes who "defended Israel" could face a hostile environment.

But Nelson acknowledged that he knew of no complaints about Salaita's 
teaching and that Salaita was not even scheduled to teach classes on 
Palestine and the Israelis.

Asked if he therefore supported a "pre-emptive firing" based on a Tweet, 
Nelson again insisted that Salaita had not been "fired," but merely not 
hired. Nelson claimed that if Salaita had already been hired, he would 
defend him.

When asked if he would oppose the hiring of a person who said that 
"someone who defends Hamas firing rockets towards Tel Aviv is an awful 
person," Nelson answered: "No."

There could be no clearer admission that Nelson's opposition to Salaita 
is based on the content of his views, specifically criticism of Israel.


    Resistance to Israel is "criminal"

This became clearer when Nelson expanded on his views on Palestine and 
the Israelis.

Nelson defended Israel's attack on Gaza as part of its "right to 
self-defense," although he stressed that many aspects of the attack were 
"unethical" and "immoral" and that pictures of children killed by Israel 
were "horrific."

When asked whether he would condemn Israel's bombing of the Islamic 
University of Gaza 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-attacks-my-university-bombs-and-lies/13697>, 
Nelson used cautious language: "It's very difficult for someone from a 
distance to judge particular artillery strikes. My personal view is that 
Israel should have been more careful. From what I know, there are 
military actions as part of the Gaza incursion that seem regrettable to 
me and should not have taken place."

While asserting Israel's right to bomb Gaza, Nelson denied that 
Palestinians have any right to armed resistance to the onslaught.

"I don't know where that right would come from," he said. "I don't view 
Gaza under as under occupation so I don't see a right to resistance."

When asked if the International Committee of the Red Cross and other 
international bodies were incorrect in their view 
<http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/update/palestine-update-140610.htm> 
that Israel's siege of Gaza constitutes "collective punishment" and is 
therefore a war crime, Nelson insisted he was unable to make legal 
judgments.

Nelson added that he did not see that the situation in the occupied West 
Bank "warrants resistance," either. "I don't think there's a right to 
violent resistance on the West Bank."

Asked if he thought "all Palestinian military resistance is criminal," 
Nelson answered: "Yes. I think that is my view."

When asked if any of Israel's actions could be labeled "criminal," 
Nelson repeated that many were "immoral" and "unethical," but that he 
was not qualified to give legal opinions about Israel's actions.

Nelson, an outspoken campaigner against the nonviolent, Palestinian-led 
boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS), said that Palestinians 
should resort to "civil disobedience" in the West Bank such as "blocking 
roads."

Israel has shot dead 17 Palestinians just in the last month 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-bombs-gaza-it-kills-palestinians-west-bank-too> 
in the occupied West Bank.


    BDS is "political violence"

Nelson reaffirmed his strong opposition to the BDS movement because some 
of its prominent advocates -- he named Omar Barghouti 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/omar-barghouti> and philosopher 
Judith Butler <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/judith-butler> -- 
dispute Israel's "right to exist as a Jewish state."

"I consider that to be a form of political violence," Nelson said.

Asked if he called himself a "Zionist," Nelson answered: "Yes."

If there were doubts about Nelson's clear bias against Palestinians and 
their pursuit of their rights by any means (except of course the most 
invisible and ineffective), his frank comments to The Electronic 
Intifada put them to rest.

On 21 July, Salaita was attacked 
<http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/21/university-of-illinois-professor-blames-jews-for-anti-semitism/2/> 
for his Twitter use in the right-wing, anti-Palestinian website /The 
Daily Caller./

It seems clear that with Nelson now publicly leading the charge, Salaita 
is the latest victim of a nationwide campaign to intimidate into silence 
anyone on campus who criticizes Israel or supports effective campaigns 
to secure Palestinian rights.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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