The Case of Steven Salaita

    Generally, I am skeptical of claims of anti-semitism in the academy. I think that people for a variety of reasons confuse legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. Accordingly, I was inclined to side with former University of Illinois Professor Steven Salaita and CUNY-Brooklyn Professor Corey Robin who claim that Salaita was wrongly terminated from the University of Illinois because he tweeted critically of Israel.

    I do not believe that freedom of speech means that an employer cannot discharge you for what you write or say. It means that you cannot go to jail for your words. Still, I would greatly prefer that employers overlook political speech with which they disagree rather than employ punitive measures.

    At some point, however, words can be so malicious, racist, or sexist that they cannot be ignored. Universities should be bastions of independent thought and scholarship where even well outside the mainstream ideas are not just tolerated but given a respectful audience and freely bandied about. But when a professor employs bigoted imagery or panders to his audience's worst instincts or generalizes unfairly about a large group of people then his employer may well be justified in terminating his employment.

    Such is the case with former Professor Salaita who, among other inflammatory remarks, tweeted the following: “There’s something profoundly sexual to the Zionist pleasure w/#Israel’s aggression. Sublimation through bloodletting, a common perversion.” For me this tweet crosses the line.

    I am a Zionist in that I support Israel's right to exist as an independent nation. I also believe that a one-state solution in which Jews, Muslims, and Christians from Gaza to the West Bank to the Golan Heights all share power under a one person/one vote principal would be the best outcome for Israel. I derive no joy from Israel's violent spasms against the Palestinian people. Likewise, there are many other Zionists who deeply regret what Israel has done in Gaza and the West Bank but believe honestly, albeit very wrongly in my view, that Hamas is a worse offender. Such people do not take "sexual" pleasure in the deaths of Palestinians.

    Factual error may be excusable but not Salaita's use of ugly anti-semitic imagery in his tweet. The blood libel against Jews that justified countless pogroms over the millenia in Europe is clearly implied in the phrase "[s]ublimation through bloodletting." Likewise, Salaita raises the specter of Jewish men defiling Aryan women with the words "profoundly sexual" and "perversion". The Nazis rallied supporters with eerily similar language.

    Salaita's defenders can claim with some justification that he did not attack all Jews only Zionists. But Salaita had to know that some Jew haters conflate the two terms and use Zionist as a politically correct stand-in for Jew even though not all Zionists are Jewish and not all Jews are Zionists.

    I am all for a robust debate about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians who live within and directly outside her borders. I have been as critical as anybody of what I believe is religious oppression based on fears, avarice, and prejudice. But, in at least one very ugly tweet, Steven Salaita went beyond a harsh but ultimately fact-based critique of Israel's actions and the words of her supporters. Salaita employed language that he had to know has been used to catalyze some of the most murderous episodes in human history. The University of Illinois was justified in terminating him.

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    Saliata isn't answerable for the fact that "some Jew-haters" use Zionist as a code word for Jew. The issue--or rather one of them-- is whether his own words were anti-Semitic.  Accusing Zionists of taking sexual pleasure in killing is inflammatory, but I don't think it can be interpreted as meaning that Jews should not have sex with "Aryans" or other gentiles. I don't think that accusing Zionists of enjoying the killing of Palestinians is tantamount to a blood libel. A fair number  of people  are happy about the killing of their nation's enemies.  Saliata was being venomous, but probably not anti-Semitic.


    Thanks for this piece, Hal. I agree with almost everything except the verdict. Yes, the First Amendment is about government censorship, not hiring practices. Yes, universities are justified in firing tenured professors for racism or bigotry. Yes, Salaita's tweet is outrageous with anti-semitic overtones.

    However.

    I also believe that overriding tenure should be a very high bar. I'm skeptical about firing anyone because of 140-character tweets, which are too short to convey nuance and too impulsive to show good judgment. Academics who drive cultural and intellectual discussion should be given particular latitude. That is the whole point of tenure.

    I don't know much about Salaita. If he has a history of anti-semitic behavior, especially in the classroom, then he should be fired because of that history. But an offensive tweet or two like does not meet my standard.


    Your post is misleading, Chicago Tribune:

    Salaita's appointment had never been endorsed by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign chancellor, Phyllis Wise, who has declined to submit his name to the board of trustees for official approval. Wise has great discretion when it comes to hiring professors — as opposed to firing them — and there is no rule that prevents her from considering Salaita's history of vulgar and intemperate outbursts. That may seem like a technicality, but law is technical by its very nature.

    He was not a tenured professor anywhere when he was not hired by Illinois.

    His employment at Illinois was never consummated, and he never taught one class or received one paycheck.

    Why did he resign from his position in Virginia before finalizing the one in Illinois?

    Too obsessed with attacking Jews, ignoring or justifying actions of Islamic terrorists while imagining connections of violence, bloodletting and sexual perversion?

    “There’s something profoundly sexual to the Zionist pleasure w/#Israel’s aggression. Sublimation through bloodletting, a common perversion.”

    'Violence through bloodletting' and 'sex' are, yes unfortunately common....in the Middle East....with the Sunni Muslim rapists of ISIS. Frankly, this Sunni Muslim guy sounds like a borderline wackjob, potentially delusional and perhaps dangerous, and he should be monitored closely by the authorities.


    If that's accurate, I accept the correction and have much less of a problem with the university's decision.


    It appears to be accurate, and this Times of Israel:

    ...Steven Salaita, whose nomination to become a tenured member of the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was ultimately rejected by the University’s Board of Trustees on September 11 by a vote of 8-1.....

    And those pesky details like the Trustees vote, Roanoke Times:

    Trustees hadn’t approved Salaita’s hire, the final step before he would have been granted tenure, which likely would have protected his speech. Salaita’s defenders say that since many professors begin work before trustees have the chance to approve their hires, Salaita was already effectively employed.

    Yeah well many professors don't spout a bunch of inflammatory bizarre sex and blood garbage before the Trustees vote....just sayin.

    Sept 9th, reports the foul mouthed tweeter finally zipped his yapper in early August:

    Until Tuesday, Salaita did not speak publicly about the university's decision, and, very uncharacteristically, hadn't tweeted since Aug. 2 other than one message to thank his supporters.

    Those in the  'academic community' supporting this guy are are peeing into the wind on this one.

     


    Actually, this is misleading: the exploitation of a loophole and, really, the changing of the rules.

    The Trustees did not schedule their vote until nearly a year after Salaitan was required to accept the job. Until after he had to resign his previous job. Until he had moved to Illinois and given up his home in Virginia.

    The Trustees don't vote at Illinois until you've already been working there for over a month. So to say he hadn't been hired until the vote is not the truth. you might get a paycheck before your appointment is "official."


    Do they really 'require' or even know if he has 'officially resigned', from his previous position before voting? If he was so loved at Virginia Tech wouldn't they take him back anyway? A financial settlement has been offered.

    Find me a member of a Governing Board or Board of Trustees that think their votes are to be taken for granted.

    A cautious blood, violence, sex and Jews tweeter would have twiddled his thumbs until the Board took it's vote.

    Maybe the guy can get a job helping the millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon. He can expound on his theory of how Khalid Mashal is like Chief Joseph.

    Sorry, but my opinion of the bloated and overfed education system in this country sinks further when I hear the bleating of academics in cases like this one.


    In practice, yes. They required him to start by a certain date PRIOR to the official vote confirming the hire. And he could NOT have started by that date without resigning his previous job and relocating from his previous state.

    And the point is that the Board votes have always been mere formalities. Not because the Board has no authority, but because they are not competent to make good decisions about academic hiring. (They cannot, for example, evaluate the quality of scholarship. They might find cutting-edge work unimpressive, and might be wildly impressed by a hack or charlatan.) A healthy university divides its authority along practical lines, letting scholars make decisions about scholarship while the Board looks after the school's financial health and legal compliance.

    Salaita got offered his job is OCTOBER 2013. He was asked to accept or reject the offer within something like two weeks. If the Board vote was not a technicality, it should have been held at the next Board meeting, in November or December 2013. If you hire someone with an August 15 start date and don't hold the vote "officially authorizing" the hire until September, then yes: you are admitting that this is supposed to be a rubber stamp.


    'Starting' any job, even in your imagined ivory tower citadel of academia, does not mean keeping the job. And he never did actually start his job in the classroom.

    Those who do not pay heed to 'mere formalities' may find their fate is decided by them. (Sun Tzu)    NCD, 22 Sept. 2014)


    I'm glad you weighed in a bit Dr. Cleveland. I was tempted to ask you to so with some information as to how big an issue it actually was to academics from someone besides Robin on the inside. [Inside of academia, not the issue itself]

    I consider another admission of wrongdoing to be an offer of a settlement. In an earlier blog I posted a link to a chronological list of posts by Cory Robin who was very prominent in the debate and who was very supportive of Salaita being instated at Uof I.  The issue is not as narrow as it can be made to seem. Those wishing more information can go there for a source on one side of the issue. http://coreyrobin.com/tag/steven-salaita/


    Speaking as someone whose knowledge of the history of anti-Semitism (and Judaism for that matter) is limited, my first inclination was to give him far more latitude than you. It's easy to imagine that someone, even a professor, would be ignorant about the blood libel (I don't think I knew about blood libel until my 40s), and I definitely don't see that the "profoundly sexual" bit refers to "defiling [non-Jewish] women". If, when I had checked, I'd found that Salaita was a professor of physics, or of any other engineering or science field, I would've stuck with that opinion. (Note: I don't at all agree with the statement and completely agree that it's distasteful, but anti-Semitism is a whole other level.)

    However, he is a professor of English. Maybe it's my ignorance of the humanities showing, but it is difficult for me to believe that a professor of English would be unaware of the semiotics involved in his tweet.


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