An excellent update and commentary on the Salaita firing: http://academeblog.org/2015/02/13/undoing-the-work-of-the-faculty-at-the-university-of-illinois/ ----------------------snip I will be speaking tonight from my experience as a member of a campus committee that was charged with considering Hiring Policies and Procedures, and I will also draw on my experience as a department head and my professional identity as a scholar in the fields of Jewish and Holocaust studies. [...]
A few discoveries in particular stuck out for me and for the others. First, we were struck by the very limited information on which the BoT based its decisions. The only information provided to the BoT before their vote was: the name of the candidate, the title of the position, the proposed salary and starting date, the former position of the candidate, and basic facts about their education. In the new procedure that was recently announced by the board, the information has become even more minimal: now the candidate’s education and former position have been eliminated. The board does have the opportunity to request further information about the candidates, but then one would have to ask under what circumstances such a request might take place. The answer can only be: in instances where there has been outside intervention, interference from beyond the search process—a process that has already concluded by the time a case goes to the board. Whether donors directly influenced the Chancellor’s decision back in July and August 2014 is actually immaterial: the key point is that there would have been no new decision on the part of the Chancellor if forces outside the university had not attempted to undermine Salaita to begin with. That kind of interference is part of a dangerous pattern we have seen in the case of other scholars who are critical of Israel or sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. The other thing that struck the committee was the language that accompanied the presentation of candidates to the board: until the meeting at which Salaita was unhired, the list of prospective faculty members—who were to be considered as one large group—included these words: these appointments “have been approved since the previous meeting of the Board of Trustees and are now presented for your confirmation.” That language has now been changed to read (at least as of the November 2014 meeting): “In accordance with Article IX, Section 3 of the University of Illinois Statutes, the following new appointments to the faculty at the rank of assistant professor and above, and certain administrative positions, are now presented for action by the Board of Trustees.” With the new, post-Salaita wording, the phrase “have been approved” dropped out and BoT “confirmation” was replaced by “action by the Board of Trustees.” Taken together, the amount of information typically supplied to the board and the language with which that information was framed demonstrate very clearly that Board of Trustees approval of faculty positions has been understood as pro forma. In almost all cases, that is true. The problem, of course, is that once that understanding has been violated and shown to be fragile, the trust on which the system was based has been negated and undone. The board cannot simply promise not to act again—or only to act in unique circumstances. The possibility of politically motivated intervention is now permanent under current policies.
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