UI Trustee Breaks Ranks! Chancellor Distances Herself from the Decision! We Have an Opening!

When this is all over and if the author is willing, would the CT hosts please consider doing a book event on the serious academic work of Steven Salaita? I think it’s pretty clear there is an audience.

Joshua, I take my hat off to you, a self-described Zionist requesting a book event for Salaita. Really, my admiration is sincere, especially since I remember you have a son in Israel.

Oh. Joshua, is that true? Do I need to clamp my hat back on my head asap?

I think a “book event on the serious academic work of Steven Salaita” might be problematic as the scholarship seems to be mostly not very serious.

https://bamdadi.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/steven-salaita-israels-dead-soul-temple-university-press-2011.pdf

Joshua W. Burton 09.05.14 at 5:24 pm
“When this is all over and if the author is willing, would the CT hosts please consider doing a book event on the serious academic work of Steven Salaita? I think it’s pretty clear there is an audience.”

Seconded.

Corey, the more blogs which do this in the next week, the better. You and the other academic bloggers should ask others to do this on their blogs, as well, or to participate here.

Oh. Joshua, is that true? Do I need to clamp my hat back on my head asap?

No, not a bit. But Corey has been under a lot of stress, some of it from me — I wouldn’t read too much into his jumping peevish here.

I certainly wasn’t promising to withhold my part in a lively discussion if we can bring Dr. Salaita onboard, mind you. I think it speaks well for what Corey calls the worthiness of the audience that a wide range of readers here would also do their share. Bring it!

Well, there were at least three PDFs on Google last time I looked (an hour ago) so it will be easy enough to find whether it’s linked from this page or not.

J Thomas @12: Are you more interested in making sure Salaita gets his royalties, or is it more that you don’t want people to see his writing?

Honestly, it’s that I can’t imagine any self-respecting author joining a discussion at a site which tolerates this behavior. And I don’t think the discussion will be up to the standards of past CT book events if the author doesn’t show up.

I would note in passing that I recommended @2 an event covering Salaita’s work as a whole, not because his latest book isn’t relevant nor because we’re tired of discussing I/P but because we’re likely to get more interesting reflections (yes, even on I/P) by standing off at a distance. Also, the “gotcha” caucus has had enough time to move on to goodreads, and that book is surely next for soundbite scrutiny. Let’s start at the other end, and flank them.

censorship . . . What a knot of threads!

OK, you’re on — untangle it for us, please. I want an influential blog (where more people have posted about Dr. Salaita in the last month than read, much less buy, a typical academic-press book) to discuss his books, presumably by either buying them or encouraging libraries to do so and then reading them. I want to use the prestige of the blog to bring him here, to hear things he hasn’t written yet and possibly to ask him questions directly in a public forum. I think this is more likely to happen if he feels this is a place where his intellectual property is respected by law and custom, and incidentally where he might profit both financially and professionally from many new intelligent critical readers who will all need access to his books at once.

Therefore . . . I am appealing for censorship. Go ahead and fill in the missing steps — I am aquiver.

Anarcissie @15: Aha, I just saw a more charitable reading of your remark. I had read you to say, with the concerned gentleman at @12, that I was somehow trying to censor Salaita; squaring that circle deserved the center-stage heckling I proposed. If, as I now read, you were saying that I was trying to censor you, or rather prevent your thoughtlessness from reflecting on our hosts, then yes, quite right, I was and am, and no more need be said about it.

I got a $16 royalty check from Japan a few years ago, blahblahblahblah

Who cares, except you? Are you consciously trying to overshadow all other voices here?

Damn’, you all sound like a bunch of cry-babies. Grow up, already.

Your piss-fight is not really at issue here. Shouldn’t be, I mean.

Honestly, it’s that I can’t imagine any self-respecting author joining a discussion at a site which tolerates this behavior.

Ah. I guess I’ve been associating with too many science fiction authors. Some of them think that their sales go up when they release some (or all) of their work online.

The argument is that they are more likely to sell to people who know how good they are. It’s worked that way for me as a reader. I’ve bought more Cory Doctorow novels after I read them than I would have blind.

Salaita’s situation is special. We’re talking about a $27 paperback that must be ordered mail order or online. Probably not a giant print run. They might sell out of paper copies, and interest in him might die down before most of them arrive.

On the one hand this is a good time for him to maximize his income. On the other hand if he wants to get his point of view across, this is the time to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. He might get a chance to influence thousands or even millions of American voters who have never heard about palestinians except through Zionist propaganda.

It doesn’t seem as one-sided to me as you make it. Maybe you just lack imagination.

I suppose these posts could be a lot less intrusive if Corey made use of the “fold” functionality of the blog. Some formatting would also help. Like this, it has the looks of a spam blog.

[…] no one is in control and all the principal agents are speaking out of turn, on and for their own behalf.

I’d say that’s pretty typical of academia, and not necessarily related to the merits of the case.

Cory Doctorow invites me to sleep on his living room couch (this has never actually happened, by the way). Lacking imagination, I fail to generalize the license to other people’s couches.

You can’t imagine that Cory Doctorow has self-respect and also tolerates his own behavior.

I can imagine it. I can imagine that Salaita might feel that way or might not.

Ideally we would ask his opinion about it, but he might be a tad busy at the moment.

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.

THEY are applying preassure, WE are expressing concern, I am examining the issues. And following policy.

Here’s a quote from Wise the day prior:

Wise said she withdrew Salaita’s appointment because trustees would likely have rejected it — and because there’s no place on campus for words that “demean or abuse” people just for expressing certain views.

So I’d take the quote of what she said the day after with a grain of salt (though either quote could be misleadingly clipped from context).

As to Montogomery’s remarks, though one always must consider the views of the source who is reporting them, even taking them at face value, he’s doing what any good attorney would be doing in those circumstances. The case for viewpoint discrimination just became a little more difficult.

Also note that he’s speaking in terms of whether to “reverse [the University’s] decision” – not in terms of whether to approve or disapprove of Salaita’s appointment to tenure as a matter of first impression.

All that said, if there is evidence made available undermining the reason for declining to hire him, it’s certainly possible for the Board to reverse course.

It is excellent that the University recognizes the deficiencies in the way this was handled, regardless.

I’m curious about journalists’ use of the term “Israel critic.” When people object to the invasion of Iraq and other U.S. actions, it would be inconceivable for a journalist to refer to them as “America critics.” The apparent purpose of “Israel critic” is to bolster the idea that any criticism of Israeli policies or actions is a criticism of the nation’s very existence.

#37 anon

[…] seems to have no expertise what so ever in Native American issues [….]

What expertise in NA issues do you use to judge that, Anon?

The sort that believes that if you work in the area of a subject, your books should have something to do with that subject. Has Salaita actually published an article dealing with Native Americans? There seems to be an ocean in between the area he researches and the one he was hired to study.

If you read those documents, you’ll see that the answer to your question is yes (in fact, he’s even published a book on the topic), and the response to your statement is: You’re wrong.

Please, professor Robin, introducing facts into the discussion is terribly uncivil. Can’t we all just get along?

If you read those documents, you’ll see that the answer to your question is yes (in fact, he’s even published a book on the topic), and the response to your statement is: You’re wrong.

Corey, stop abusing his viewpoint. In the interests of free speech, I simply won’t stand for it.

A clear instance of lèse-majesté.

As long as he doesn’t frighten the horses.

To be clear, this is what Salaita says. Were the trustees to reject his broader vision and review him only on the same narrowly academic criteria that have suppressed other indigenous voices, I would expect them to do their job honestly as they (unimaginatively and from a stance of colonial privilege) understand it, and it might then fall to future generations of public intellectuals to argue in alternative media that it was ill done.

@49 and @50: a nice try, but nope.

Let’s start with the job ad, findable in the trove Corey posted the other day. The main paragraph:

“American Indian Studies is searching for a scholar in interdisciplinary American Indian or
Indigenous Studies. While fields and regions of coverage are open, evidence of innovative
transnational, comparative, creative, or interdisciplinary approaches to American Indian or
Indigenous studies is preferred. The successful candidate will have a record of research
excellence and publication in American Indian or Indigenous studies (tenured) or demonstrate
potential to develop such a record (tenure-track). Along with research and publication, the
position requires significant contributions to undergraduate teaching, graduate mentoring, and
program, university, and other forms of professional service. Current program faculty conduct
research in comparative Indigenous studies, media studies, expressive culture, intellectual
history, literary history, educational history, sports, social and political theory, language
revitalization, policy, governance, health, militarization, and performance, and the search
committee will be interested in candidates who can complement those areas. A joint appointment
or teaching arrangement with another academic unit on campus is likely. Minimum
qualifications include the PhD or equivalent by the start of appointment, clear knowledge and
experience in American Indian and Indigenous studies, scholarly achievement and promise, and
evidence of teaching excellence. Experience working with American Indian or other Indigenous
communities is a plus.”

Anyone with experience doing academic hiring should know that once you post an ad, you are morally and legally constrained to use the ad’s criteria to assess candidates for the position. This is one of the reasons ads get so much review before going out. (You will also see in the document trove the hiring committee’s pre-review memo on how it plans to use the ad’s criteria in its screening.)

So even if a candidate *does* try to argue that their application should be assessed by standards different from the posted ad, you ignore that in hiring. But I don’t see even that going on in Salaita’s letter. Read as a whole, his 22 October 2012 letter is a wholly traditional application letter, carefully addressing each element in the job ad. The public intellectual stuff that you pull out follows the lengthy paragraph on the scholarly work.

And where are you getting these bits about “counterpoised to the hegemonic norms of the existing power structure” and ” stance of colonial privilege”? I don’t see those in Salaita’s letter, but perhaps you are reading more widely than I.

anon, you’re in luck!

You can find the application letter, full CV, and a couple of samples of Salaita’s research here: http://www.news-gazette.com/sites/all/files/pdf/2014/08/30/Salaita.pdf

So Joshua W. Burton is trying a rhetorical double backflip in which Salaita gets to redefine the characteristics of the job search to include political action as an academic qualification, and then Burton claims that because people don’t like Salaita’s particular political actions that they have grounds for disqualifying Salaita on the same grounds that he himself supposedly introduced.

It’s pure sophistry.

The scholar’s not yet been invited,
And only short quotes have been cited.
Though lining up Dicky
Is out, I’m not picky.
When bulls run, the rats are afrighted.

Salaita has spoken.

Has anyone here seen a report of the event, other than that in the execrable local right-wing rag, the News-Gazette?

From Lyle’s link above, here’s a transcript of one of Katherine Franke’s remarks:

“Well, what we see in that letter is basically a page from the playbook of the David Project. The David Project is a Boston-based pro-Zionist, pro-Israeli project dedicated to shaping the way in which Israel and Israeli state policy is discussed—are discussed on college campuses, in a way that is friendly towards Israel and Israeli state policy. They’ve recently issued a report where they said, “Our technique now will be in approaching the critics of Israel on campus to describe what they say as uncivil.” And if you read the chancellor’s letter and you read this strategy memo, you see that her letter—I don’t know if it’s actually been informed by that memo, but it certainly reflects it and was influenced by it.”

I also recommend the paragraph just under that, which begins with “Civility is not an academic norm.”

Vijay Prashad just wrote an excellent analysis of “Berkeley’s Faux Free Speech”:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/08/berkeleys-faux-free-speech/

I hesitate to post the links themselves here explicitly lest Mr. Burton become overexcited.

That Mr. Burton sure is getting powerful around here!

So, they’re locked in?