Steven Salaita’s situation–fired from the University of Illinois before being hired–continues to make news. The university, which took offense at a series of crude and hateful messages about Israel, is now considering a financial settlement for terminating Salaita’s agreement with the university. The chairman of the board of trustees, Christopher Kennedy, told the Chicago Tribune, “We are not trying to hurt the guy. We just don’t want him at the university.” (The story is on Inside Higher Ed.)
Robert Weissberg, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has a different view from most previous discussions, which have centered on Salaita’s academic freedom. Weissberg says that the case is not about academic freedom. Rather, it’s about the failure of the university to judge Salaita on his academic achievements, particularly those relevant to the American Indian Studies Program, which was poised to hire him. Salaita had no history of scholarship on American Indians, as far as Weissberg–or, it appears, anyone else–has found; just a journalistic article in which he favors giving the United States back to the Indians.
If it hadn’t been for his outraged and outrageous tweets, Salaita would have been a faculty member teaching young people in an area he knows little about. He’d have as much learning to do as his students.