Unruly Rhetorics: Protest, Persuasion, and Publics by Jonathan Alexander & Jonathan Alexander & Susan C. Jarratt & Nancy Welch
Author:Jonathan Alexander & Jonathan Alexander & Susan C. Jarratt & Nancy Welch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Language Arts & Disciplines, General, Rhetoric
ISBN: 9780822986430
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: 2018-11-13T00:00:00+00:00
10
THE STEVEN SALAITA CASE
PUBLIC RHETORIC AND THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN US COLLEGE COMPOSITION AND ITS PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
JOHN TRIMBUR
On August 1, 2014, Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) informed Steven Salaita that his appointment as a tenured associate professor in the American Indian Studies program would not be submitted for final approval to the board of trustees.1 Even though Salaita had been offered and had accepted the position nearly nine months earlier, resigned his post as a tenured faculty member at Virginia Tech, and was scheduled for fall semester classes at the University of Illinois—and despite the fact that Chancellor Wise had already approved tenure for Salaita—she now said it was “unlikely” the board would confirm his appointment. As later came to light, by the time she wrote Salaita on August 1, Wise had already met on July 21 with Illinois president Robert A. Easter concerning complaints from pro-Israel alumni, faculty, students, and donors about tweets Salaita posted protesting the mass destruction and civilian deaths caused by Israeli military operations launched against Gaza earlier that month. On July 24, Wise attended a board of trustees meeting, where it was decided in executive session to rescind the offer to Salaita.2
The Salaita case opened up a whole new dimension of stifling unruly political speech and especially heated criticism of Israel, such as Salaita’s tweets, by labeling them “uncivil.” As Chancellor Wise explained in “The Principles on Which We Stand,” issued on August 22, 2014, in response to widespread objection at Illinois and elsewhere to Salaita’s unhiring, the question was not Salaita’s pro-Palestinian politics but the “tone” of his tweets. After reaffirming her commitment to academic freedom, Wise articulated a civility doctrine to govern faculty conduct: “What we cannot and will not tolerate at the University of Illinois are personal and disrespectful words or actions that demean and abuse either viewpoints themselves or those who express them.” In an accompanying statement of support for Wise, President Easter and the board of trustees said they wanted to “ensure that faculty, students, and staff are comfortable in a place of scholarship and education.” Their goal was to make the University of Illinois a “national model of leading-edge scholarship framed in respect and courtesy” (AAUP 8). In other words, what started as a pro-Israel witch hunt against Salaita turned into a full-blown rationale, discovered after the fact, for norms of academic civility that excluded “uncivil” political speech.
The Salaita case prompted extensive media coverage that framed the question of academic civility from different angles, including hand-wringing in the liberal free speech sector about “where the line is” for faculty and “what’s going too far” (see, for example, Levine) as well as the shameful attack on Salaita’s academic credentials and fitness for teaching by Cary Nelson, a former American Association of University Professors (AAUP) president and once upon a time a radical faculty member at Illinois (Flaherty). Very quickly, the AAUP, professional associations across a range of academic fields, and individual faculty quite
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