Israel Matzav

University of Illinois censured for withdrawing Jew hater's appointment

The University of Illinois has been censured by the American Association of University Professors for withdrawing the appointment of Jew-hater Steven Salaita after the discovery of anti-Semitic tweets in his Twitter account last year. This is from the first link.

The vote hinged on the principle of academic freedom, said Anita Levy, an association staff member involved with the group’s investigation of the matter. A report by the group described Salaita’s tweets as expressions of “outrage in strong language over the war in Gaza”.

Rejecting the professor’s appointment “violated Professor Salaita’s academic freedom and cast a pall of uncertainty over the degree to which academic freedom is understood and respected” at the school, Levy said, reading from a statement after Saturday’s vote.

The academic association currently has 56 institutions on its censure list.

A university spokeswoman, Robin Kaler, said the school had an “unyielding commitment to the principles of academic freedom”.

And, in an email sent to faculty on Saturday, university chancellor Phyllis Wise said the decision was “disappointing, but not unexpected”.

“We take this decision by the AAUP seriously,” Wise said in the email. “We understand that it will have repercussions on the scholarly activities of many in our community, and we intend to address both the censure and the underlying concerns through our established processes of shared governance.”

And for those who have forgotten, here are some samples of his tweets from the second link.

One of his posts that has garnered much attention was from June 20, soon after three Israeli teens were kidnapped and later found dead. “You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the (expletive) West Bank settlers would go missing.”

On July 31, he wrote: “Next time a Zionist asks you to ‘dialogue,’ remind him that you heard everything he had to say when #Israel was murdering children in #Gaza.”

It was that kind of language that U. of I. President Robert Easter and Wise alluded to when asking the board not to approve Salaita’s appointment.

Here are some more recent sample tweets:

I fully affirm Israel's right to exist... ...as a defendant on charges of war crimes at the ICC.

— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) June 4, 2015

Calling Israel/Palestine a "conflict" is akin to calling McCarthyism a "dialogue."

— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) April 16, 2015

Nearly every time I discuss Zionist colonization, somebody asks about Hamas. Zionist colonization began a century before Hamas even existed.

— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) April 15, 2015

#Easter: the holy day in which Palestinian Christians march from Bethlehem to an Israeli checkpoint where they are beaten by IDF soldiers.

— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) April 5, 2015

The retweets are worse.

Labels: academic boycott, anti-Semitism, BDS, liberal academia

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:22 PM