I don't have the details of the exact tweet but I recall reading something like "Israel makes antisemitism respectable."
― Mordy, Tuesday, 26 August 2014 18:30 (nine years ago) link
Also does Dawkins still count as a "reputable academic?"
― Welcome to my spooooooky carnival! Hope I don't... blow your mind! (Phil D.), Tuesday, 26 August 2014 18:31 (nine years ago) link
wait, so your proof that other ppl wouldn't similarly be fired/contract unapproved is from a guy with tenure?
― Mordy, Tuesday, 26 August 2014 18:31 (nine years ago) link
he runs pjmedia, writes books that get reviewed outside the rightwing pastemill ghetto. he ain't drudge but he's a big deal
this isn't to excuse salaita's antisemitism (if that's what he is, i haven't looked into it myself tbh). it should not even be questionable to state that open hatred of palestinians and muslims generally can be done w/o much sanction on the right, and therefore treated as alien and controversial (at best) by the mainstream
xps
― goole, Tuesday, 26 August 2014 18:32 (nine years ago) link
I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here! The tweet in question read: Zionists: transforming ‘anti-Semitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948.
xxp Let's ask Ward Churchill just how much protection tenure revokes when the right wing gets its panties in a knot, shall we?
― Welcome to my spooooooky carnival! Hope I don't... blow your mind! (Phil D.), Tuesday, 26 August 2014 18:38 (nine years ago) link
*tenure provides
― Welcome to my spooooooky carnival! Hope I don't... blow your mind! (Phil D.), Tuesday, 26 August 2014 18:39 (nine years ago) link
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2014/08/a-very-letter-to-chancellor-wise-from-the-eminent-historian-natalie-zemon-davis.html
golly she sure is good
― j., Wednesday, 27 August 2014 21:04 (nine years ago) link
i don't have time to fully investigate the articles he links to here but this seems relevant to what we were discussing above re double standards:http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/09/03/steven-salaita-more-than-just-an-obnoxious-tweeter/
But a lot of people are using him as an example of how academics with pro-Palestinian or “anti-Zionist” views are punished in American universities. This is laughable. For every Steve Salaita, there are a larger number of people interested in Middle East Studies who get rejected for academic jobs, or decline to go into academia to begin with, because they have pro-Israel views. As I noted several years back, top universities have found it necessary to create special “Israel Studies” programs and chairs because Departments of Middle Eastern Studies are so closed to anyone who wants to do objective, much less sympathetic, scholarship on Israel. That final link goes to a story about what passes for debate at the Middle East Studies Association: “Should we boycott all Israeli goods, products, services, and people, or should we exempt academics?” The vast majority of those who are agitating for Salaita on the grounds that political views shouldn’t affect academic appointments don’t care at all that MES programs are so one-sidedly hostile to Israel, and hire accordingly.
― Mordy, Thursday, 4 September 2014 15:46 (nine years ago) link
no, we're agitating b/c of faculty governance; i.e. it shouldn't matter what rich people who happen to have been named to the board of trustees think about an appointment
― Euler, Thursday, 4 September 2014 15:55 (nine years ago) link
i'm not sure why someone who apparently exclusively writes about palestine/israel would be getting a tenure job in a native american studies program tbh, and this article suggests his scholarship is not so fantastic either. someone said early on that this makes the perfect 'freedom of speech' in academia case bc of how much salaita fails on every other merit.
― Mordy, Friday, 5 September 2014 18:16 (nine years ago) link
because decolonialization
― j., Friday, 5 September 2014 18:26 (nine years ago) link
"fails on every other merit" : maybe you should be consulted on every faculty hire! would save us a lot of work. congrats on tenure btw
― Euler, Friday, 5 September 2014 18:40 (nine years ago) link
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ASteven%20Salaita
― iatee, Friday, 5 September 2014 18:48 (nine years ago) link
he fails on the merit 'actually seems to be a scholar in the field'
― iatee, Friday, 5 September 2014 18:49 (nine years ago) link
lol, what is "the field". like I don't have a clue what people in area studies do but I don't presume to judge its boundaries. I mean right wingers hate area studies generally so I get what's going on here
― Euler, Friday, 5 September 2014 18:55 (nine years ago) link
U of I actually has a Middle Eastern Studies dpt - I was scanning through the faculty and I've actually read some of Pitard's work on the Ugaritic Baal Cycle. I wonder why he didn't try to work in the actual department that fits his area of expertise.
― Mordy, Friday, 5 September 2014 18:57 (nine years ago) link
don't force boundaries on him man
― iatee, Friday, 5 September 2014 18:58 (nine years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLoYFvbR0XY
― Mordy, Friday, 5 September 2014 18:59 (nine years ago) link
bc that unit didn't have a line?
― Euler, Friday, 5 September 2014 18:59 (nine years ago) link
are arab americans americans? looks like that's who half of his books are about
― goole, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:00 (nine years ago) link
idk how U of I works but i'd be surprised by any institution i've been involved w/ giving someone a spot in an unrelated department bc the correct department is filled up - it's pretty bizarre.
― Mordy, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:01 (nine years ago) link
arab americans are not native americans
lol mordy I like you but you have no clue here
― Euler, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:01 (nine years ago) link
idk i have experience w/ a variety of NYC universities and departments so i'm not coming from complete ignorance. obv you feel it's not strange tho. i guess you've seen stuff like this before?
― Mordy, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:03 (nine years ago) link
like, i have known ppl doing stuff in like German + French language departments that weren't German or French, but they always had theoretical basis in those languages. i've never seen someone literally doing another department in the wrong place.
― Mordy, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:04 (nine years ago) link
like to lay it out: a unit gets a line, it advertises, it gets applicants, it chooses among those. they decide who "fits". they can't just send an applicant to another unit. in this case they judged fitness.
― Euler, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:04 (nine years ago) link
oh lol i missed that whole angle on this
maybe it's a ward churchill honorarium kind of thing
― goole, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:05 (nine years ago) link
as in my eye missed the 'native' american part of all these articles
he has a book exploring parallels bw Native American and Palestinian issues. that's the basis for their judgment of fit
― Euler, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:07 (nine years ago) link
feels like they might have been able to find someone else who cared a little more about native american issues, somewhere in america
― iatee, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:07 (nine years ago) link
guess they didn't! maybe you should talk to them about it
― Euler, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:09 (nine years ago) link
did they post on craiglist that seems to be a good place to post jobs
― iatee, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:10 (nine years ago) link
you would know
― Euler, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:10 (nine years ago) link
feel like if I were someone really invested in illinois supporting its university system I wouldn't be so sad that tax dollars aren't going to the guy writing for electronicintifada.net, like gee, why are conservatives so bitter about area studies hmmm
― iatee, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:20 (nine years ago) link
again, you would know
― Euler, Friday, 5 September 2014 19:34 (nine years ago) link
http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-order-of-civility.html
on the uc berkeley chancellor's civility/free speech statement, for the 50th anniversary of the free speech movement
― j., Monday, 8 September 2014 01:15 (nine years ago) link
"The demand for civility effectively outlaws a range of intellectual, literary, and political forms: satire is not civil, caricature is not civil, hyperbole and aesthetic mockery are not civil nor is polemic. Ultimately the call for civility is a demand that you not express anger; and if it was enforced it would suggest that there is nothing to be angry about in the world. The call for civility in discourse confuses the enforcement of administrative time, place, and manner restrictions with the genuine need to defend people from personal threat. The result is that the administrative desire trumps all else."
― j., Monday, 8 September 2014 01:18 (nine years ago) link
two very different threads there IMO and not entirely consistent with, for instance, how this discussion often plays out on ilx
― nakh is the wintour of our diss content (darraghmac), Monday, 8 September 2014 01:21 (nine years ago) link
in the case of the U of I "administrative time, place, and manner" includes flattering big donors, so indeed there are three different threads therein (as Chancellor Dirks no doubt intends to obscure)
― Euler, Monday, 8 September 2014 06:57 (nine years ago) link
well we do have mordy
― j., Monday, 8 September 2014 12:39 (nine years ago) link
i don't feel sufficiently flattered
― Mordy, Monday, 8 September 2014 13:02 (nine years ago) link
fwiw i thought the contractual arguments for hiring salaita were strong enough that they should've reinstated him, but i'm still pretty pumped about the news that they voted him down
http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/09/u-illinois-board-of-trustees-votes-down-steven-salaita/
― Mordy, Thursday, 11 September 2014 18:43 (nine years ago) link
a victory for rich people, good job
except the boycotts suck and the u will lose the lawsuit
yay
― Euler, Thursday, 11 September 2014 18:55 (nine years ago) link
i'm sure rich ppl all over the world are celebrating the news
― Mordy, Thursday, 11 September 2014 19:04 (nine years ago) link
legalinsurrection
― goole, Thursday, 11 September 2014 19:06 (nine years ago) link
I'm sure rich people are always celebrating. They're rich! This is just icing on the cake (albeit icing that will cost the Illinois taxpayer a lot). But hey! Civility! It's worth it!
― Euler, Thursday, 11 September 2014 19:24 (nine years ago) link
http://linchpin.ca/?q=content%2Fallies-these-reflections-privilege-reductionism
― j., Sunday, 21 September 2014 17:38 (nine years ago) link
http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2014/10/free-speech-is-not-for-feeling-safe.html
wendy brown of uc berkeley
― j., Thursday, 9 October 2014 23:39 (nine years ago) link
this will probably be great - loads of v smart ppl:http://www.csgsnyu.org/2014/09/october-14-taking-offense-trigger-warnings-the-neoliberal-politics-of-endangerment/
― Mordy, Sunday, 12 October 2014 16:40 (nine years ago) link
I'm going to have to bookmark that for my debate class. There's a resolution of whether or not govt restrictions on threatening speech are desirable.
― owe me the shmoney (m bison), Sunday, 12 October 2014 17:03 (nine years ago) link