Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

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?

*tenure provides

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

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.

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

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.

because decolonialization

"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

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ASteven%20Salaita

he fails on the merit 'actually seems to be a scholar in the field'

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

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.

don't force boundaries on him man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLoYFvbR0XY

bc that unit didn't have a line?

are arab americans americans? looks like that's who half of his books are about

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.

arab americans are not native americans

lol mordy I like you but you have no clue here

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?

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.

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.

oh lol i missed that whole angle on this

maybe it's a ward churchill honorarium kind of thing

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

feels like they might have been able to find someone else who cared a little more about native american issues, somewhere in america

guess they didn't! maybe you should talk to them about it

did they post on craiglist that seems to be a good place to post jobs

you would know

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

again, you would know

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

"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."

two very different threads there IMO and not entirely consistent with, for instance, how this discussion often plays out on ilx

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)

well we do have mordy

i don't feel sufficiently flattered

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/

a victory for rich people, good job

except the boycotts suck and the u will lose the lawsuit

yay

i'm sure rich ppl all over the world are celebrating the news

legalinsurrection

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!

http://linchpin.ca/?q=content%2Fallies-these-reflections-privilege-reductionism

http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2014/10/free-speech-is-not-for-feeling-safe.html

wendy brown of uc berkeley

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/

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.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/police-637732-council-meeting.html

SANTA ANA – Mayor Miguel Pulido canceled Tuesday night’s Santa Ana City Council meeting after a man in attendance refused to remove a cap with an anti-police expletive on it.

The chambers were filled as the City Council was scheduled to discuss a proposed homeless shelter, as well as meeting decorum rules after anti-police demonstrators interrupted a Sept. 2 council meeting in which police officers were being honored.

The man, who would not disclose his full name and only went by “Bijan,” was first approached by City Manager David Cavazos while he was sitting, waiting for the meeting to start. “He told me that he was going to give me the option to take it off. He didn’t ask me to take it off immediately when he was speaking to me,” Bijan said.

Bijan said he’s part of a group, CopWatch Santa Ana, and was arrested last week while he was filming police activity.

“I came here to talk about the police abuse that I’ve experienced with the Santa Ana Police Department,” he said. “I don’t feel like I have to take this off in this City Council meeting. It’s a meeting for the public and I’m allowed to be here with my hat.”

Pulido said he found the hat offensive and soon after, the public was asked to leave the City Council chambers because “we didn’t want to get into a big debate with a room full of people,” Santa Ana Police Chief Carlos Rojas said. He said police wanted the room isolated “in order to deal with the problem, whether it would lead to an arrest or not.”

Most left, but about 20 chose to remain inside.

“Start the meeting!” a woman shouted.

“You’re silencing people for a hat,” one man said.

Expletives in Spanish and English were thrown at the mayor.

Santa Ana police told attendees who chose to remain inside the council chambers that they risked being arrested if they did not leave.

Albert Castillo with Chicanos Unidos chose to stay and asked the mayor: “Explain to us, what actually are we doing wrong by sitting here? Just tell us what we’re doing wrong.”

At one point, demonstrators argued with Councilwoman Michele Martinez, who was surrounded by police officers, as she asked the man to take off his hat.

“Why don’t you just be respectful and take off your hat and we can resume the meeting. That’s all we’re asking,” Martinez said. “It’s disrespectful to the chambers. It’s disrespectful to our police officers.”

About 10 people remained inside the chambers when Pulido gave the man the ultimatum on to whether remove his cap or leave the premises. He did not leave, but was not arrested.

After Pulido announced the cancellation of the meeting, the attendees who had remained were greeted with applause as they exited the chambers.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/police-637903-meeting-hat.html

jesus fucking christ

http://youtu.be/flaTrTJhkN8

what scares is i think we hear… violence

hadn't seen this before:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-05-15/dear-class-of-2014-thanks-for-not-disinviting-me