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  1. Justin Fisher's avatar

    To be worth using, a detector needs not only (A) not get very many false positives, but also (B) get…

  2. Mark's avatar

    Everything you say is true, but what is the alternative? I don’t think people are advocating a return to in-class…

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  4. Keith Douglas's avatar

    Cyber security professional here -reliably determining when a computational artifact (file, etc.) was created is *hard*. This is sorta why…

  5. sahpa's avatar

    Agreed with the other commentator. It is extremely unlikely that Pangram’s success is due to its cheating by reading metadata.

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Suggestions about what to do next re: Illinois?

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT TO ENCOURAGE FURTHER INPUT.

The University's conduct is so clearly illegal that I really did not see these egregious statements from the Chancellor and the Board coming.  That the Chancellor of a major research university in what is a politically moderate (even liberal at times) state would affirm in public that faculty at state universities have no right to make comments that are uncivil or demeaning, even though they manifestly do under the First Amendment and, arguably, as a matter of academic freedom is truly unbelievable.  My supposition, naively, had been that some adult in the university's counsel office would have explained to the miscreants or incompetents the probable legal consequences; but either there are no adults in the counsel office or they were ignored.

The question now is what to do that might make a constructive difference:  I welcome suggestions from Illinois faculty and others. 

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26 responses to “Suggestions about what to do next re: Illinois?”

  1. orwellwritesforwise

    This:

    http://www2.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/story.html?id=cb866343-4e3b-42c1-b6d0-b35c292573f8

    If the presiding officer (either President or Chancellor) abuses what is normally a ceremonial power, then take away that power. Done.

    Left unchecked, this action (and the appalling "justifications" thereof) will have a chilling effect across the academic landscape in America. I feel cold already.

    Reply
  2. Paul Boghossian

    It depends what you mean by 'constructive.' The chances that there is anything we can do that will make Illinois reverse itself are next to zero. But growing and maintaining the boycott will indicate to other universities that the costs of interfering with academic freedom are not to be minimized.

    Reply
  3. Concerned UIUC Humanities Professor

    My first thought about the next step is to extend the academic boycott so that those who support academic freedom and freedom of speech do not seek or accept job offers at UIUC. Perhaps an extended boycott together with a concerted effort on the part of faculty at UIUC to leave and to make it clear why they are leaving will make a difference.

    Reply
  4. Christy Mag Uidhir

    Given that both Paula Allen-Meares, the Chancellor of University of Illinois-Chicago, and Susan J. Koch, Chancellor of University of Illinois-Springfield are among the signees of the fucking embarrassment that is the letter of support for Chancellor Wise, should the boycott thereby extend to the Chicago and Springfield campus as well? I myself don't know enough about university administration and the roles therein to be confident about making a decision either way, but I would very much like to know others' thoughts on the matter.

    Reply
  5. rt

    Not that it could really happen, but if one could convince the football team to join the boycott, that might actually have an effect.

    Reply
  6. Rich

    Seems to me that if a large enough cohort of current UIUC faculty contemporaneously made statements of a similarly "demeaning and uncivil" nature, the administration would face a conundrum: either fire a significant portion of the University's faculty on pain of inconsistency, or hand Salaita a workplace discrimination/Equal Protection cause of action (on top of the existing First Amendment and academic freedom grounds) on a silver platter. I'm sure that's too simple to actually work, but it's better than nothing.

    Reply
  7. Stephen

    Their football team has been boycotting success for years.

    Reply
  8. Mike Otsuka

    The Chancellor's statement draws NO distinction between those who have yet to be formally appointed and those who are already in post at the University of Illinois. Rather, her statement implies that "personal and disrespectful words or actions that demean and abuse … viewpoints" are just cause for stripping an associate or full professor an the university of tenure:

    "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. …[A] tenured faculty position at the University of Illinois is a tremendous honor and a unique privilege. Tenure also brings with it a heavy responsibility to continue the traditions of scholarship and civility upon which our university is built."

    This needs to be recognized and resisted as an attack on tenure.

    Reply
  9. David Sobel

    So far the boycott involves not going to their campus. I am wondering if there are good ways to expand it. I would think, for example, that refusing to write tenure letters for folks there or refusing to invite folks from there to one's conferences would be going significantly too far. But I am looking for help in thinking about other directions to expand the boycott. What about, for example, refusing to publish anything in a U of Illinois press volume?

    Reply
  10. Tamsin Shaw

    I've seen a lot of international scholars saying on social media that they don't want to sign the boycott letters because they're not American. I think it would be good to galvanize this international support in some way, to show Chancellor Wise et al that they have violated internationally recognized norms. If we can't persuade the University of Illinois trustees to respect academic freedom we at least need to send a very clear message to other boards of trustees out there, many members of which have strong opinions about, for example, what kind of academic work is worthwhile or what kind of political biases shouldn't be tolerated, and who would like more authority to exercise them. This decision, if it stands, gives them license to do that. The wider the sphere of outrage, the more those people will have to be aware that this has ramifications across the world, not just in the little pond where they happen to be a big fish.

    Reply
  11. Matthew Smith

    I'd like to second the recommendation to expand the boycott to include both UIC and the Springfield campus. Maybe Corey Robin can open discussion about that on his blog, which has been a clearinghouse for things-Salaita.

    Also, it seems very important to involve the student body. Mass protests by students can be effective. Perhaps one thing to do would be to contact relevant student leaders to organize an off-campus teach-in, and perhaps even some civil disobedience.

    Finally, I agree with Mike Otsuka reading of the situation. This appears to be an attempt both to limit academic freedom and to dismantle some of the most important protections of tenure.

    Just some thoughts.

    Reply
  12. Tristram McPherson

    Hi Matt –

    there is an existing student group organizing on campus, which seems like the natural group to interface with, for faculty wishing to engage with UIUC students:

    https://www.facebook.com/events/692543827505345/

    Reply
  13. Gordon Hull

    In addition to extending the boycott by adding names, one thing we can do to help is to donate here to support Salaita's legal bills and everyday expenses: http://supportstevensalaita.com/

    From the website: "Salaita now has no job nor does his wife who quit her job in Virginia to support the family’s move, no personal home to live in, and no health insurance for their family, including their two year-old son."

    BL COMMENT: John, do you know who is behind this? It would be good to have some assurance in the form of names attached. I will donate with some greater transparency about who is collecting the money and insuring that it gets to the people in need.

    Reply
  14. Gordon Hull

    I have received confirmation from the person identified as the PayPal recipient. She writes: "It is me! I am acting as a stopgap til we get a non profit or a special bank account to hold funds. We thought we had one but it turned out not and people were getting antsy to donate Friday so Steven told me just to put it in my account for now." I have asked her to confirm her identity to Brian in an email.

    Reply
  15. Grad Student at U of I

    I'm a grad student at U of I's philosophy department. I was reading Nietzsche today and it occurred to me that Nietzsche certainly would not be a potential hire according to Wise's standard. Then I remembered Lawrence Krauss's "moronic philosopher" comment from a few months ago. One thing that might be done is either making a list of all scholars who could not be hired based on this standard and/or inundating the Chancellor's office with emails that give examples of non-hirables and instances of their insulting speech. I'm pessimistic of the effect, though. (For those of you who don't know what a backward administration we have, an anecdote: when the grad employee union last bargained a contract, the administration staunchly opposed a clause that would give women the guarantee that they could breastfeed and pump breast milk in a room with a lockable door that is not a bathroom stall.)

    Reply
  16. VL

    I would think that the most practical thing other faculty could do would be to help Prof. Salaita find a new post somewhere, and soon. Are there any signatories with clout who have open searches going on? At the very least, multiple invitations to come give talks and interview at other campuses would be of practical benefit to Salaita but also stimulate the kind of live discussion in multiple places that would allow the salient issues to be discussed and understood by a broader public.

    Also, it would be a wonderful show of solidarity, and probably personally meaningful to Prof. Salaita, if those UIUC colleagues who enthusiastically lobbied to hire him would now invite him as a seminar speaker (with honorarium) in as many venues as possible. Just because he’s technically not on faculty at UIUC for the time being doesn’t mean he can’t speak there, does it?

    Reply
  17. Richard Moore

    I don't know what's permissible for tenured faculty in the US, and I do know that attitudes to striking are very different in the UK and Europe. However, I'd have thought that a day of lectures in which all (securely employed) UIUC staff sat in silence, perhaps with their mouths taped shut, would constitute a symbolic act that the UIUC would find difficult to ignore.

    Reply
  18. Kirk Ludwig

    I don't think that a boycott by philosophers will have much effect. If faculty from the sciences nationally were to boycott UIUC that would be significant. There must be some pressure from within the institution as well. A vote of no confidence in the chancellor from the UIUC faculty senate, for example, would put pressure on the chancellor and the trustees.

    Reply
  19. Corey Robin

    Grad Student at U of I: I took a preliminary stab at coming up with a list of uncivil writers and scholars (Schlegel, Diderot, Orwell, and more) throughout the ages who would not be eligible to be hired based on an earlier standard that was promulgated by Cary Nelson. But of course, as I noted in a follow-up note, you could easily add Nietzsche, Marx, and Hobbes, all of whom were very uncivil to their opponents. Even Locke (so nasty to that poor old Filmer).

    http://coreyrobin.com/2014/08/06/six-statements-cary-nelson-thinks-should-get-you-unhired-at-the-university-of-illinois/

    http://coreyrobin.com/2014/08/23/more-than-3000-scholars-boycott-the-university-of-illinois/

    Reply
  20. David Owen

    Naive question – are there not academic lawyers who also practise and could take the case on a pro bono basis?

    BL COMMENT: Probably, but most academic lawyers take on more limited pro bono commitments (e.g., appeals). This is likely to be a full-time commitment for awhile.

    Reply
  21. Gordon Hull

    I would like to second Kirk Ludwig's remark, with the proviso that philosophers are not the only discipline whose members are boycotting UIUC.

    But the part about enlisting scientists is I think crucial. Please contact your scientist friends and urge them to join the boycott. They can sign this general pledge https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1_oGbCNTx7lcvYzQP_kDEZbfclDdu5-GU_HIfCUKfIGQ/viewform or they can form their own discipline-specific pledges.

    I would think that scientists who have run into attacks on their academic freedom on the climate change issue would be especially keen to join this fight.

    I also like the suggestion of supporting the UIUC Faculty Senate should they join in. I am going to introduce a resolution to my FS at our first meeting this semester. I'll circulate a draft for comments when it's ready.

    Reply
  22. Eric Caplan

    I do not think an academic lawyer is appropriate for a case THIS BIG. This is a case that demands a legal superstar whose name itself will send chills to university of administrators. Someone of David Boies's caliber if not Boies himself. As case like this requires an experienced trial lawyer. Not a brilliant law school professor.

    Reply
  23. Debra Nails

    I am another who thinks an ad hoc boycott will be feckless, another who thinks legal action is unlikely to budge Chancellor Wise and her board, so here is a specific point, followed by a general one:

    At UIUC, it's not just Steven Salaita who deserves assistance; the administration also fired James Kilgore without academic due process (see the Illinois Public Media account at https://will.illinois.edu/news/story/former-sla-member-kilgore-to-lose-u-of-i-teaching-position).

    John Dewey and Arthur Lovejoy founded the AAUP "to make collective action possible" across the disciplines–so Lovejoy wrote. For 99 years the association has been conducting investigations and censuring administrations for violations of academic freedom–as well as assisting administrations that wanted to avoid or remove censure. The AAUP censure list changes annually because administrators know it is a public humiliation that will not go away until they change their policies and make restitution. The dues of more philosophers would help the AAUP continue such work.

    BL COMMENT: Kilgore was an at-will employee, so had no legal entitlement to process. That is not a defense of what was done to him, just a legal clarification. His claim is not as strong as Salaita's, but he probably does have a constitutional claim as well.

    Reply
  24. Chris

    I like Rich's suggestion. Perhaps someone among the faculty at UofI can organize an event where one professor after another comes up to a microphone and proceeds to describe a viewpoint of their choosing (and the advocates of that viewpoint) in the most uncivil way that they can.

    Reply
  25. Barry Lam

    Something we can all do consistent with harming no innocent people is pressure administrations at our own institutions to write a public statement affirming the right of their faculty and their prospective faculty to academic freedom, which includes political statements, even inflammatory political statements, over social media and other formats. Many administrations from many institutions found themselves very motivated to affirm academic freedom principles in statements opposing the ASA support of the BDS movement. I have noticed that Boards of Trustees, Presidents, Chancellors, and Deans are highly sensitive to what peer institutions do and say. A slew of such statements gives the Board and administration at UIUC a lot of evidence that they are, indeed, isolated.

    Reply
  26. Grad Student at U of I

    It's pretty clear now that the university made what it saw as a financial decision. A six-figure donor threatened to cease to donate money in an email to the university unless Salaita was not hired. Are there liberal donors who could threaten to do the same UNTIL the university hires Salaita? Surely it's not a foregone conclusion that conservative donors are the only ones the university cares about.

    Reply

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