Source: Laura Briggs
Reinstate Dr. Salaita!!!
SEND LETTERS IN SUPPORT
Emails of the
trustees are in a chain for
your convenience, but if you want to send them individually (even better), see full list at: http://bit.ly/1qdDfI4. With permission from Laura Briggs, her letter is posted below.
TO: EMAILS of the Trustees (copy and paste):
chris@northbankandwells.com,reaster@uillinois.edu,hcave2@illinois.edu,estradar@metrofamily.org,patrick.fitzgerald@skadden.com,lnfrye2@illinois.edu,hasgot28@aol.com,pholmes@schiffhardin.com,
timothy.koritz@gmail.com,tkoritz@gmail.com,
dleibo2@uic.edu,mcmillaned@sbcglobal.net,mcmillaned@msn.com,james@jdmlaw.com,pbstrobel@comcast.net,bearrows@uillinois.edu,kies@uillinois.edu,lmckeever@wpmck.com
FROM: Laura Brigg's letter:
Much has been said about the Salaita case, and I'm sure a
great deal of it has reached your ears: that it is a violation of the
fundamental Constitutional protections of freedom of speech; that it was done
with disregard for UIUC's own statutes; that it has a chilling effect on public
engagement by academics; that it was a breach of contract with Steven Salaita;
that it was a racist act against a Palestinian American who of course felt
considerable distress when dead Palestinian children were on the front page of
every newspaper. All of this, I think, is fundamentally correct and extremely
unfortunate for a state university--which, as I am sure you are aware, has a
higher (legal and perhaps moral) obligation not to act in ways that censor any
views, however expressed.
Let me then be brief then, and, I hope add something new to
the conversation. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a large, multi-page feature
about academic think-tanks accepting money from foreign governments to the
point, the article suggests, that they should be registering as agents of
foreign governments. I suspect the venerable Brookings Institute will not soon recover
from the charge that it has acted as an agent of Qatar, limiting scholars'
freedom to speech about Qatari foreign policy. Nor, I think, will the Atlantic
Council be seen in the same way after the charge that it censured its staff to
the degree that when the director called the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood
in Egypt a military coup (signing a petition or testifying to that effect in
Congress), she was forced out after conflict with the Lebanese donor.
Painfully, then, the question arises: is the University of
Illinois effectively being forced by wealthy donors to be an agent of a foreign
government, Israel, in de-hiring a faculty member who too sharply criticized
its military actions in Gaza?
This is not a light in which any of us want to see UIUC. I
urge you to vote favorably on Salaita's hiring at the upcoming meeting.
--
Laura Briggs
Professor, History
Chair, Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies
University of Massachusetts
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