University Illinois faculty angry over decision not to hire pro Palestinian professor

Salaita firing turns into a ‘catastrophe’ for University of Illinois
Philip Weiss on September 3, 2014
Steven Salaita


    


The Steven Salaita case at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign keeps boiling away on the stove. The university surely hoped that it would die away after Chancellor Phyllis Wise fired the Palestinian-American scholar in early August over angry tweets Salaita had posted about Israel’s massacres in Gaza, just nine months after he had agreed to come to Illinois to teach American Indian studies. But the case isn’t going away, it’s just getting more attention. It is now, as Columbia law professor Katherine Franke says below, an “unfolding catastrophe” for the school.


(Image: Twitter)

Emails that Wise exchanged on the case have been published, and though heavily redacted, show that she was more concerned about a donor who is on the board of the Jewish Federation and Hillel, two Zionist organizations, than she was about the views of academic officials who report to her. (That’s neoliberal Zionism in a nutshell).

Also, Inside Higher Ed reports that UIUC is seeking to reach a financial settlement with Salaita. The chairman of the board told the Chicago Tribune: “We are not trying to hurt the guy. We just don’t want him at the university.” Generally such settlements include a gag clause; UIUC would probably pay anything right now to make this go away. But Salaita may have the upper hand. He is a cause celebre. The American Historical Association has published a strong letter from its president, past president, and president-elect telling Wise that unless she reverses her decision, her school will gain a reputation for “arbitrary administrative practices.” In a veiled threat, these leaders let Wise know that they may warn members who are thinking of applying to the school. Rehiring Salaita is “the only satisfactory outcome. We implore you to reverse your decision.”

And Katherine Franke has withdrawn an agreement to speak at the school but stated she’s coming out there anyway to participate in a forum on the case, in a brilliant letter to Wise denouncing Zionist pressure campaigns of the sort that came to bear on Wise, to which she foolishly acceded.

More on the developments:

Phan Nguyen has posted 443 pages of the redacted emails on-line.

Corey Robin has published a post called Reading the Salaita papers in which he demonstrates that as the crisis broke upon Chancellor Wise in late July she did not discuss the matter with her academic team even as she was having frantic meetings with alumni, trustees and development officers. The university as corporation.


What’s most stunning about these documents is that they show how removed and isolated Chancellor Wise is from any of the academic voices in the university, even the academic voices on her own team. As she heads toward her August 2 decision to dehire Salaita, she is only speaking to and consulting with donors, alums, PR people, and development types.

Robin saves the best for last:


Apparently, Carol Tilley on Twitter revealed earlier today the identity of that the alum whom Wise scrambled to rearrange her schedule over. His name is Steve Miller; the UIUC redactor failed to catch it. Tilley then tweeted some other information about Miller. He’s a huge venture capitalist. In 2010, he donated a half-million dollars to endow a professorship in the UIUC business school. He’s given money for years to endow the Steven N. Miller Entrepreneurial Scholarships. He believes in “venture philanthropy.” And he’s on the board of Hillel.

Miller is a graduate of UIUC and is on the board of the Jewish Federation of Chicago, too– a leading organization in the Jewish establishment, along with Hillel. (This is further evidence of my point that the Israel lobby is based on financial contributions and on the Jewish presence in the establishment, Jews in their 40s and older who were indoctrinated in triumphalist Zionism, such as Brian Roberts and David Cohen, leaders of Comcast, the largest media company in the world, or Thomas Kaplan, who is married to an Israeli and funds an organization that is pushing war with Iran. Today all the mainstream Jewish organizations are Zionist, and you have to reckon with this sociological/religious issue, as uncomfortable as it is, in a process of decolonizing Judaism from Zionism.)

The neoliberal/Israel lobby nexus behind the UIUC leadership is also the subject of an excellent investigative piece by Tithi Bhattacharya and Bill V. Mullen at Electronic Intifada. Consider Christopher Kennedy, the board chair who made the comment to the Chicago Tribune that we don’t want Salaita at our school.


Kennedy, the son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, is the chairperson of Joseph Kennedy Enterprises, a financial entity named after his grandfather.

One of the directors of Kennedy Enterprises is Roy J. Zuckerberg.

When not acting as a director of Kennedy’s business empire, Zuckerberg also serves as chairperson of the Board of Governors of Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

In 2009, Zuckerberg received an honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion University for his contributions as a “generous philanthropist, an enthusiastic Zionist, a concerned and influential member of the US Jewish community.”

Here are excerpts of the blunt and straightforward letter to Wise from the American Historical Association presidents, saying that Wise’s “civility” standard for hiring sounds good because we all want civility, but warning that as a speech requirement at a university it will impose a chilling atmosphere, even for tenured faculty. The presidents warn that they have a concern about their members applying for positions at the school.


August 31, 2014

…We did not speak out earlier because of the ambiguity initially surrounding some of the facts of the case. Professor Salaita’s status with respect to the conventions of your hiring process was at first unclear, but we subsequently learned that your Board of Trustees votes on appointments only in September, so that scores of new University of Illinois faculty begin teaching each fall without Board approval. In addition, your administration initially offered no substantive explanation for its last-minute withdrawal of the offer. We naturally gravitated to the universal assumption that Professor Salaita’s suddenly high profile on social media as an opponent of Israeli military action in Gaza had prompted the decision. But, still, despite our awareness that the case might involve a violation of the right of free speech, we chose to remain silent until the facts had been clarified.

That clarification came with your open letter of August 22, in which you stated that your administration objected not to Professor Salaita’s pro-Palestinian stance on Twitter but rather to the style in which he expressed it. Specifically, you held up “civility” as a necessary attribute of free speech in a university community. Even assuming that Professor Salaita’s tweets, sent from a private account, should be considered part of the campus environment—which is far from evident—revoking his job offer because of them is unacceptable. The insistence that all speech must be “civil” harbors serious danger for the health of our institutions of higher learning and for American democracy generally. Especially when used as an administrative guideline at a great research university like Illinois, it requires us to raise our voice in protest.

The First Amendment protects speech, both civil and uncivil. It does so for good reason. The United States made a wager that democracy can flourish only with a robustly open public sphere where conflicting opinions can vigorously engage one another. Such a public sphere rests on the recognition that speech on matters of public concern is often emotional and that it employs a variety of idioms and styles. Hence American law protects not only polite discourse but also vulgarity, not only sweet rationality but also impassioned denunciation. “Civility” is a laudable ideal, and many of us wish that American public life had more of it today. Indeed the AHA recommends it as part of our own Statement on the Standards of Professional Conduct. But imposing the requirement of “civility” on speech in a university community or any other sector of our public sphere—and punishing infractions—can only backfire. Such a policy produces a chilling effect, inhibiting the full exchange of ideas that both scholarly investigation and democratic institutions need.

If allowed to stand, your administration’s punitive treatment of Steven Salaita will chill the intellectual atmosphere at the University of Illinois. Even tenured professors will fear for their job security, persuaded that their institution lacks respect for the principles of academic freedom. The unhappy consequences for the untenured will be even more pronounced. A regimen of defensive self-censorship will settle like a cloud over faculty lectures and classroom discussions. Faculty will be inclined to seek positions elsewhere. This, surely, is not the future you wish for your historically great institution.

While we have thus far dwelt at length on the justification that you gave ex post facto for the rescinding of Professor Salaita’s offer, we find the procedural irregularities entailed in that decision equally troubling. On this score, too, the facts of the case have emerged more clearly since August 1. The recruitment of Professor Salaita was carried out with scrupulous care and adherence to prescribed procedure. The American Indian Studies Program chose him as their preferred candidate after a national search; every subsequent level of the University administration below the Chancellor endorsed that choice. His scholarship passed muster with your trusted colleagues. Especially important, in light of your remarks of August 22, he has a record of teaching successfully at Virginia Tech, and by all indications, students of every stripe felt welcome in his classroom. Finally, your University provided him with a standard written job offer of the type that routinely guarantees appointments at Illinois. By depriving him of that appointment, you do him a personal injustice. You also disrupt your own system of internal university governance, sowing distrust by ignoring its counsel. And, at the national and international levels, you risk saddling your institution with a reputation for arbitrary administrative practices. Certainly the American Historical Association would have concerns about our members applying for positions at Illinois.

In sum, every aspect of this case points to the reinstatement of the offer to Professor Steven Salaita as the only satisfactory outcome. We implore you to reverse your decision and to put your great university back on a course worthy of its history. Sincerely,

Jan Goldstein, President, American Historical Association

Vicki Ruiz, President-Elect, American Historical Association

Kenneth Pomeranz, Immediate Past President, American Historical Association

Next, here are substantial excerpts of Katherine Franke’s wonderful “catastrophe” letter to Wise, dated yesterday and widely circulated, informing the chancellor that Franke has cancelled her appearance at the school but is coming to Illinois at her own expense this month to participate in a forum that will deal with the debate on the Israel/Palestine issue and the uses of the anti-Semitism charge by Zionists to stop criticism of Israel. Franke says she wants to meet with Wise. This thing isn’t going away! Also note that Franke’s own dean’s office once told her she couldn’t teach a course with Palestine in the title.


Dear Dr. Wise:

Last June several University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty invited me to your campus as part of The Cultures of Law in Global Contexts Initiative and the Gender and Women’s Studies Department’s Queer Studies Reading Group. I agreed to come in late September and give several public lectures and hold intensive sessions with graduate students in the humanities, law, and women’s/gender/queer studies. For this I was generously offered a modest honorarium plus the costs of travel and accommodation. I enthusiastically looked forward to working closely with the UIUC’s outstanding interdisciplinary group of faculty and students who are thinking in new and challenging ways about notions of globalization, nationalism, personhood and justice across a range of disciplinary locations…

Regretfully, I write to inform you that on account of the decision to rescind an accepted offer of employment to Professor Steven Salaita, I must now cancel my visit to the UIUC campus in late September.

I have long held the view that the use of boycotts as a tactic to protest an unjust practice by a state, business or academic institution may be appropriate in the right context, such as the current crisis at the UIUC, but that those who pledge to honor a boycott cannot rest their political commitments exclusively on a promise not to do something. Rather they should also pledge to affirmatively engage the injustice that generated the call for the boycott. For this reason, rather than merely boycotting your institution, I plan to travel to Urbana-Champaign in mid September at my own expense to participate in a forum (located off campus) with members of the UIUC community in which we will explore the manner in which the termination of Professor Salaita’s employment at UIUC threatened a robust principal of academic freedom.

Of equal, if not greater, importance, at this forum I plan to explore with UIUC faculty the complex questions of belonging, dispossession, and possibilities for legitimate uses of state and non-state violence that may underlie Professor Salaita’s tweets on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

We would be well served to relate them to a rich academic literature that has aimed to give meaning to this particular struggle. UIUC’s world-class faculty in history, comparative literature, post-colonial studies, Jewish and Arab studies, ethnography, and human rights, are more than equipped to unpack Professor Salaita’s brief comments on social media (most would admit that 140 characters do not allow for nuance, rigor or careful analysis), taking them as a starting point instead of an end of a discussion about complex questions of belonging, dispossession and identity. Rather than appealing to norms of civility and safety that risk inoculating the UIUC community from challenging and uncomfortable inquiry, an approach that appreciates the norms and values of an academic institution would substitute rigorous interdisciplinary and scholarly analysis of the possible meanings of a provocative comment such as “Zionists: transforming ‘anti-Semitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948.” Should we take from such a statement a cynical, if not offensive, apology for antisemitism or does it suggest a deeper critique of the unintended and tragic consequences of certain extreme forms of political Zionism? Perhaps both? This conversation may include thoughtful consideration of the perils and merits of academics’ use of social media. Instead of being afraid of ideas that may be disturbing or provocative, or prejudging their meaning and declaring them off-limits, scholars aim to unpack them and interrogate their possible implications. I suspect that this conversation could generate disagreement, but I am certain it would galvanize a rich scholarly inquiry that has been lost by banishing Professor Salaita and his ideas from the UIUC campus.

As for my decision to decline the departmental invitation to speak at the UIUC, allow me to explain why I have chosen to take this course. The statement you and your Board of Trustees issued on August 22nd, affirming the decision to terminate Professor Salaita’s employment, as well as emails related to this matter that were released to the public last week, make clear that this catastrophe is not really about Professor Salaita and the UIUC’s interest in preserving a civility norm on campus. Rather, it is better and more accurately understood as the most recent iteration of a well-funded, well-organized and aggressive strategy to censor academic scholarship, research or discussion that is critical of Israel or Israeli state policy. So too it aims to censor scholarship, research or discussion that expresses sympathy for the rights of Palestinians. With the assistance of consultants and other branding experts, the strategy has been to frame comments critical of Israel as an affront to civility in the university context. To those of us who have defended academic freedom on this issue in recent years, your statement on the Salaita case echoed, in profoundly disappointing ways, the framing that has been advanced by political operatives who seek to capture the parameters of discussion of Israel/Palestine in an academic context. We at Columbia University are no strangers to this pressure, as we have experienced, and weathered, enormous outside pressure placed on our administration to deny tenure to scholars whose academic work criticizes Israel or political Zionism. I have had my own lectures taped and then critiqued by members of the David Project, have been instructed by my dean’s office that I cannot give a talk in which the word “Palestine” appears in the title because “there is no such place as ‘Palestine,’” and my former dean refused to accept a grant I received to fund scholarly work designed to create space in academic contexts for critical discussions of Israel/Palestine.

The strategy behind the campaign opposing Professor Salaita’s appointment at the UIUC seeks to reframe any discomfort that might arise around the competing claims to belonging, dispossession and identity in Israel/Palestine as a fundamental problem of intolerance, disrespect or abuse. This tactic insinuates as a baseline a particular stance or orthodoxy with respect to the highly contested claims to truth or right on this issue that can then be intolerated, disrespected, or abused. The emails disclosed from your office from university donors, alumni/ae, and others clearly document that the UIUC has been targeted by a particular kind of pro-Israel pressure group hoping to purge the professorate and the campus of parties who they deem to have taken positions (whether in their academic or personal capacities) hostile to an uncritically felicitous conception of Israel. That the UIUC administration would surrender to that pressure, and then defend the decision to do so, in the name of a civility norm on campus, is both disingenuous and disheartening….

In addition to myself, Professor Salaita, and many other scholars holding appointments at peer academic institutions whose scholarship and other advocacy contain remarks that would run afoul of the UIUC’s new civility policy, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would surely be unwelcome at the University of Illinois as an invited lecturer on the basis of his recent uncivil comments on social media, swearing vengeance against the “human animals” who captured and killed three Yeshiva students in the West Bank last June.

My most sincere regrets that on account of the unfolding catastrophe surrounding the termination of Professor Salaita’s employment I will be unable to accept your faculty’s invitation to visit the Champaign-Urbana campus to give a lecture on The Cultures of Law in Global Contexts. However, I do hope that we can meet in mid September, either in a public or private context, when I come to central Illinois to participate in an off-campus session with a community of scholars who do not fear, nor are intolerant of, provocative, challenging, and even uncomfortable ideas.

Sincerely,

Katherine M. Franke

I hope you noticed Franke’s openness to an intellectual discussion of the ways that anti-Semitism has been revised by Zionists. In her footnotes, Franke refers to Corey Robin’s astute observation that the Israel lobby has removed the opprobrium from the anti-Semitism charge, making it a badge of honor for some: “Israel and many of its defenders claim that Israel is coterminous with Jewishness — indeed, sometimes, that Israel exhausts the definition of Jewishness; Israel has come to be associated, in the eyes of many, with colonization, racism, occupation, population transfer/ethnic cleansing; and movements against colonization, racism, occupation, and the like are considered to be honorable because those things are thought to be, like antiSemitism itself, among the great sins of the 20th century. Because of these three developments, Israel has perversely made anti-Semitism into something honorable: i.e., a discourse that is not about animus toward Jews but rather about opposition to colonization, population transfer, occupation, and the like.” Robin goes on to say that he disagrees with this understanding of anti-Semitism. (No wonder The New York Times lately published a piece calling Robin one of the two best on-line journalists.)

Source

Academic Freedom and Justice at the University of Illinois

A weblog for faculty of the University of Illinois committed to promoting academic freedom and shared governance on our campus. To learn more about us, email uiucfaculty@gmail.com

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Open Letter to Chancellor Phyllis Wise, President Robert Easter, and the University of Illinois Board of Trustees

We, the undersigned faculty members of the University of Illinois, write in reply to the statements of August 22, 2014 by Chancellor Wise and the Board of Trustees concerning the Chancellor’s retraction of the offer of a tenured professorship to Dr. Steven Salaita.  We find these statements disappointing in providing no details of how this remarkable decision was reached. Instead, the statements put forward a troubling rationale for leadership which seems to threaten the excellence and integrity of a world-class research institution with a land-grant mission.  

The University of Illinois has strict protocols for tenured hires, including extensive review of scholarship and teaching.  The tenure process involves consultation with outside experts and rigorous oversight at several levels.  When Professor Salaita accepted the offer of a tenured professorship in October 2013, he was the approved choice of American Indian Studies, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Office of the Provost, the chief academic officer of the Urbana campus.  The Chancellor’s withdrawal of that offer just days before the expected start date came without the knowledge of the relevant academic program or college. As news of this decision spread, thousands of scholars and professional organizations including the American Comparative Literature Association, American Historical Association, Center for Constitutional Rights and the Modern Language Association wrote in protest. Many have promised to boycott the university until the decision is reversed.

In light of these statements, it appears that the Chancellor’s withdrawal of the offer on August 1 was a hurried response to what began as a campaign by off-campus political groups to tarnish Salaita as an anti-Semitic critic of Israel.  As the News-Gazette reported on July 22, the incoming UI professor had drawn “the ire of a conservative website after posting angry commentary on Twitter about Israel’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.”  In retracting Salaita’s offer just a few days later with no apparent faculty consultation, the Chancellor violated the university’s established procedures and principles of shared governance. As a public institution, the University of Illinois has clear protocols for handling concerns from the public, which appear to have been entirely disregarded in this case.

Moreover, as the statements make no attempt to deny, Chancellor Wise terminated this offer in response to Professor Salaita’s political utterances as a private citizen. Neither her statement nor the Board’s demonstrates that Salaita's specific words or actions properly place him outside the bounds of proper faculty conduct.  Indeed, Salaita’s record of highly reputed scholarship and teaching is nowhere in dispute.  The decision thus constitutes a dangerous attack on academic freedom which will exert a chilling effect on political speech throughout our campus. 

As scholars and teachers, we understand the importance of civil discourse.  But the facts of this case do not support the conjecture that Salaita’s private tweets somehow constitute a threat to the “traditions of scholarship and civility upon which our university is built.” Read in their entirety, Salaita’s tweets indicate that his criticism of Israel consists in a “principled stand against state violence” and that he is “fundamentally” committed to “acknowledging and countering the horror of antisemitism.” None of the statements that we have seen represents an attack on any racial or ethnic group, unless one accepts the disingenuous equation of the state of Israel and Jewish people generally. 

The decision to terminate Salaita also raises serious questions about the University’s stated commitment to diversity and to supporting the study of racialized communities and underrepresented people.  Salaita is Palestinian-American, a group that constitutes a tiny minority on campus and in the U.S academy.  He was hired by a small academic unit that has struggled for years with the administration over the racially divisive “Chief” mascot and the validation of American Indian Studies as a legitimate scholarly discipline.  Given these issues, we are concerned that the revocation of Salaita’s position might embolden intolerant forces in the community and on campus. These actions have already created a climate of fear and stoked an already tense racial climate.

This makes it all the more troubling that the Chancellor and Board have described this decision as a victory for civility, academic excellence, and “robust debate.”  Their statements leave us to ponder how one upholds civility by overriding the decision-making of faculty members and deans without consultation or due process. How, we must ask, does one foster academic excellence by making academic decisions without the advice of scholars in the field?  Can it really be that debate is best served by secretive decision-making that silences dissent?  Recent reporting on this issue suggests that particular donors may have had an impact on this decision and that a task force will soon be charged to “develop a new process” for situations in which the chancellor “does not agree with a hiring decision.”  This seems to represent a radical departure from principles of shared governance which have been the bedrock of academic excellence on this campus.  

The Chancellor and the Board write eloquently of their support for academic freedom.  We call on them to fulfill that claim by affirming that a faculty member’s extramural political opinions have no place in the evaluation of that individual's scholarship, teaching, or collegiality.  If shared governance means anything, it means that if a faculty member’s speech raises any public concern those concerns should be addressed by an appropriate faculty body in adherence to established university procedures. To assert otherwise in the name of promoting student “comfort” or assuring a "welcoming environment" is, in effect, to license political censorship and arbitrary decree.  It unacceptably endows the Chancellor and Board with authority to monitor, evaluate, and punish faculty members for the way they exercise their rights and duties as citizens.   

Chancellor Wise has set a dangerous precedent that the Board of Trustees has now emphatically endorsed.  The integrity and reputation of our campus has suffered a terrible blow. We call on the Chancellor, President, and Board to heed the thousands of voices now protesting this illegitimate course.  We ask them to reverse their decision, act in accordance with the AAUP's principles on academic freedom and tenure as they are reiterated in the August 29 AAUP letter that calls upon UIUC to honor its obligations to Salaita, and open this process to investigation by the UI Senate's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure.  In calling on these leaders to reinstate the offer to Professor Salaita, we ask them to show the campus and the world that the University of Illinois is genuinely committed to shared governance, academic freedom, and robust debate.  We ask them to reaffirm the importance of a diverse campus where all voices can be heard.

Signatures as of September 6, 2014

Evelyne Accad, Professor of French and Global Studies

Gul Agha, Professor of Computer Science, Coordinated Science Laboratory, Information Trust Institute
       and Affiliate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering

Imad L. Al-Qadi, Founder Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Director, Illinois Center for       Transportation and Advanced Transportation Research & Engineering Lab

Tariq Omar Ali, Assistant Professor of History
Jayadev Athreya, Assistant Professor of Mathematics.

James R. Barrett, Professor of History and African American Studies

Robert W. Barrett, Jr., Associate Professor of English, Medieval Studies, and Theatre

Anustup Basu, Associate Professor of English
Manisha Basu, Assistant Professor of English and African Studies

Asef Bayat, Catherine and Bruce Bastian Professor of Global & Transnational Studies and Professor of
        Sociology and Middle East Studies

Ericka Beckman, Associate Professor of Spanish and Comparative & World Literature
Howard Berenbaum, Professor of Psychology

Bruce Berndt, Professor of Mathematics

Ann Peterson Bishop, Associate Professor, Emerita, of Library & Information Science

Nancy Blake, Professor of Comparative & World Literature

Merle L. Bowen, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Director of the Center for African

                Studies
Samantha Brotman, Visiting Lecturer and Arabic Specialist, Intensive English Institute

Donna A. Buchanan, Associate Professor of Musicology and Anthropology, School of Music

David S. Bullock, Professor of Agricultural & Consumer Economics
Adrian Burgos, Jr., Professor of History and LAS Centennial Scholar

Antoinette Burton, Catherine & Bruce Bastian Professor of Global & Transnational Studies and Professor of History

Jodi Byrd, Associate Professor of American Indian Studies and English and Conrad Humanities Scholar

J.B. Capino, Associate Professor of English and Media & Cinema Studies
Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History

Arnab Chakraborty, Associate Professor of Urban & Regional Planning
Tamara Chaplin, Associate Professor of Modern European History
Kiel Christianson, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, Psychology, Linguistics, and Beckman Institute 
Amanda Ciafone, Assistant Professor of Media
Julie Cidell, Associate Professor of Geography
Kathryn B. H. Clancy, Assistant Professor of Anthropology 

Jennifer S. Cole, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Beckman Institute Cognitive Science Group

David L. Cooper, Director of the Russian, East European, & Eurasian Center and Associate Professor of

                Slavic Languages & Literatures

Eleanor Courtemanche, Associate Professor of English

Clare Crowston, Professor of History and Conrad Humanities Scholar

Kenneth M. Cuno, Associate Professor of History and South Asian & Middle Eastern Studies

Jerry Dávila, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor of Brazilian History

Peter A. Davis, Associate Professor of Theatre

Susan G. Davis, Professor of Communication and Library & Information Science

L. Elena Delgado, Associate Professor of Spanish, Criticism &Interpretive Theory, Gender and Women’s                Studies
Jane Desmond, Professor of Anthropology and Gender & Women's Studies and Director of the International Forum for US Studies

Vicente Diaz, Associate Professor of Anthropology and American Indian Studies (Co-Chair of Salaita Search     
     Committee)
Brian Dill, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Pradeep Dillon, Associate Professor of Educational Policy, Organization and Leadership

Lisa Gaye Dixon, Associate Professor of Theatre 

Adrienne Dixson, Associate Professor of Critical Race Theory and Education

Emanuel Donchin, Professor, Emeritus, of Psychology

Nathan Dunfield, Associate Professor of Mathematics
Christopher Dunn, Associate Professor of Spanish & Portuguese (beginning January 2015)

Mary M. Edwards, Associate Professor of Urban & Regional Planning and MUP Program Director
Amr S. Elnashai, FREng and Adjunct Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering

Hadi Salehi Esfahani, Professor of Economics

C. G. Estabrook, Professor, Emeritus, of Sociology
Brenda M. Farnell, Professor of Anthropology and American Indian Studies

Walter Feinberg, Charles Hardie Professor, Emeritus, of Educational Philosophy
Karen Flynn, Associate Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and African American Studies

Stephanie Foote, Professor and Chair of Gender & Women’s Studies
Eduardo Fradkin, Professor of Physics

Karen L. Fresco, Associate Professor of French
Peter Fritzsche, Trowbridge Professor of History

Peter K. Garrett, Professor, Emeritus, of English and Criticism & Interpretive Theory

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Associate Professor of History and Sociology
Daniel A. Gilbert, Assistant Professor of Labor & Employment Relations

Zsuzsa Gille, Associate Professor of Sociology

Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Professor of English and Criticism & Interpretive Theory
Radhika Govindrajan, Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology 
Catharine Gray, Associate Professor of English
Jessica Greenberg, Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Ryan Griffis, Associate Professor of New Media, School of Art & Design

Joseph Grohens, Senior Instructor of English

Kevin Hamilton, Associate Professor of Art & Design

James A. Hansen, Associate Professor of English

Brendan Harley, Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Dianne Harris, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Director, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities

Stacy Anne Harwood, Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning

Waïl S. Hassan, Professor of Comparative & World Literature, English, French, South Asian & Middle Eastern         Studies 

Julie A. Hengst, PhD CCC-SLP, Associate Professor of Speech & Hearing Science 

Linda Herrera, Associate Professor of Educational Policy, Organization & Leadership
Mark Hertzman, Assistant Professor of History
Stephanie M. Hilger, Associate Professor of Comparative & World Literature, German, French, and Gender & Women's Studies

Valerie Hoffman, Director, Center for South Asian & Middle Eastern Studies and Professor of Religion
Lou van den Dries, Professor of Mathematics
Lillian Hoddeson, Professor, Emerita, of the History of Science
Margarethe Hoenig, Professor Emerita, College of Veterinary Medicine

Kristin Hoganson, Professor of History

Frederick E. Hoxie, Swanlund Professor of History, Law and American Indian Studies
Jonathan Inda, Associate Professor and Chair of Latina/Latino Studies

Javier Irgoyen-Garcia, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese

Sharon Irish, Adjunct Lecturer of Library & Information Science

Nils P. Jacobsen, Associate Professor of History
Brian K. Johnson, Professor of Journalism

Laurie Johnson, Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures

Lilya Kaganovsky, Associate Professor of Slavic, Comparative Literature, and Media Studies and Director of the         Program in Comparative & World Literature and LAS Centennial Scholar

Stephen Kaufman, Professor, Emeritus, of Cell and Developmental Biology
Lori Kendall, Associate Professor of Library and Information Science

Marcus Keller, Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature 

Margaret Kelley, Associate Professor of Sociology

Diane P. Koenker, Professor and Chair of History

Roger Koenker, William B. McKinley Professor of Economics

Craig Koslofsky, Professor of History and Germanic Languages & Literatures

Susan Koshy, Director of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory and Associate Professor of English and

                Asian American Studies

Mosbah M. Kushad,  Associate Professor of Crop Sciences

Soo Ah Kwon, Associate Professor, Department of Asian American Studies & Human and Community Development

Kathryn La Barre, Associate Professor of Library & Information Science

Brumsoo Lee, Associate Professor of Urban & Regional Planning and Director of MUP Admissions

Bruce Levine, J.G. Randall Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of African American Studies

Trish Loughran, Associate Professor of English and History
Alejandro Lugo, Professor of Anthropology and Latina/Latino Studies

Vicki Mahaffey, Clayton & Thelma Kirkpatrick Professor of English and Gender & Women’s Studies

Martin F. Manalansan IV, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies

Ralph Mathisen, Professor of History, Classics, and Medieval Studies

Cameron McCarthy, Professor of Education Policy, Organization & Leadership

Cris Mayo, Professor of Educational Policy, Organization & Leadership and Affiliate Professor of

                Gender & Women’s Studies
Robert W. McChesney, Gutgsell Endowed Professor of Communication
Jerome McDonough, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science
Erik McDuffie, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History

Robert McKim, Professor of Religion and Philosophy

Megan McLaughlin, Professor, Emerita, of History, Gender & Women's Studies and Medieval Studies

Clark McPhail, Professor, Emeritus, of Sociology

Heather Hyde Minor, Associate Professor of Architecture

Faranak Miraftab, Professor of Urban & Regional Planning

Feisal Mohamed, Professor, Department of English
Isabel Molina-Guzmán, Associate Professor of Media & Cinema Studies

Ellen Moodie, Associate Professor of Anthropology

Jennifer Monson, Professor of Dance

Justine S. Murison, Associate Professor of English

Chantal Nadeau, Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies

Name Withheld, Assistant Professor, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

Name Withheld, Assistant Professor, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Name Withheld, Assistant Professor, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

Name Withheld, Assistant Professor, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Name Withheld, Assistant Professor, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Name Withheld, Assistant Professor, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Name Withheld, Assistant Professor, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Name Withheld, Assistant Professor, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Hina Nazar, Associate Professor of English
Michelle Nelson, Associate Professor of Advertising
Tim Newcomb, Professor and Associate Head of English 
Alexandra Newton, Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Carl Niekerk, Professor, Germanic Languages & Literatures

Fiona I. B. Ngô, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies and Gender & Women's Studies

Mimi Thi Nguyen, Associate Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and Asian American Studies
Ned O'Gorman, Associate Professor of Communications

Kathryn Oberdeck, Associate Professor of History
Cynthia Oliver, Professor of Dance
Andrew Orta, Professor and Head of Anthropology

A. Naomi Paik, Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies

Robert Dale Parker, James M. Benson Professor of English

Timothy R. Pauketat, Professor of Anthropology and Medieval Studies

Curtis Perry, Professor of English and Classics
Philip Phillips, Professor of Physics
Wayne T. Pitard, Professor of Religion

John S. Popovics, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Catherine Prendergast, Professor, Department of English

Paul Prior, Professor  of English, Center for Writing Studies

David Prochaska, Associate Professor, Emeritus, of History

David H. Price, Professor of Religious Studies

François Proulx, Assistant Professor of French

Dana Rabin, Associate Professor of History

Junaid Rana, Associate Professor and Interim Chair of Asian American Studies

John Randolph, Associate Professor of History

Leslie J. Reagan, Professor of History and University Scholar
Ann Reisner, Associate Professor of Media & Cinema Studies

Jesse Ribot, Professor of Geography and Director of Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy Initiative
Paul Ricker, Associate Professor of Astronomy
Rachele Riley, Assistant Professor of Art & Design

Richard T. Rodriguez, Associate Professor of English & Latina/Latino Studies
Jay Rosenstein, Center for Advance Study Professor of Journalism

Bruce Rosenstock, Associate Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies
Gilberto Rosas, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Latina/o Studies

Emanuel Rota, Associate Professor of Italian

Michael Rothberg, Professor and Head of English/Director of Holocaust, Genocide & Memory Studies

                 Initiative
James Rounds, Professor of Educational Psychology and Psychology

D. Fairchild Ruggles, Professor and Interim Head of Landscape Architecture 

Brian Ruppert, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages & Cultures and Religion
Robert A. Rushing, Associate Professor of Comparative & World Literature, Italian, Cinema Studies, and Criticism & Interpretive Theory

Mahir Saul, Professor of Anthropology

Julia F. Saville, Associate Professor of English

Daniel Schneider, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning

Jeannie Natsuko Shinozuka, Ph.D. and Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Associate

Daniel J. Simons, Professor of Psychology

Valeria Sobol, Associate Professor of Slavic Languages & Literatures

Gabriel Solis, Associate Professor of Music and African American Studies

Siobhan Somerville, Associate Professor of English and Gender & Women’s Studies

Mark D. Steinberg, Professor of History
Andrea Stevens, Associate Professor of English
William Sullivan, Professor of Landscape Architecture
Carol Symes, Associate Professor of History, Theatre, and Medieval Studies

Anna Stenport, Associate Professor of Scandinavian Studies and Director of the European Union Center
Inger Stole, Associate Professor of Communications

Eleonora Stoppino, Associate Professor of Italian

Zohreh Sullivan, Professor, Emerita, of English, African Studies, and Global Studies
Caroline Szylowicz, Associate Professor, University Library
Robert Tierney, Associate Professor of Comparative & World Literature and East Asian Languages & Culture and Director of Graduate Studies
Carol L. Tilley, Associate Professor of Library and Information Science

Maria Todorova, Gutgsell Professor of History
James Treat, Associate Professor of Religion

Renee R. Trilling, Conrad Humanities Professorial Scholar of English and Medieval Studies
Dallas R. Trinkle, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
Emily E. LB. Twarog, Assistant Professor of Labor & Employment Relations
Rizwan Uddin, Professor of Nuclear, Plasma, Radiological Engineering

Ted Underwood, Professor and LAS Centennial Scholar of English
Angharad N. Valdivia, Professor of Media Studies
Oscar E. Vázquez, Associate Professor of Art History
Joaquin Vieira, Assistant Professor of Astronomy
Renée Wadleigh, Professor of Dance

Robert Warrior, Professor and Director of American Indian Studies

Deke Weaver, Associate Professor of Art & Design
Terry Weech, Associate Professor of Library & Information Science
Michael B. Weissman, Professor of Physics

Terri Weissman, Associate Professor of Art History
Kate Williams, Associate Professor of Library & Information Science

David Wilson, Professor of Geography

Gillen Wood, Director of Sustainability Studies Initiative and Professor of English

Charles D. Wright, Professor of English & Medieval Studies

Gary G. Xu, Associate Professor and Head of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Yasemin Yildiz, Associate Professor of German

Jaya G. Yodh, Research Assistant Professor of Physics 

Assata Zerai, Associate Professor of Sociology

Signatories from the University of Illinois, Chicago

Jennifer Ashton, Associate Professor of English

Aleeca Bell, Assistant Professor of Nursing

Nicholas Brown, Associate Professor of English and African American Studies

Barbara DiEugenio, Professor of Computer Science

Stephen Engelmann, Associate Professor of Political Science

Judith Kegan Gardiner, Professor, Emerita, of English and  Gender & Women's Studies
Anna Kornbluh, Associate Professor of English

Walter Benn Michaels, Professor of English

Paul Preissner, Associate Professor of Architecture

Therese Quinn, Associate Professor of Art History and Director of Museum and Exhibition Studies
David Schaafsma, Professor of English

Signatory from the University of Illinois, Springfield

Michael J. Murphy, Assistant Professor of Women & Gender Studies

 

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