Friday, September 5, 2014

Letter to from Iowa AAUP, September 13, 2014

Here is a link to another powerful letter, this time from the Iowa AAUP. 

Here is an excerpt from that letter:

We expect that the UIUC administration and Trustees will have noticed the skepticism expressed in many quarters regarding your claim that the civility of expression – itself inseparable from the content of protected speech – rather than Prof. Salaita’s specific political views was in fact what prompted his discharge. We share the conclusion that many readers have reached, on the basis of the 276 pages of emails that your administration made available on Aug. 22, 2014 pursuant to a FOIA request,5 that your decision regarding Prof. Salaita’s appointment was affected by objections from donors, alumni, students, organizations, and others to the content of his speech expressed as a citizen on an issue of public concern. Regardless of whether such a reading of this correspondence is correct, the widespread impression that UIUC is failing to honor its commitment to Prof. Salaita because of his specific political views will be difficult to erase. Precisely such treatment of faculty members was the reason for the founding of the A.A.U.P. in 1914, and it is not compatible with the joint 1940 Statement of Principles.
For at least a hundred years, then, college and university trustees and administrations have been subject to external pressures not to hire and not to retain faculty members whose intramural or extramural speech is controversial at a particular time. We urge you and the University of Illinois Board of Trustees not to yield to such passionate but temporary pressures from those who do not fully appreciate the importance for academe and democracy of defending speech with which we disagree – we do not, after all, require a First Amendment to protect the freedom to express calmly

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