Steven Salaita files federal lawsuit over non-hiring (Update: Glaring defect)
Names Trustees and unnamed donors.
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Steven Salaita, the controversial former professor who was denied a tenured job at the University of Illinios at Urbana-Champaign, has filed a lawsuit against the university trustees and unnamed (“John Doe”) donors who allegedly pressured the university. The one trustee who voted in favor of hiring, James Montgomery, was not named as a defendant. Chancellor Phyllis Wise also was named as a defendant.
The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of Illinois, rather than the Central District where the campus is located, based on the Trustees having voted not to hire Salaita at a meeting in Chicago. Strategically, Salaita presumably prefers a Chicago jury, if it gets to that.
More details and an embed of the Complaint to follow (now full embed at bottom of post).
The heart of Salaita’s factual claim is that his tweets during July 2014 over the Gaza conflict are all that is at issue, when in fact one of his tweets before July wishing for all Israeli settlers to go missing after three teens were kidnapped and presumably murdered, was specifically mentioned by at least one of the Trustees:
3. The speech at issue consists of messages critical of Israeli policy that Professor Salaita posted to his personal Twitter account in July 2014, after the state of Israel launched “Operation Protective Edge,” an aerial bombardment and ground campaign in the Gaza Strip. Professor Salaita saw the news images of Palestinian children killed and felt compelled to speak out. He did so by posting Twitter messages critical of the Israeli government and its political leaders, and highlighting the impact of its policies. In the United States, Professor Salaita’s criticisms of Israeli state policy are infrequently heard from American politicians or presented in the mainstream national media. The University Administration, facing pressure from wealthy University donors, fired Professor Salaita for his political speech challenging the prevailing norm.
Salaita alleges, among other things, reputational damage, which opens up a lot of issues for litigation:
5. Professor Salaita has suffered severe economic, emotional, and reputational damage as a result of the wrongful conduct of the University, the above-named University officials, and the donors to the University who demanded that the University break its contract with Professor Salaita. Professor Salaita’s prominent scholarship and excellent teaching credentials had allowed him to obtain a lifetime-tenured faculty position at a major American university—the pinnacle achievement for an academic….
Salaita alleges that donors caused or at least contributed to his non-hiring (which he calls a firing), something Chancellor Phyllis Wise has vigorously denied:
15. Defendants JOHN DOE DONORS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS are unknown contributors to the University who threatened future donations to pressure the University to terminate Professor Salaita. They each communicated with University officials regarding Steven Salaita’s employment and demanded that the University breach its contractual obligations and promises to Professor Salaita or else they would withhold financial contributions to the University.
We can expect to see an attempt to add these alleged donors to the lawsuit at some future date. One donor, Steven Miller, is identified in the Complaint, but was not (yet) named in the lawsuit.
There is a glaring defect in the Complaint which at least would go to Salaita’s contractual claims and perhaps even his free speech claims. Salaita never says in the Complaint that anyone ever told him that Board of Trustee approval was a formality and certainly would be obtained. That was a condition of the offer, yet in the Complaint Salaita only says he assumed Trustee approval was a formality:
38. Based on the communications and conduct above, as well as standard academic hiring practices, including practices at the University of Illinois, Professor Salaita reasonably believed that approval of the Board of Trustees was a mere formality and that his position with the University of Illinois was certain so long as he remained legally eligible to work.
This will be problematic for Salaita in his quest to turn a contingent offer into an enforceable contract under the doctrine of promissory estoppel. Based at least on the Complaint, no one with authority ever promised him that the Board of Trustee contingency would not apply.
If a court finds no enforceable contract, and that Salaita was just a potential hire, then the University would have more discretion into what it took into account in the hiring process. That would include, as both official and unofficial university faculty committees found, whether the tweets were part of Salaita’s scholarly profile and therefore properly taken into account when judging Salaita’s fitness for the job.
I will have more analysis of the lengthy discussion of Salaita’s tweets in the Complaint, likely in a later post.
Here are the Counts in the Complaint:
Count I – 42 U.S.C. § 1983
First Amendment
Against the Trustee Defendants and Defendants Easter, Pierre, and Wise
Count II – 42 U.S.C. § 1983
Procedural Due Process
Against the Trustee Defendants and Defendants Easter, Pierre, and Wise
Count III – 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 42 U.S.C. § 1985
Conspiracy
Against all Defendants
Count IV – State Law
Promissory Estoppel
Against the Board of Trustees
Count V – State Law
Breach of Contract
Against the Board of Trustees
Counts VI and VII – State Law
Tortious Interference with Contractual and Business Relations
Against John Doe Donor Defendants
Count VIII – State Law
Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress
Against all Defendants
Count IX – State Law
Spoliation of Evidence
Against Defendant Wise
The University issued the following statement in response:
A statement by the University re Steven Salaita complaint
University to vigorously defend against meritless claimsJanuary 29, 2015
The University of Illinois must balance all of the interests of its campuses and the institution in reaching any decision, particularly one as important as granting a positon as a member of our faculty.
Last summer, while Steven Salaita was still under consideration for a tenured position to teach courses comparing issues related to the experiences of Native Americans to issues related to Palestinians and the Middle East, Dr. Salaita began demonstrating that he lacked the professional fitness to serve on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Specifically, Dr. Salaita began making a series of statements via social media on precisely the subject matter that he proposed to teach at our University. For example, on June 19, 2014, after three Israeli teenagers were reported kidnapped and presumed dead, Dr. Salaita posted a statement on Twitter which read: “You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” Dr. Salaita continued to post this comment even after the three teens were found murdered later that month.
Dr. Salaita also posted statements such as:
“Zionist uplift in America: every little Jewish boy and girl can grow up to be the leader of a monstrous colonial regime.”
“If #Israel affirms life, then why do so many Zionists celebrate the slaughter of children? What’s that? Oh, I see JEWISH life.”
“Zionists: transforming antisemitism [sic] from something horrible into something honorable since 1948.”
“Let’s cut to the chase: If you’re defending #Israel right now you’re an awful human being.”
These statements and many more like them demonstrate that Dr. Salaita lacks the judgment, temperament and thoughtfulness to serve as a member of our faculty in any capacity, but particularly to teach courses related to the Middle East.
As Dr. Salaita admits in the complaint he filed today, the offer he received in October 2013 from the American Indian Studies Program was at all times subject to the ultimate approval of the Board of Trustees. This is consistent with the Statutes of the University of Illinois and the past precedent of the University. Dr. Salaita was well aware of the importance of this final approval. At no time was Dr. Salaita hired as a faculty member. His appointment was always subject to approval by the Board of Trustees.
On September 11, 2014, after carefully considering all of the issues related to Dr. Salaita’s proposed appointment, the Board of Trustees voted 8-1 not to approve Dr. Salaita for a position on the faculty. Two weeks ago, the Board emphatically reiterated that its decision is final and will not be reconsidered.
The Board’s decision concerning Dr. Salaita was not reached hastily. Nor was it the result of external pressures. Indeed, the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure concurred that “donor influence” was not a basis for the decision. The decision did not present a “new approach” to the consideration of proposed faculty appointments. It represented the careful exercise of each Board member’s fiduciary duty and a balancing of all of the interests of the University of Illinois. In the end, this is a responsibility that cannot be delegated nor abdicated.
Today, Dr. Salaita has filed a complaint in federal court. Among other accusations, he contends that the individual trustees and administrators of the University of Illinois are liable for intentionally inflicting emotional distress by refusing to provide him with a faculty position. The University of Illinois intends to vigorously defend against these and each of Dr. Salaita’s other meritless claims. The University has attempted to negotiate a settlement for his reasonable losses and expenses, but he has refused those offers.
As a private citizen, Dr. Salaita has the constitutional right to make any public statement he chooses. Dr. Salaita, however, does not have a constitutional right to a faculty position at the University of Illinois.
Steven Salaita v Christopher Kennedy Et Al – Complaint
(This post was added to several time)
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Comments
The plaintiff’s counsel has to suppress that photo of Salaita at ALLLLLLlllll costs.
Jury poison, rat thar…
Another socialist ring leader experiences a burned down liberal utopia. How sad… Not.
It is indeed a problem for him that the Board of Trustees must vote, and that vote is not guaranteed to go his way.
However, he will try to point out that at UIUC (and every other major university), 99%-plus of the time the Board votes to allow the Provost/Chancellor/President to hire whomever has been proposed for hiring by the College, School, Department, etc.
The Board always reserves the right to review but rarely exercises its right to refuse.
The reasons are clear: 99%-plus of the time, there are no controversies. The hire is a good one, and the Board doesn’t want to get into the habit of refusing (or overly delaying) the recommendation of the Provost. Do a couple of those and any Provost with a spine will tell the board to go find a more simpatico Provost, and quit. Boards don’t want that to happen and so 99%-plus of the time they go along. After all, they hired the current Provost and they figure he/she knows the situation and the candidate. For their part, Provost offices almost always do a pretty good job of vetting candidates, particularly those being hired for leadership positions and those being hired at the Full/Associate Professor level.
But, once in a great while the Board has to step in. When they do they have to show some compelling reason that they are right and the Provost is wrong, precisely to avoid the counter-charge that their refusal is “political” or “discriminatory”. That compelling reason has to be documented carefully and extensively.
That’s the challenge for the UIUC Board here, and I think they were able to do just that. I’m going to be surprised if the courts, in the end, decide that the Board was acting in bad faith, or in an arbitrary or capricious manner. That’s the only basis to overturn their decision.
So in the end I think Salaita has to be going for a small bag of money by filing the court challenge — pay me and I go away.
The thing is that they have already offered to pay him, so if anything he must be wanting a larger bag of money.
What I think he is going for is to try to set a precedent that basically boards of trustee’s don’t control hiring of academics.
So the board, making a decision that is within their legal capacity, and having a first amendment right to talk about that decision, is wrong for making the undesired decision and then talking about it? Gee, this sounds a lot like the Rick Perry indictment.
NU, 1987: Franklyn Haiman, author of the book “Speech and Law in a Free Society,“ said last week that although it was debatable whether [Barbara] Foley`s actions at the protest were enough to justify a denial of tenure, the university did not violate her academic freedom because it was entitled to take how she behaves as a citizen into consideration.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-04-26/news/8702010360_1_academic-freedom-grant-tenure-protest
That’s the great thing about freedom of speech: it doesn’t just apply to leftists.
Salaita was free to post his nasty Twitter comments expressing his hatred for Jews and his desire to see them dead. But Illinois donors and alumni were also free to contact the Board of Trustees and express their disgust at Salaita’s comments, and also express their opinion that his comments demonstrated a lack of professionalism and an unfitness to work at their state university.
If Salaita were as smart as he thinks he is, he would have had enough sense not to post his ugly and hateful remarks until after the Trustees had voted to approve his hiring.
The guy is a sack of s***.
However, I’m too well acquainted with the left pulling this PC speech persecution act on conservatives to side against him. Since we’re talking about academia, if they get to pull it on this ass wipe, then KNOW it will be done in spades to conservatives for simply “liking” Palin on Facebook.
Recall: Rush Limbaugh was TOO CONTROVERSIAL TO BE A PART OWNER IN AN NFL TEAM!!!!! I know that’s not the same playing field as academia, but the political climate we live in today is getting a little too close to 1930’s Germany for my tastes.
I thought Salaita’s photo needed a caption.
Then I saw “Glaring Defect” was added.
Nice.
Promissory estoppel sounds in equity, and requires “reasonable reliance” on the part of the person appealing to equity.
All appeals to equity require “clean hands” on the part of the supplicant. You can’t claim equity if you do not DO equity.
Stevie Boi is going to lose badly.
Yea, frankly I don’t see how this one ever even see’s the inside of a court room.
Just because doofus “assumed” something was a formality, well thats just his assumption, which as you know would make an arse out of him and umption.
As a Nurse I have done contract work before for hospitals where contracts have to be approved at several levels. You never assume you are hired until you are signing the final contract in HR. This doesn’t seem any different to me.
Also, I am wondering how you can be “fired” from a job you never actually had?
I wonder if this one will even survive the first set of challenges from the universities lawyers?