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Academic Freedom Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 09, 2014 13 Comments
If reports are true, Steven Salaita's horrific and bizarre Twitter feed cost him a job offer at U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As of this moment, the reason behind the denial of a position is not known, but that hasn't stopped Salaita's supporters from portraying the denial as based on Salaita's anti-Israel views. As if there is some new blacklist against anti-Israel views, despite the fact that so many faculty members are anti-Israel and proud to express those views. One thing about Salaita's tweets -- he said how he feels. And how he feels is that Israel should be destroyed ("decolonized" in his lingo). That's what the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement really is all about -- it's struggle until Israel is gone. There are some naive dupes who actually believe that academic boycotts are about changing Israeli policies, but the leadership knows that it's about destroying Israel. The reaction to the denial of an offer to Salaita has been furious. One supporter of the academic boycott of Israel now wants a boycott of UI-Urbana-Champaign. Another professor is refusing to show his film there. The American Association of University Professors has weighed in against the denial, although it admits "a number of facts concerning this case remain unclear." There has been an attempt to portray Salaita as a world-reknowned scholar, but that's an exaggeration. Most of his work was simply devoted to bashing Israel in a now-typical melding of political activism and academics. Whether Salaita's initial selection was political to begin with is being questioned. Much of the organizing has been focused on a Petition for Corrective Action on Change.org posted by Rima Merriman: Salaita Change.org Petition Rima Merriman

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 08, 2014 12 Comments
For background on the controversy surrounding Steven Salaita, who was denied a job offer at U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign allegedly due to his tweets, see my prior posts: No one knows for a fact why his job offer was denied at U. Illinois, but the presumption is that it concerned his bizarre, vulgar and unhinged tweets. His defenders try to portray this as viewpoint discrimination, as if he lost out just because he criticized Israel; at this point that is entirely speculative as to the basis for the university's actions. For more background see arguments for the denial of a job offer, and against the denial of a job offer. [See video discussion here, couldn't be embedded due to formatting problems][new embed code added - thanks to commenter] The whole thing may come down to contract law.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 26, 2014 30 Comments
The attacks on a University of Virginia law professor for expressing legal views not in keeping with the views of some LGBT activists and much of the political establishment has created a stir in legal academia. In Jamaica, a somewhat analogous case is developing regarding a recently retired professor who was fired from his continuing HIV/AIDS research position after filing an accurate, but politically incorrect, expert report in a highly contentious case in Belize (h/t Blazing Cat Fur). The case has received almost no attention outside the Caribbean press, and none in the U.S. as far as I can tell. The background is that the Belize Supreme Court is considering a court case seeking to overturn Section 53 of the criminal code, which bans some forms of homosexual behavior, specifically male-on-male sodomy. Argument was held in May 2013 but there has been no decision as of this writing. The highly charged nature of the case pits a coalition of international gay rights activists against some Christian churches and groups. Enter Dr. Brendan Bain, who retired as a Professor in 2013 from the University of West Indies.  While still a professor, in 2012 Dr. Bain submitted testimony in the form of an Expert Report in the case (embedded in full at the bottom of this post). Dr. Bain is one of the pioneers in the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean, as detailed in the introduction to his Expert Report, and in the numerous news reports referenced later in this post. [caption id="attachment_87310" align="alignnone" width="454"]Dr. Brendan Bain by Steve Shapiro for the 2011 Caribbean HIV Conference (Dr. Brendan Bain,by Steve Shapiro for the 2011 Caribbean HIV Conference, used under an Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license.)[/caption] Among other things, even after his retirement as a professor Dr. Bain was director of the U.S.-funded Regional Coordinating Unit of the Caribbean HIV/AIDS Regional Training (CHART), which he helped create.  Here is his bio from 2013 from the CHART website:
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