University of Illinois Rescinds Offer to Professor After Anti-Israel Tweets
Steven Salaita
The University of Illinois rescinded a job offer to an incoming professor who harshly criticized Israel on Twitter.
Steven Salaita, who was offered a job at the Champaign-Urbana campus in the American Indian studies program, will not be hired, according to a report by the website Inside Higher Education.
Steven Salaita
The move reportedly was made in response to concerns civility following a series of tweets in which Salaita criticized Israel and supporters of Israel in stark terms. Inside Higher Education cited sources familiar with the university’s decision.
Salaita’s tweets included, “At this point, if Netanyahu appeared on TV with a necklace made from the teeth of Palestinian children, would anybody be surprised? #Gaza.” Another tweet said, “Ever wonder what would happen if the KKK had F-16s and access to a surplus population of minorities? See #Israel and #Gaza.”
Salaita also retweeted this tweet that seemingly advocated the murder of journalist Jeffrey Goldberg: “Jeffrey goldberg’s story should have ended at the pointy end of a shiv.”
According to Inside Higher Education, the university had announced that Salaita would be hired, and Salaita had already resigned his position as an associate professor at Virginia Tech in its English department.
However, University of Illinois Chancellor Phyllis Wise reportedly informed Salaita that his appointment would not go to the university’s board of trustees for approval.
A university spokeswoman had stressed faculty members’ right to free speech when asked about Salaita’s tweets, according to The News-Gazette, a local newspaper.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
