Professor fired for criticizing Israel files suit against University of Illinois

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The guy advocated mass murder and put the blame for anti-semitism on the victims. He can go to hell, and the hypocrisy of the far left has never been clearer when it comes to "speech has consequences".

Did he? Neither, surely, follows from those tweets cited above.

[ag]

Also, he wasn't actually fired. Given that fact, I'm not sure he actually has a case. Too bad such a big fuss needs to made over so irrelevant a figure.

There's a dispute over whether he was actually fired.  The university is claiming he hadn't been, since the paperwork wasn't final and it would make their case stronger if he hadn't been.

That is the University's only claim that seems to be, at least somewhat, valid. Then, again, though it might be legally true and take care of this particular case, that something like this can ever happen at a university would make pretty much any academic upset.

Universities function, to a large extent, on trust. A formal offer, once it is given, is, generally, viewed as binding on the offerer. Once it is accepted, it is viewed as binding for the faculty member as well - even though it cannot be binding legally (there are no slavery contracts in this day and age). Academic markets work slowly - being notified in August that you are not employed means you pretty much will be unemployed (or, at best, a temporary visitor somewhere) for the next 13 months. If a university may rescind an offer on this short notice, it cannot, really, give any offers which anybody would trust. This will create hiring problems, unless they can convince everybody and their grandmother that this is an exceptional case, that can never happen again. And it would be a tough convincing.

This is aggravated by the fact that the guy had been tenured, was offered a tenured position, resigned his tenure at the other school to take it - and then this happened. I could, possibly, understand the university if in the meantime he had been convicted of a serious crime - though, frankly, even in that case I would prefer if the university followed procedures it uses in such cases for existing tenured faculty. Simply reneging on a tenured offer at that stage - for whatever reason that is not materially related to his job (he has not been caught plagiarizing, or faking his credentials, for instance) - is a very serious breach of trust.

[ag]

And he more than once said that Israel is the cause of anti-semitism (and even described it as "noble" because Israel), which puts him about four thousand years off the mark as to the origin.

Well, as somebody who has experienced anti-semitism first hand - as a victim - and from very early age (growing up Jewish in USSR does that to you), I think I am qualified to respond to this.

Anti-semitism is, of course, not caused by Israel. For centuries - millenia - Jews were the only notable minority in much of Europe (and not only Europe - though, one should note, nowhere were Jews treated as badly as in Christian Europe). When others went to church on Sunday, Jews did not. Jews spoke their own languages, dressed strange, prayed to god in their own way, etc.,etc.  And, as such, they - my ancestors - were the focal point of popular xenophobia. Strangeness somehow attracts hatred. Strangeness is a convenient scapegoat. Uniting against strangeness is a firm ground to build a national identity on. Hence, the massacres and the ghettos of the middle ages. Hence the pogroms and the death camps of the newer - romantic nationalist - age.

That kind of antisemitism still exists today - but it has gotten to be fairly marginal. Jews are no longer strange. It is the "Judeo-Christian" age. My fellow tribesmen (as my grandfather would put it) are now mainstream. In the age where the main difference between us and the rest is that we do not go to the sinagogue on Saturdays while the rest do not go to church on Sundays it is harder to feel hatred than it was when people, actually, went somewhere to pray during the Sabbath. And the Holocaust did, finally, make that anti-semitism a thing to be ashamed of, at least in the civilized word - an inconceivably large price to pay, admittedly, but it has been paid. True, there are countries - such as Russia - where the lessons of the Holocaust have never been properly learned (distorted, really, by the  regime that never viewed mass murder as something shameful) , where the traditional anti-semitims is still alive  - but even there it is losing its virulence (for lack of identifiable Jews, mostly, but that is another matter).

In any case, the traditional European anti-semitism - the type that gave me the bloody nose in my young years - is on its way out. When people in the civilized world have encounters with anti-semitism today it is, more often than not, a very different phenomenon. When a Palestinian teenager says that he "hates Jews" he does not express xenopohbic hatred for a stranger. His feelings, in fact, are much closer to those of a Jewish kid a hundred plus years back who, having had enough, joined - or, at least, sympathized with - a revolutionary organization. In fact, he IS the Jewish kid of modern Israel. For my fellow-tribesmen have managed to take on the role their ancestors rebelled against in the old Empire: that of the majority oppressor.

Now, do not get me wrong. I am not an admirer of the old revolutionary hatred, nor do I think that today's Palestinian "hater of Jews" is anything but an idiot. What I am saying is that this "anti-semitism" is a very different phenomenon from that of old. And, well, yes, this new anti-semitism has its own causes: for instance the fact that my fellow-tribesmen decided that what they always hated was not that the ispravniks cut the beards, but that they were not the ispravniks.

The nearest parallel to that old anti-semitism today is the anti-migrant - or, for that matter, the anti-Muslim feeling too many people in the "civilized world" do not feel a need to be ashamed of. That is the old hatred of the stranger, the one who goes for his own prayer at his on time.

[ag]

I'm not familiar with all the legal complexities when it comes to the case, but assuming they didn't enter a final contract together, I don't see how he "fired" in the legal sense. Of course he was essentially fired, but not in the legal definition, and thus not in a way that the courts could recognize as a firing.

It is almost certain that by that point he had signed some sort of a contract at that point - nobody resigns their tenure just like that without a written contract. Yes, sure, there must have been a footnote somewhere saying that this is conditional on approval by the board. Individual faculty members are NEVER vetoed at that stage - this is something completely unheard of. A provost might veto, true - but he was 6 months past that stage, probably. He had accepted a tenured offer. Few things are supposed to be more binding in the university world. This is a tough contract to break. If they get away with it, they will have a big problem hiring in the future.

[ag]

I refer to the tweet I referenced above where he put "anti-semitism" and "honorable" in the same sentence.

Arguably, he was being deliberately provocative in that statement. There is no suggestion that this was anything but a fairly common rhetorical device. I could understand a computer taking this for an approval of anti-semitism, but an actual human being would have to think first before taking that point of view.

In any case, if tenure was created for some purpose, this was the purpose - to protect unpopular and provocative speach. A university that feels firing is justified in this case should simply abolish tenure.

[ag]

The professor in question here did not have a tenured position. He had been offered one by the American Indian Studies Program at UIUC, but his offer letter clearly indicated that his position would be subject to confirmation by the Board of Trustees. That's the typical form of one of these offers.

The professor's behavior during the time between the offer and the meeting of the BoT was relevant to the BoT decision. They are not supposed to be a rubber stamp for the academic departments. The BoT felt that confirmation was not in the best interests of the university. As it was the BoT has now voted twice to not confirm the offer to the professor. A copy of the BoT press release is here.

Well, if they ever are to get another senior hire, they would need to have board approvals in March - at the latest. At this point the university severely damaged its reputation by rescinding an offer at that late stage. It is still, probably,a legal issue to which extent such an unusual behavior is a breach of the implicit contract - there will be many people (department chair, a dean or two, the provost, etc.)  who will have to testify that they assured the guy, board approval was an empty formality. Elizabeth II has the right to veto bills, but if she did, there would be a major constitutional crisis.

Btw, they now claim to have voted against him AFTER he was supposed to have started teaching. They also claim that his statements about Israel are directly related to what he was supposed to teach in the Indian Studies department. This all looks like extremely bad faith to me. If a faculty member is supposed to start teaching before the vote - so, without a contract - as they imply, and if anything he says may be construed as relevant to his job, there is no tenure at UI.