What is an Employee?

One of the sillier claims defenders of the University of Illinois are making is that the University never hired Salaita because the Board of Trustees never approved of his hire. Yet, as one astute commenter points out here, when the University was first confronted with Salaita’s tweets in the local News-Gazette, on July 22, before Inside Higher Ed made the story national, the university had this to say in defense of Salaita (if you can’t read the quote from the News-Gazette, you can read it in the Inside Higher Ed piece):

“Faculty have a wide range of scholarly and political views, and we recognize the freedom-of-speech rights of all of our employees,” Kaler said in response to the tweets.

The rights of all of our EMPLOYEES. You normally don’t talk about someone who is not in your employ as an employee.

7 Comments

  1. c August 17, 2014 at 7:33 pm | #
    • GerardO August 19, 2014 at 5:26 am | #

      another 404

  2. GerardO August 18, 2014 at 3:14 am | #

    What I’d like to know is who is on the University’s donor list. An Adelson-style Zionist? This information would be valuable to this campaign, as would any links to the ADL or similar organizations.

    • GerardO August 18, 2014 at 3:37 am | #

      A quick internet search reveals that the University has removed its list of donors for 2013 from its own website. Another page reveals that donors can opt out of having their membership of the Chancellor’s Circle being made public before they donate, so it seems unlikely to be a basic privacy issue. It may be possible to find out WHEN this page was removed.

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