Corey
Robin

I went back and re-visited this site’s posts from last year on the Salaita affair. It’s quite a trip down memory lane.

Please check out the comments’ sections there. The first thing one will notice at the time as well as now is the suspect strategic argumentation by those defending UIUC and Chancellor Wise, and how un-useful those arguments are now, outside of their immediate and battleground context. There is no real principle at stake for UIUC and Wise other than a fear of large donors, of right-wing politicians, and of apologists for Israel’s apartheid terrorism of an occupied people. Oh, and a healthy dose of political butt-covering and not-so-subtle abuse of labor by the University’s “management”.

The bad-faith arguments of the anti-Salaita forces really stick out. Further, the venal opportunism of UIUC officials and their inability to see that their actions have consequences (like a boycott or FOIA or investigative journalism looking to see what the fuss is about) or that after their victory in de-hiring Salaita he and his defenders would not let this injustice lie. So, here we are now a year later and the story bounds back to the front pages.

And out of all the consequences that one could easily predict from UIUC’s self-inflicted fiasco, probably the most fascinating of them is the spectacular collapse or implosion of the University’s officialdom. Did anyone really believe that the University’s abuse of Salaita would end with him just going home, the reactionaries doing a victory lap, and the University seeing not only no stoppage of its donors’ generosity, but possibly a widened floodgate of new and even bigger donations? A career booster for all but that jihadist Salaita, right? The University strengthened and secure, thanks to Wise and the Trustees! Congratulations all around, no?

Establishment forces saw heroism in the University’s actions against Salaita then. We knew better at the time and we still lost. But it appears that our – Salaita’s – defeat was temporary. And now the officials at UIUC are scrambling for – what, exactly? It should have been clear that a university administration so craven as UIUC’s should have come to this point after so cowardly a display in their handling of him.

Which brings me to this snarky question: Where are Wise’s and UIUC’s defenders now? Would they not feel the need to come to the aid of Wise, and to plead with UIUC to stay its hand against her? Is there no one out there to assist this savior of UIUC’s terrified Jewish students, at the time quaking at the prospect of a professor who would use his awesome powers of grading to intimidate them and propagandize jihadist hostilities into their vulnerable young minds? Should not those oft-invoked frightened prospective Jewish students and their parents, and the alumni donor class, all so nobly served by Wise/UIUC, be now prevailed upon to heed their consciences and intercede to defend their and (let us face it) Israel’s defender?

Hasbarists! Duty – and civility – calls upon you!! Unite and advance, ho!

But seriously folks…

It is worth stepping back a little to observe clearly the collapse of the University’s anti-Salaita forces into an incoherent mass of finger pointing and mutual recrimination — all thanks to the forensic evidence of the e-mails. Absent entirely is any willingness NOW to assert boldly the rightness of the actions taken by the Wise and/or the University’s administration. The injustice against Salaita finds no mouthpieces now. Instead, there is this brutal infighting at UIUC. If anything betrays the nature of how Salaita was treated, it is surely this situation. One may be forgiven if in despair one could not see it coming. But now it does look kinda inevitable.

Salaita was treated like crap and evidently his legal case against the University now can proceed. Like I suggested last year, he rather may have dodged a bullet with his un-hiring there.

The defenders of UIUC and of Wise can look upon their work and see nothing of which they can boast and, hence, their silence now.

You know who you are….

Good comment:

“Jake, it’s capitalismtown.”

http://www.juancole.com/2015/08/illinois-damaged-amendment.html