Tonight, the major news out of the University of Illinois is that two more departments have taken votes of no confidence in the leadership of the UIUC: the department of history (nearly unanimous, I’m told) and the department of Latino and Latina Studies. The latter’s announcement reads:

The faculty of the Department of Latina/Latino Studies (LLS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign met on Wednesday, September 3, 2014 to discuss the University’s revocation of an offer of employment to Dr. Steven Salaita. We concluded that this revocation and the subsequent public statements by Chancellor Phyllis Wise, President Robert Easter, and the Board of Trustees about Dr. Salaita’s appointment demonstrate a clear disregard for the principles of academic freedom, free speech, and shared governance, as well as for established protocols for hiring, tenure, and promotion. The faculty of LLS therefore declares that we have no confidence in the leadership of the current Chancellor, President, and Board of Trustees.

That means that six departments have now voted no confidence, two of them fairly large departments, representing a significant number of faculty in the humanities. Word is that we should be expecting at least four more votes of no confidence by the end of the week, for a total of ten.

Just a word on these votes. While it might seem from the outside to be an inconsequential, costless move by faculty, a vote of no confidence, in my experience, is a vote most professors are loathe to take. If for no other reason than that they fear retaliation from the administration: fewer lines, smaller budgets, no seat at the table. If faculty are willing to take such a vote, it means one of two things: either the administration has done something truly egregious or the faculty senses that the administration has lost control of the situation and is thus no longer in a position to exercise its usual political clout. At the UIUC, both seem to be true.

The American Comparative Literature Association has weighed in with a strong letter criticizing the UIUC decision. Its conclusion?

Given that Chancellor Wise has not only ignored numerous calls for her to reverse her decision but has also defended her action, with the strong backing of UIUC Board of Trustees Chairman Christopher Kennedy and University President Robert Easter (http://www.uillinois.edu/cms/one.aspx?portalId=1117531&pageId=1603474), we express our solidarity with UIUC departments and programs that have cast no-confidence votes in the university administration (http://www.dailyillini.com/news/article_cf55ebce-2f97-11e4-b672-0017a43b2370.html).

On a personal note, I was pleased to see that the letter was signed by the association’s president Ali Behdad. When I was a grad student writing my dissertation on the political theory of fear, I found an article of his on Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (“The Eroticized Orient: Images of the Harem in Montesquieu and his Precursors”) especially useful.

That brings the number of professional associations condemning the UIUC to six.actually, seven.

Law professor Jonathan Adler, who’s a fairly conservative sort of guy, blogs at The Washington Post today:

While I think a case could be made that some of Professor Salaita’s tweets could suggest he lacks the proper temperament to be an educator (and that any such case could be refuted by, for instance, reviewing his teaching evaluations, speaking with peers, etc.), this is something the university should have examined up front — before preparing to place his appointment before the Board of Trustees. As it happens, it appears the university had no problem with anything Salaita said or did until it became controversial, suggesting it was the content of Salaita’s opinions, and not legitimate concerns about his qualifications or abilities, that prompted the university’s actions.

Newly released university documents, as summarized on Crooked Timber, suggest the university’s about face was due to pressure from wealthy donors and alumni.  If so, this demonstrates the university’s lack of commitment to principles of academic freedom.  Again, while there may have been legitimate arguments for refusing to hire Professor Salaita, kowtowing to wealthy alumni and donors who find his ideas offensive is not among them.  These revelations would also seem to undermine whatever legal defense the university has planned and will only fuel the growing academic boycotts of the university.

For a look at what the other side is doing we turn to a group of, well, I’m not sure who (more on this in a second), who took out an ad today in the local newspaper in support of Chancellor Wise. They implicitly (well, not so implicitly) accuse Salaita of “speech which incites others to violence or to harm.” They write strange statements like “She wears many hats, and must ensure that each one fits as comfortably, fairly, and well as possible.” (How does a hit fit fairly?) And they express “grave concern” about “the escalating, often incendiary and sometimes extreme rhetoric regarding Chancellor Wise’s decision.”

New Rules: no incendiary or extreme rhetoric. Like this:

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

(The author of those words, by the way, founded a university. And one of the signatories to those words was the president of a university. Autres temps.)

So who are the signatories to this advertisement? The good people of Twitter have been crowd-sourcing it. It turns out that a fair numer of the signatories are administrative staff at UIUC, or donors and boosters. And some of the signatories are affiliated with the First Busey Corporation/Busey Bank, on whose board sits…Phyllis Wise. Of the many hats. Of the 139 signatories (remember, our side has over 17,000 on a petition), only ten are academics.

But it tells you something about the state of play. Clearly their side is rattled; in the battle for public opinion, they are losing. And so feel like it’s essential to mobilize the troops, such as they are.

Lastly, all throughout the day I received a flurry of emails from men and women writing to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. One of the strongest emails was posted on Facebook by University of Chicago professor Patchen Markell. He has kindly given me permission to reprint parts of it here:

My purpose in writing is less to urge you to approve the appointment than to offer you something that I sincerely hope will be of use to you: an account of how this situation, and your situation as decision-makers at a critical moment in the life of your institution, looks from the perspective of a deeply concerned observer who has spent a little time studying the history and politics of academic governance at other institutions and in other difficult moments.

This situation must feel like an emergency. How could it not? Chancellor Wise’s initial decision provoked criticism—and not just criticism but forceful action, in the form of petitions, appeals, statements of refusal, cancellations of appearances—on a scale and of an intensity that she surely did not anticipate. The Executive Committee’s affirmation of her decision did not quell the criticism, which only intensified when the Chancellor’s contacts with donors opposed to Salaita’s appointment were disclosed. Now you are approaching a meeting at which, one way or another, Steven Salaita’s case may appear on your agenda. And while I gather that in ordinary circumstances the Board of Trustees’ approval of appointments is routine, and doesn’t involve a fresh consideration of the appointees’ merits—that’s how it works at most schools I’m familiar with—this must feel like an exceptional situation, one of those rare moments in which big principles are at stake, and in which you therefore have no choice but to subject a controversial appointment to careful scrutiny, and to exercise your final authority with the eyes of the world upon you.

To cut to the chase, I think this is an extraordinarily dangerous way of thinking about the present situation; I think you have at least one option more than this picture suggests; and I think that the best course of action, both for principled and for pragmatic reasons, is for you not only to approve Professor Salaita’s appointment if you have (or can create) any opportunity to do so, but to treat it as a routine case, giving it no more and no less scrutiny than you would give to any other faculty appointment sent to you by the administration for your final approval.

This is the right decision for reasons of principle, not least because it affirms that judgments about the qualifications of scholars and teachers under consideration for appointment to the faculty are best made by the faculty, drawing on their own expertise and experience, and informed by the assessments of their colleagues at other institutions. And it is the right decision for pragmatic reasons, because it is the only decision that stands a chance of ending the controversy….

I have said nothing about the substance of Steven Salaita’s controversial tweets, about his scholarship, his teaching record, or anything else. I urge you to do much the same thing: to approve his appointment routinely, without comment on its merits, and without getting embroiled in the details of his case. This may seem like an abdication of your power and your responsibility in an emergency situation. But you also have the power to declare that this is not the emergency it appears to be…

So that’s your task for the night: write the Board of Trustees. Though Patchen went long (for good reason, as you can see), I, like Brian Leiter, recommend short.

Here are the email of all the trustees; I recommend emailing them individually if you can.

Christopher G. Kennedy, Chair, University of Illinois Board of Trustees: chris@northbankandwells.com

Robert A. Easter, President: reaster@uillinois.edu

Hannah Cave, Trustee: hcave2@illinois.edu

Ricardo Estrada, Trustee: estradar@metrofamily.org

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Trustee: patrick.fitzgerald@skadden.com

Lucas N. Frye, Trustee: lnfrye2@illinois.edu

Karen Hasara, Trustee: hasgot28@aol.com

Patricia Brown Holmes, Trustee: pholmes@schiffhardin.com

Timothy N. Koritz, Trustee: timothy.koritz@gmail.com or tkoritz@gmail.com

Danielle M. Leibowitz, Trustee: dleibo2@uic.edu

Edward L. McMillan, Trustee: mcmillaned@sbcglobal.net or mcmillaned@msn.com

James D. Montgomery, Trustee: james@jdmlaw.com

Pamela B. Strobel, Trustee: pbstrobel@comcast.net

Thomas R. Bearrows, University Counsel: bearrows@uillinois.edu

Susan M. Kies, Secretary of the Board of Trustees and the University: kies@uillinois.edu

Lester H. McKeever, Jr., Treasurer, Board of Trustees: lmckeever@wpmck.com

Update (11:30 pm)

I meant to post this but forgot. The graduate student boycott is going like gang-busters. They’ve already got over 400 signatures, which brings our overall number way above 4000. So more than 4000 scholars are now boycotting UIUC. If you’re a grad student and want to join the boycott, go here.

There’s also a statement being organized by Jewish students, faculty, and staff at UIUC, which some of you may be eligible to sign.

We, Jewish students, faculty, staff, alumni, and parents of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, are writing to object in the strongest possible terms to the firing of Professor Steven Salaita. As Jewish members of this campus community, we insist that you do not speak for us in your unjust actions. In no way do Professor Salaita’s words, tweets, or presence on campus make us feel unsafe, disrespected, or threatened, as your public letter indicated.

…

…By conflating pointed and justified critique of the Israeli state with anti-Semitism, your administration is effectively disregarding a large and growing number of Jewish perspectives that oppose Israeli military occupation, settler expansion, and the assault on Palestine….

…

It is unfortunate that Professor Salaita’s critique, anger, dissent, and very existence on this campus have made some, donors or otherwise, within the UIUC community uncomfortable. However, there is nothing comfortable (or civil, for that matter) about Israeli war or occupation. While you pontificated over whether or not some comments made on social media were anti-Semitic, the U.S. sponsored Israeli military systematically murdered thousands of Palestinians. Now our campus has been denied an invaluable scholarly voice to help lead this community in a conversation about why as well as how to stop this from ever happening again.

The firing of Professor Salaita is the Israeli attack on Palestine coming to our campus….