Who is Steven Salaita?
The News-Gazette has a long profile of Steven Salaita. Though many of us have argued this case on the grounds of academic freedom and free speech, it’s also important to point out just how cartoonish is the portrait Salaita’s critics have drawn of him, that the substance of the man is nothing like the surface strokes his critics have painted. The victims of witch hunts like this one don’t need to be perfect and they don’t need to be angels in order for us to come to their defense. But when it comes to his students, Salaita does seem to go the extra mile, and it’s worth mentioning that.
The article contains many other details I didn’t know about: not only is Salaita Palestinian on his mother’s side, but his grandparents were forced out of Israel. His doctorate is in Native American Studies. He is at the forefront of a move to internationalize all aspects of American Studies. While other scholars in American Studies and American History do this without drawing any scrutiny or criticism (indeed, they are encouraged to do so), Saliata has made the quite logical inference that if we’re going to internationalize American Studies, perhaps we should also internationalize our analysis of American indigenous studies. When it comes to Israel/Palestine, however, logic can get you into trouble.
Here are just some highlights; read the whole piece yourself. And then write the trustees.
Among the hundreds of emails sent to the University of Illinois in response to the un-hiring of Steven Salaita was one from a former student at Virginia Tech University.
The student recounted the terror that followed the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech.
Salaita was the one professor who was able to keep her on campus and in school, helping her find a way to turn a terrible experience into something she could face, said UI Professor Robert Warrior, director of the American Indian Studies Program.
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According to friends and information posted by Salaita online, he was born in Bluefield, W.Va., the son of a Jordanian father and Palestinian mother who had both emigrated to the United States (his mother via Nicaragua). His mother’s parents were forced out of what is now Israel…
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Salaita earned his undergraduate degree in political science from Radford University in Virginia, and then a master’s in English, before completing his doctorate in Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma in 2003. It was there he met Warrior. Salaita’s primary focus was Native American literature but he also studied Palestinian and Arab-American literature.
He then taught American and ethnic American literature at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater until 2006, when he was hired by Virginia Tech’s English Department. He earned tenure three years later, teaching English and writing about Arab-Americans, Indigenous peoples, race and ethnicity, and literature.
In an item for the English Department newsletter in 2006, Prof. Virginia Fowler said Salaita’s writing reflected his parents’ immigrant experience, with “themes of immigration, American-ness, dislocation, cultural multiplicity, xenophobia and racialization.”
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Critics have questioned why an academic who has written so much on Israel and Arab American literature would be hired by American Indian Studies.
Kauanui and others said those critics are missing a huge aspect of his work. Salaita is a comparative scholar, Kauanui said, and the field itself is changing.
American Indian Studies wants to broaden its framework, comparing the Native American experience to that of other indigenous people around the globe, Kauanui said, The UI program, in fact, has hired scholars who focus on Native issues in Guam and the Pacific islands, she said.
Salaita has done research on Native North America, she said, and his training is in Native American studies. His early work focused on comparing colonialism by settlers in North America to those in Israel and the occupied territories. His 2006 book “The Holy Land in Transit: Colonialism and the Quest of Canaan,” based on his doctoral dissertation, examines how settlers in the Holy Land and the Americas used a “theological narrative to justify their occupation of foreign lands,” she said. “It’s a path-breaking book.”
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A Virginia Tech English student last year called him “super friendly, very engaging, hilarious.”
“You feel less like you’re in a class and more like you’re at a book club and having enjoyable, intelligent literary discussion without having to worry about anyone disagreeing with your views or grading you on what you say,” the student wrote.
In 2011, a Virginia Tech student who took his “Renaissance Revenge Tragedy” class said Salaita is “not afraid to argue his views but he’ll also never make you feel unwelcome for giving your own. His tangents are amazing, and you’ll find yourself with so many new ways of looking at the world you might just explode. Plus … it was easy as hell.”
I have little doubt that Salaita’s critics will seize upon that last line as proof positive that he should have been dehired by the University of Illinois. It’s just one more sign of their desperation. They’ve gone from apoplexy over his tweets to fretting over his Amazon reviews. Now it’ll be that he’s an easy grader. Well, if being an easy grader is enough to get you fired from academe, there’s an Ivy League university I’d like to introduce you to. Perhaps you should start there first.
Please write your emails to the Board of Trustees. Here again are their addresses.
Christopher G. Kennedy, Chair, University of Illinois Board of Trustees: chris@northbankandwells.com
Robert A. Easter, President: reaster@uillinois.edu
Hannah Cave, Trustee: [the one we had doesn’t work, though a commenter claims this one is correct: hcave2@uis.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: 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