Nearly 40 of Virginia Tech’s faculty members have signed a letter protesting how the university has distanced itself from an associate professor of English whose public critique of patriotic slogans angered some political conservatives.
The associate professor, Steven G. Salaita, became the target of threats, racist emails, and demands for his firing after the website Salon last summer published his op-ed arguing that public appeals to “support our troops” serve to discourage legitimate criticism of the nation’s military actions while actually doing little to help military personnel or veterans.
Within days of the op-ed’s publication, in August, Lawrence G. Hincker, Virginia Tech’s associate vice president for university relations, began sending people who complained about Mr. Salaita a statement that defended the faculty member’s right to express his views but said those views “in no way represent an official university opinion.”
It is common for college officials to emphasize that faculty members speak for themselves, and not their institutions, in commenting on controversial subjects, but Mr. Hincker’s statement went a step further. It concluded, “While our assistant professor may have a megaphone on salon.com, his opinions not only do not reflect institutional position, we are confident they do not remotely reflect the collective opinion of the greater university community.”
In a letter published last week in the Collegiate Times, an independent student-run newspaper, the faculty members criticized the university’s statement as “wholly unsatisfactory” and “placing in doubt its commitment to academic freedom.”
The letter called on Mr. Hincker and Charles W. Steger, the university’s president, “to reaffirm Virginia Tech’s principles of free inquiry” and for Mr. Hincker “to clarify that his words and actions did not represent the psyches or opinions of the diverse population at Virginia Tech, but his opinion alone.”
Academic Freedom in Action
Mr. Hincker could not be reached for comment on Tuesday. Mark Owczarski, the university’s assistant vice president for news and information, said its administration had no response to the faculty members’ letter, which he called “a wonderful illustration” of academic freedom in action.
Benjamin E. Sax, an assistant professor of Judaic studies at Virginia Tech, said on Tuesday that he had helped enlist faculty members in signing the statement because “the university did not do a very good job of protecting Steve Salaita” and that he personally had found the university’s response to Mr. Salaita’s critics to be “unsettling.” He characterized Virginia Tech as “not a hospitable climate for difference.”
For his part, Mr. Salaita said he was disappointed with the university’s response. “I felt that they were at least inadvertently fanning the flames of anger,” he said.
Also stirring up outrage against his op-ed were denunciations of it in an editorial at examiner.com and on blogs such as Atlas Shrugs, which had previously promoted the theory that Seung-Hui Cho, the student responsible for the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, was an Islamic terrorist.
Mr. Salaita said he decided last month to take a new position next academic year, as an associate professor of American Indian studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He said his discussions with Illinois over the job began before the controversy over his Salon editorial, and he decided to take the new job simply because “it was just a better professional opportunity.”
Can anyone point to an American university or college that actually practices academic freedom? US institutions of “higher learning” are instruments of capitalist systemic indoctrination, training, and propaganda. Capitalism has triumphed (globalization), and students are but cogs of capitalism’s “educational” machines.
I live near Humboldt State University, which has a diverse student body and a progressive reputation. However, in a decade I have yet to detect any worthwhile academic courses or politics on this campus. It’s a glorified high school, and there are no professors at HSU who might need to have their academic freedom defended.
I was a student at UC-Berkeley, which I now refer to as “John Yoo and Benjamin Netanyahu U.” Capitalism now systemically, relentlessly affirms Helen Keller’s century-old declaration, “College is not the place to go for ideas.” Or for the academic freedom necessary to ideas.
Comment by Joe Barnwell — August 11, 2014 @ 5:50 pm
Much like Ward Churchill, Salaita has become too hot for academia to handle. He crossed the line between distanced, academic study with papers published in obscure journals into the arena of public political discourse. He is now a pariah, but I expect him to win a substantial settlement from the University of Illinois, which is more than willing to pay it to be rid of him. Hope he puts the money to good use, and learns to enjoy his exile from academia.
Comment by Richard Estes — August 11, 2014 @ 7:54 pm
In the immediate aftermath of 911 even Chomsky got a bunch of flak for merely suggesting that the attack was the culmination (blowback) of a half century of predatory foreign policy.
Man did that get a shitload of pundits all bunched up.
Comment by Karl Friedrich — August 12, 2014 @ 11:48 pm
reported that David Klinger, a University of Illinois professor, called the protesters in Ferguson “a bunch of thugs” on CNN today
if true, this is no doubt an acceptable discourse there
Comment by Richard Estes — August 14, 2014 @ 7:52 pm
Of course that’s “an acceptable discourse there”. CNN often adopts a Fox News line in its scramble for ratings. And there’s a grain of truth. Once you kill off all their positive role models and eliminate all the job prospects many Black youth are reduced to thugs as the only way to survive.
Foreign policy can only be an extension of domestic policy since the ruling class makes both.
The mercenary army that kicks in doors and slaughters Iraqis in their cities come home eventually and the typical jobs they land are on the police forces so the same methods ultimately wind up in places like Ferguson.
Comment by Karl Friedrich — August 15, 2014 @ 12:52 am
Re #4: There is no David Klinger in the University of Illinois (at Urbana) phone book, faculty staff, or student.
Comment by Jon Thaler — September 8, 2014 @ 2:17 am
#6 – Jon Thaler
Searching the UIC (Chicago campus) and the UIS (Springfield campus) did not find anyone by that name at either of those locations
either. It appears that per #4 CNN is following it typically loose ‘journalistic’ standards and reporting … fiction.
Comment by anon — September 8, 2014 @ 8:43 pm