In the Land of Lincoln cultural controversy and political corruption are usually confined to Chicago and Springfield, the state capital. After all, this is the state that gave us Hizzoner Richard J. Daley and which has sent four of its past chief executives to prison. Natives have been known to joke that their governors make their license plates, and some even proudly wear T-shirts saying so.
Due to the lingering power of blue-collar unions and the massive weight of Democratic Chicago, the state has generally been spared the wing-nut madness that has swept so much of the rest of the country. This is the state, after all, that produced Barack Obama and, in general, the Republican Party is mostly the party of big business, not right-wing cultural politics. That does not mean such politics do not exist, of course, but that its natural habitat — the cultural wasteland that is small town and rural America — is simply overwhelmed by the state’s urban liberals.
This makes the recent kerfuffle over the effective firing of a professor of American Indian studies at the flagship University of Illinois campus in downstate Champaign-Urbana all the more puzzling. What usually goes on there is grist for griping about the terrible sports teams fielded by the university or admiration for its world-class engineering and computer science programs — the fictional HAL 9000 of “2001: A Space Odyssey” fame was born there. If political or cultural controversy ever does hit the campus, it is usually over the university’s former, affably racist Chief Illiniwek mascot, who was officially done away with — after some grumbling from older donors — in 2007.
For those not aware of the issue, a quick recap: Over the summer a tenured new hire at the university by the name of Steven G. Salaita was stripped of his position by the University’s Chancellor Phyllis Wise after the Palestinian-American professor made comments on social media that criticized Israel’s campaign against Gaza. Salaita has also written on Zionism and the Israel-Palestine conflict as a scholar of imperialism and colonialism — issues Native Americans have been known to suffer — and as the controversy deepened after the initial shock of the nearly unprecedented reversal of a faculty decision played out, it, too, came under attack. As it stands now, the Board of Trustees on Thursday confirmed the decision in an 8-1 vote, leaving the only avenue forward for Salaita a legal one.
Lifted out of obscurity
For those who vehemently disagree with Salaita, the rescinding of his appointment as a fairly uninfluential member of an unremarkable department at a big state university in downstate Illinois is embarrassing for a number of reasons. First, academia already has a well-known tendency toward the cultural and economic left, and the firing of one professor
from one position will hardly do little to change that. Indeed, if the point was to show how terrible the consequences would be for breaking taboos on certain subjects, then the likelihood is that not only will the professor get off with a financial payoff for the dismissal via legal action, but he will get much positive publicity as result.
Salaita is now a celebrity thanks to U of I’s Chancellor and Board, and both he and his work and criticism of Israel will be far more widely known and trumpeted than might otherwise have been the case. They’ve lifted him out of obscurity and made a martyr out of the professor, who will now most likely be able to capitalize on his dismissal. What book marketer, after all, could turn down a proposal by a controversial figure? What talk show host could pass up the chance to score ratings by having the firebrand on the air? What university, except U of I, of course, could miss the opportunity to have a controversial figure on staff? Inevitably, as all crushers of dissent eventually find out, attempts to clamp down on speech and impolitic attitudes usually backfire horrifically and to great embarrassment — and U of I’s ham-fisted efforts here will probably do exactly that.
The Chancellor and the Board most likely know and understand this — they aren’t stupid, after all, and they must deal with awkward scholars all the time — which, in turn, raises the question as to why they would do such a foolish thing to begin with.
Follow the money
As with all things, it is best to follow the money in this case, and here is where we find the usual suspects. Unsurprisingly, it turns out it was not so much the staid administrative bureaucracy at U of I that had a problem with the professor, it was actually the university’s big money donors. Specifically, rich donors who were quick to tar Salaita with charges of anti-Semitism — standard operating procedure for the Israel lobby.
Documents acquired by Insider Higher Ed show that Chancellor Wise “was lobbied on the decision not only by pro-Israel students, parents and alumni, but also by the fund-raising arm of the university.” You read that right: The folks responsible for soliciting the vast amount of private cash that actually keeps the whole expensive operation going were worried that the controversial professor would stop the flow of money into U of I’s coffers. What’s more, the university received a number of emails and letters about Salaita — far more than could be expected for the simple hiring of university professor no one had ever heard of — and all citing the same things and all looking terribly similar, hallmarks of an organized campaign.
Furthermore, at least one of the emails the chancellor received was from an alleged major donor who said the money would stop if Salaita were hired. It stated, “Having been a multiple 6 figure donor to Illinois over the years I know our support is ending as we vehemently disagree with the approach this individual espouses. This is doubly unfortunate for the school as we have been blessed in our careers and have accumulated quite a balance sheet over my 35 year career,” reports Inside Higher Ed. There is, to say the least, a huge amount of pro-Israel, establishment money on the line for U of I in this case.
The overt use of raw power
This, in turn, raises the second aspect of why getting rid of Salaita was such a tremendously bad move for those who disagree with him — and this is actually a much more interesting thing to consider. The overt, clumsy use of raw power to manipulate officialdom in such a way is usually something that isn’t done simply because it doesn’t have to be done. True power is having toadies both in and out of officialdom do things for you without you ever actually having to articulate what you want them to do. When that is the case, expectations are met with a wink and a nod, and the exercise of power is never actually mentioned, explicitly referenced, or ever actually observed. It all, so to speak, takes place behind the curtain.
In such a system things happen as if by magic, and if the pro-Israel lobby truly had that much power, then Salaita would have never been hired in the first place, let alone fired in such a clumsy, embarrassing way. But that’s not what happened, and much like how regimes on their last legs often resort to shooting people to remind everyone of who is in charge, overt financial intimidation like this is a surefire signal that the unquestioned command of the intellectual environment surrounding U.S. attitudes toward the Israel-Palestine conflict are slipping out of the hands of the pro-Israel lobby. After all, if you have to actually remind people that you are powerful, you aren’t actually that powerful.
The implication is that the lobby, long feared, is losing control of the narrative, and that, in fact, is increasingly the situation. Many young American Jews, for instance, find themselves only distantly identifying with Israel and do not share their parents’ overwhelming attachment to the idea that Zionism is an unalloyed good or that Israel is a weak state bullied and threatened by outsiders. Experience and exposure to the reality of the Israeli occupation and the knowledge passed on by people like Salaita demonstrate otherwise, and increasingly in the battle between good, old-fashioned liberal American values and exclusionary Zionism — which is really just another discredited form of religious and ethnic nationalism — American secular liberalism is winning out.
So, is the firing of this controversial, outspoken professor disappointing? Absolutely. Is it yet another example of a well-heeled, big-money special interest manipulating public institutions like a marionette? You bet. But — and this is important — that we see the manipulation so openly and crassly done with such little regard for appearances speaks volumes. It suggests the lobby, though not exactly toothless, is growing into more of a cardboard castle every day. What they did to Salaita is our system’s equivalent of shooting protesters in the streets, and we all know what usually comes after that — especially when it comes to matters related to the Middle East.