Steven Salaita's New Circumstances

I have an oped in the Chicago Tribune on Steven Salaita's unfair exile from academia and his new circumstances as a school bus driver. It covers pretty much the same ground as my earlier (and much longer) blog post. Here is the gist.

As one of Salaita’s most severe critics, I have pointed out that his vilification of Israel tended to cross the line into bigotry. But the Israel-Palestine struggle has driven numerous others, of all persuasions, to deplorable rhetoric, and Salaita’s tweeted outbursts were no worse than those of many still-employed professors. He deserved censure, not expulsion.

Even so, Salaita has applied a scholar’s insights to the safe transport of schoolkids, which suggests that he has found some peace:

“Every now and again while my family sleeps and I’m on the back porch enjoying a final cigarette I think about my days as a star speaker, memories that allow me to better appreciate the quiet of my surroundings, although in pronounced moments of loneliness I miss the company of the audience, the pleasure of applause and laughter and the cathartic thrill of raging against injustice, but the feeling is evanescent, for the sobering immediacy of cold air on my fingertips and pressure in my thorax reminds me of both material and psychological limitations that render me unfit for prominence, being that I’ve become the kind of person content with the humdrum thrill of stopping traffic.”

The entire piece is here.

Comments

[anon]

In all seriousness, of course redemption is possible. What is your evidence of that? That he only mentioned the subjects of his pronounced venom a couple of times, and mildly?

What about a complete apology? A Malcolm-like discussion of the discovery that his bigotry was wrong?

Have you seen that?

YOu have an argument about the academic freedom issue (not really, but, for the sake of discussion, let's pretend that you do). But the logic of the quotation from the essay, and references to his new circumstances does nothing to advance that argument. It is just, well, demagogic: appealing to emotions about his new circumstances to win the debate on the academic freedom issue.