On Friday, the Campus Senate of the University of Illinois at Springfield will take up a strongly-worded resolution written in the aftermath of the Board of Trustees' controversial dismissal of Steven Salaita. He's the professor whose job offer at the university's main campus was rescinded after his critical and sometimes profane tweets about the Israeli conflict with Gaza.
University of Illinois at Springfield Senate chair Jorge Villegas said the resolution is in response to the Board's position that tenure comes with a requirement of civility.
“That is probably one of the most important elements of our academic enterprise, the freedom to do our academic research that we want to do and we should be free to say it the way that we want to say it.”
The resolution opposes any outside interference in hiring decisions and also says that faculty should be consulted before a job offer is retracted.