CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A professor who lost a University of Illinois job offer over his profane, anti-Israel Twitter messages sued several university officials on Thursday, saying they denied his right to free speech and that the school should rehire him.
Steven Salaita argues in the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, that he also is being deprived of the academic freedom that would be guaranteed under the tenured position he accepted from the school.
The 39-year-old left a job at Virginia Tech University for the position even though the University of Illinois’s Board of Trustees had not yet approved his appointment. Such approval is required but often doesn’t happen until after a professor starts teaching.
The lawsuit, which also seeks unspecified monetary damages, was filed against several university trustees who voted against rehiring Salaita after Phyllis Wise, chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus, rescinded the job offer.
Wise and University President Robert Easter also are named as defendants, as are “John Doe” donors. Salaita’s attorneys say donors they have yet to identify influenced the decision, which school officials have denied.
“No one — not even the university administration — disputes the fact that it acted based on Professor Salaita’s speech,” the lawsuit states, accusing the defendants of conspiring to keep him from working at the university and, in the process, damaging his reputation as an academic.
“The firing has left my academic career, the primary mechanism for supporting my family, in shambles,” Salaita said Thursday. “Without an income source, my wife, young son and I have been forced to move in with my parents and now struggle to make ends meet.”
