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Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Professor Salaita.


kant_get_in

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Is anyone thinking of not applying to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's program because of the recent controversy over professor Salaita (whether you're boycotting the school or you're worried about the school's academic climate or reputation)?

I'm not advocating action; I'm only curious whether any of you are considering taking action. 

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, here's an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education that does a better job of describing what's going on then I could (
http://chronicle.com/article/U-of-Illinois-Feels-Backlash/148471/) and here's a Crooked Timber post about the boycott by professors (http://crookedtimber.org/2014/08/22/2700-scholars-boycott-ui-trustees-to-meet-tomorrow-salaitas-teaching-evaluations-superb-philosopher-cancels-prestigious-lecture/). 

Let this be a general discussion thread about Salaita and the implications for UIUC. 

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I am not in this field but I am curious how philosophy students (well, all students) feel about boycotts in academia. I hope this is along the lines of the type of discussion you wish to have!

 

Last year, a boycott was discussed in my field as well. A brief summary: There was a very important meeting in the field about a NASA mission to be held at a NASA science center, hosted by NASA. However, there was also a directive to NASA that they are not to spend NASA funds hosting Chinese foreign nationals. Because of this, a graduate student (who was a Chinese national) working for a prominent American researcher was not allowed to attend the meeting. The prominent American researcher then chose to boycott the meeting to protest the unfair rules and several other prominent American researchers also joined the boycott. 

 

Some of these prominent researchers simply chose to boycott the event but a few encouraged their entire labs/groups to also boycott and also encouraged everyone else to boycott the event as well. This raised a dilemma, because the consequences of boycotting an important career event is very different for established, prominent researchers vs. young researchers that are new to the field. Some people thought that it's okay if a professor chooses to exclude themselves from the meeting but it would be unfair to expect their students (who might be meeting their future employers) to miss out on the opportunity as well. 
 

I think there is an analogous issue with boycotting this program as well. First, is it fair to expect new graduate students, who might have the best fit possible with one of the other profs at UIUC, to give up this chance because of this controversy that has nothing to do with them (and potentially nothing to do with the prof they want to work with)? Secondly, to all the profs that are cancelling seminars at UIUC: is it fair to deny the current students at UIUC the chance to benefit from the seminar because of a controversy that has nothing to do with them?

 

Personally, I think this is a very tough decision to make. I feel that as a young researcher just starting out in my career, academic boycotts would do more harm to the community than good. But I think it might really depend on each individual case. Anyone have other thoughts about the role of boycotts in academia?

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Is anyone thinking of not applying to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's program because of the recent controversy over professor Salaita (whether you're boycotting the school or you're worried about the school's academic climate or reputation)?

I'm not advocating action; I'm only curious whether any of you are considering taking action. 

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, here's an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education that does a better job of describing what's going on then I could (http://chronicle.com/article/U-of-Illinois-Feels-Backlash/148471/) and here's a Crooked Timber post about the boycott by professors (http://crookedtimber.org/2014/08/22/2700-scholars-boycott-ui-trustees-to-meet-tomorrow-salaitas-teaching-evaluations-superb-philosopher-cancels-prestigious-lecture/). 

Let this be a general discussion thread about Salaita and the implications for UIUC. 

 

I am considering pulling them off of my list and I have my fee for application waived there!  I'm more worried about the way the administration will treat departments that stand in support of Salaita.  They also have a somewhat questionable placement record of late.  

 

Also, Leiter has a bunch more about the situation on his blog.  http://leiterreports.typepad.com/  

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