SHOCKINGLY, IT TURNS OUT TO STINK: Someone actually read Steven Salaita’s scholarship.

University of Illinois’s behavior in this matter seems rather sketchy. But as with Ward Churchill, the scandal is two-fold, and begins with the scandal of his being offered a job in the Native American Studies Department in the first place. Instead of expressing concerns about civility, which I think is at best a poor justification for not rubber-stamping a tenured lateral offer, perhaps the Illinois administration should have, as a commenter on a previous thread suggests, “called the faculty hiring committee to the mat to justify the appointment, demanding that they explain in detail precisely why Salaita was not barely qualified but the best qualified candidate for the position, address concerns about possible classroom bias in the light of his extracurricular rants, and potentially require an extended probationary period before granting him tenure.

Yeah, but if you started requiring quality scholarship in grievance-studies departments, that would threaten the whole feedlot.