As more and more information on the firing of Professor Steven Salaita appears, including the letter that was sent to him, it becomes apparent that the language of civility and open dialogue was used precisely to perform violence and to foreclose opportunities for dialogue and debate. In a classic exemplar of communicative inversion, Chancellor Wise, the Board of Trustees of UIUC, and the donors who ran a backdoor campaign to pressure the Chancellor to fire Professor Salaita participated in uncivil behavior. Politeness, defined as a normative principle of speech, and as integral to codes of civility, has been constructed as the reason for the decision to fire Professor Salaita, based on the implicit argument that impolite speech silences opportunities for dialogue. Civility then, and this is emphasized in the blog post by Chancellor Wise explaining the UIUC decision, closes off discursive spaces and discursive opportunities. When Chancellor Wise states " As chancellor, it i
This blog offers Mohan Dutta's reflections on the theoretical framework of the culture-centered approach, examining the interplays among Structure, Culture, and Agency in shaping marginalisation and the ways in which communities at the margins challenge structures. Writings on the blog are continually being revised to reflect the organic analysis of structure and agency.