Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Chancellor Phyllis Wise has issued a blog post titled " The principles on which we stand " to UIUC colleagues defending her decision to not recommend Professor Steven Salaita for further action to the Board of Trustees concerning his appointment as Associate Professor.  The post responds to the widespread criticism of the violation of academic freedom by the UIUC decision voiced internally by Illinois academics as well as externally by academics globally . The message articulates the resolve of the University leadership to stand by the decision, noting the commitment of the University to the twin principles of academic freedom and civility, observing that the University has a vital role to play in encouraging debate and in doing so in civil and respectful ways. In this piece, I will draw upon the notion of "communicative inversion" that I have presented elsewhere to argue that (a) the way in which Chancellor Wise went about making/communicating the decision to no...

In 2012, based on a promotion and tenure case in Singapore, a number of US academics, many of them who had served on the promotion and tenure review committee of a Singapore academic, had initiated a petition observing what they felt as violations of tenure and promotion processes. The petition was organized around the concept of academic freedom, powerfully suggesting the importance of upholding the principle of academic freedom in the context of Universities and the important role that can be played by faculty. A number of Singapore academics had initiated another petition requesting the University administration to reconsider their decision. Along the same time, a number of US academics had raised their voices on the case, suggesting that the decision-making processes reflected the lack of academic freedom in Singapore and had called for a boycott of Singapore universities. In response to these calls for the boycott of Singapore universities based on this one case, I had penne...

I shared in an earlier post my letter to the Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, requesting her to respect the communicative and academic freedom of Professor Steven Salaita. Professor Salaita, who had resigned from his job at Virginia Tech University to accept an offer at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, was "de-hired" from the University. This decision was apparently prompted by tweets posted  by Professor Sailata criticizing the Israeli attack on Gaza. The UIUC decision to de-hire Professor Salaita came in the backdrop of social media conversations that suggested that Profesor Salaita had crossed the line of civility in his criticism of Israel. So what exactly is this line of civility that defines the range of possible conversations on social media? What are the communicative expectations of interaction on social media? When writing on Facebook, how are we expected to voice our opinions, thoughts, and feelings? What are the exp...

Phyllis M. Wise Chancellor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Robert Warrior, Department of American Indian Studies (UIUC) August 7, 2014 Dear Chancellor Wise and Professor Warrior, I refer to the recent decision by the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign to “de-hire” Professor Steven Salaita, apparently in response to his social media posts on Gaza.   That social media foster spaces of social change, bypassing the dominant narratives circulated in the establishment media is an observation that has been solidified in US academic and public sphere celebrations of the Arab Spring. In a wide ranging collection of essays, communication experts studying social media point to the democratic possibilities fostered by social media such as Facebook and Twitter. In my own work on “Voices of Resistance” documenting grassroots-driven social change processes across the globe, I attend to the possibilities of transformative democratic politics gr...