Anti-Israel Tweeter Steven Salaita Said to Lose Beirut Job

By Josefin Dolsten April 14, 2016

Steven Salaita was reportedly blocked from receiving a permanent position at the American University of Beirut, two years after his dismissal from the University of Illinois following controversy over anti-Israel comments he made on Twitter.

AUB president Fadlo Khuri was said to shut down a job search for a permanent position at the university after the search committee unanimously endorsed Salaita, according to .

Salaita started working at AUB in 2015, a year after the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign revoked his offer for tenure. Administrators acted after anti-Israel tweets that the scholar had written drew ire for including traditional anti-Semitic tropes.

Supporters of Salaita implied he was targeted for his pro-Palestinian views and urged the university to follow the search committee’s recommendation, in a petition posted online.

“With the absence of an investigation, and given Professor Salaita’s recent termination from a tenure-track position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for his pro-Palestinian political views, we fear that AUB is reproducing the trend of persecuting scholars who condemn the injustices committed in Palestine,” the petition read.

“This breach of academic freedom cannot be allowed at AUB, an institution that ‘encourages freedom of thought and expression and seeks to foster tolerance and respect for diversity and dialogue,’” it continued.

Khuri, meanwhile, called claims Salaita was dismissed due to his political views “wholly untrue” saying they were “a malicious distortion of the facts involved in this case,” according to an email obtained by Inside Higher Ed.

The university president named complaints from faculty members regarding “conflicts of interest and misconduct” in the search process as the reason behind the decision.

“Violations included the presence of visiting faculty with selection and voting rights on the search committee, as well as the presence of lower-ranked faculty members voting for a higher-ranked position,” Khuri said. “Additionally, there was a conflict implied by the current incumbent chairing a committee to find their own successor.”

Salaita did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

Josefin Dolsten is a New York-based writer who has reported for the Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Times of Israel and other Jewish publications. She currently works as an account director at Fenton Communications, supporting organizations that work to advance racial justice, LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive rights and more. Dolsten earned her B.A. in government from Cornell University and her M.A. in comparative religion and Jewish studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO