Dive Brief:
- The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s last-minute revocation of its job offer to Steven G. Salaita has faculty across academia with no choice but to be more cautious about big moves.
- With official policy at UIUC still claiming that offers of employment may be subject to board of trustees approval, Colorado State history professor Jonathan Rees writes for Vitae that the threat of micromanagement from the top will prompt those with offers to wait longer before telling their home institutions about their exit, leaving less time for sometimes-cross-country moves.
- While the UIUC policy is standard, the university’s actions have provided precedent for other institutions to stop thinking of such a governance clause as a rubber-stamp, though UIUC did settle with Salaita rather than argue its case.
Dive Insight:
Shared governance is important. If trustees are hesitant to remove their claim to a role in the hiring of individual faculty members, which Rees argues they have no business doing, colleges and universities will be compelled to speed up the offer process to provide certainty in a respectable timeframe. It is possible that concerns over the Salaita case are limited to the University of Illinois. The institution is still facing censure from the American Association of University Professors and somewhat of an academic boycott. Other higher education institutions might consider their own policies in the wake of the scandal, however. It might be time for an edit.