The Senate Executive Committee voted to create a task force/ad hoc committee to review aspects of the campus’s system for appointing tenured faculty.
Sen. Joyce Tolliver, a professor of Spanish, suggested forming the task force/ad hoc committee with a resolution submitted and approved at the SEC’s Aug. 25 meeting.
She said the group, which will include tenured faculty members and representatives from the administration, should consider whether changes are needed in campus written policies to cover the rare instance when a tenure-track faculty member hire is supported by a department or college but rejected by the chancellor or provost.
She said the university statutes currently grant power only to the chancellor and provost to recommend faculty hires, with the final decision resting with the board of trustees.
Tolliver’s resolution asks the task force/ad hoc committee to consider whether additional campus-level consultation is needed when a proposal for a new hire is rejected by the chancellor and provost, but not forwarded to the board.
“I don’t know where it will lead,” she said of the resolution. “There could be a proposed revision of the statutes based on the task force’s work, but it may lead to no change at all considering this is such a rare situation.”
Though the case was not mentioned specifically, the resolution is in response to the recent ruling over Steven Salaita, who had been selected by the American Indian Studies Program to join the faculty starting this fall.
After controversial online comments attributed to Salaita were revealed in media accounts, Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise informed him she would not be forwarding the department’s recommendation to the board.
“A pre-eminent university must always be a home for difficult discussions and for the teaching of diverse ideas,” Wise said in a statement sent to campus. “The decision regarding professor Salaita was not influenced in any way by his positions on the conflict in the Middle East nor his criticism of Israel. … What we cannot and will not tolerate at the University of Illinois are personal and disrespectful words or actions that demean and abuse either viewpoints themselves or those who express them.”
In addition to Wise, U. of I. President Bob Easter and Christopher G. Kennedy, board chair, have made public statements defending the decision.
Mary Mallory, a professor of library science, was the lone dissenter of the resolution to form the special committee, saying she feels the proposal should be developed within the normal senate committee structure, rather than in an ad hoc task force. She accused SEC members of trying to squelch dissenters.
Tolliver said creating the special committee instead of using an already established senate committee would allow input from university human resources and legal representatives, and provide a detailed focus on the issue without taxing other committees. She said the special committee also would allow a more timely resolution of the issue.
The proposal of the task force, to be co-appointed by SEC chair Roy Campbell and Ilesanmi Adesida, the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, will be presented to the full senate for their comments.
