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Education Desk
The Education Desk is our education blog focusing on key areas of news coverage important to the state and its improvement. Evidence of public policy performance and impact will be reported and analyzed. We encourage you to engage in commenting and discussing the coverage of education from pre-natal to Higher Ed.Dusty Rhodes curates this blog that will provide follow-up to full-length stories, links to other reports of interest, statistics, and conversations with you about the issues and stories.About - Additional Education Coverage00000179-2419-d250-a579-e41d385d0000

Springfield Faculty Takes Stand on Academic Freedom

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The University of Illinois Springfield Campus Senate today/Friday passed a measure aimed at protecting academic freedom. It's in response to the U of I's controversial decision to withdraw a professor's job offer. 
 
 
The vote came after more than an hour of debate, much of it revolving around "civility." That was the term used by Phyllis Wise, chancellor of the university’s Urbana campus, in a mass email sent to the university community in an attempt to justify putting a halt to the hiring of Steven Salaita. 
 
 Salaita had been in line for a tenured position at that campus until controversy arose over his passionate and sometimes profane tweets about the conflict in the Middle East. The resolution objects to the addition of civility as a requirement for being hired. 
 
 
James Ermatinger, the administration representative on the senate, argued that what a person says is fair game.
 
 
"The way this reads is that basically ... we can hire somebody who is a racist, a sexist," Ermatinger said.
 
 
But theater professor Eric Thibodeaux-Thompson said it won't mean an acceptance of what some view as "hate speech." 
 
 
"I don't think this document is saying 'You now have a license to say bad things to people.' I think what it says instead is that the issue of civility should not now be introduced as an additional criterion in the hiring process," Thibodeaux-Thompson said.
 
 
The resolution at the Springfield campus also includes language that urges   faculty be consulted before a job offer is rescinded.
 
 
 

After a long career in newspapers (Dallas Observer, The Dallas Morning News, Anchorage Daily News, Illinois Times), Dusty returned to school to get a master's degree in multimedia journalism. She began work as Education Desk reporter at NPR Illinois in September 2014.
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