Steven Salaita |
Steven Salaita, who recently announced his departure from the American University of Beirut (AUB), and academe in general, with no intent “to slosh around in self-pity” before blaming “Zionists” for his travails, is now whining that he was “ousted” due to “Zionist pressure.” Salaita denies that he’s exhibiting “an unjustified sense of self-importance,” while launching into a conspiratorial rant on the alleged omnipotence of “pro-Israel groups,” even in the “Arab World.” So powerful are “the Zionists,” whom he thought he could escape with “a gig in Lebanon,” that they “traversed a supposedly ironclad border” to get Salaita fired.
The fact that AUB hired Salaita in 2015 to hold the Edward Said Chair of American Studies hardly bespeaks a Zionist plot. Moreover, it is Salaita’s shoddy, politicized scholarship, not to mention his penchant for deranged, profanity-laden, anti-Semitic tweets, that hobble his career (before AUB, it was a rescinded position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).
With all the free time on his hands, perhaps Salaita will start looking in the mirror.
