Move over Norman Finkelstein. Steven Salaita, the discredited professor who was offered a job to teach at the University of Illinois (an offer that was rescinded), has now given up the ghost and accepted a job at the American University of Lebanon.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/197689#.VZsQYPlViko
Salaita may have become the darling of the academic left and anti-Israel crowd, but he became a joke as he launched a lawsuit against the University of Illinois. The university stood firm having learned of Salaita’s disturbing messages on social media in the wake of the kidnapping of three Israeli teens who were later found murdered. Salaita expressed a wish thatall settlers would go missing. (The teens lived in one of those Israeli settlements that everybody complains about. When the settlers are occasionally murdered, the academic left sheds no tears.)
So now Salaita has followed in the footsteps of another academic joke, Finkelstein, who finally took a position teaching in Turkey since no American university would hire him after being sacked at DePaul. He was reduced to appearing as a side show attraction speaking at various universities trashing Israel on behalf of the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine. Since he had no position, he was advertised as an “Independent Scholar with a PhD from Princeton”. I suspect he got tired of being mocked and shown up for the fool he is when he spoke at places like UC Irvine. Possibly, Salaita and Finkelstein will run into each other in some event in the region-if they can find a place safe enough to speak.
In closing, I sincerely hope nobody will kidnap Salaita as often happens to Westerners in Beirut. If, God forbid, it happens, I would never follow his example and wish that all his ilk would go missing.
We don’t talk like that in civilized society.