Free Republic

The University of Illinois board of trustees on Thursday affirmed its refusal to hire a professor who posted a series of harsh anti-Israel tweets this summer. The professor says the act is part of an effort by “wealthy and well organized groups to attack pro-Palestinian students and faculty.” The case has drawn wide attention on college campuses because it raises the issue of the suppression of academic freedom around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—a hot-button topic at universities across the country. Steven Salaita, a Palestinian-American professor with an expertise in indigenous studies, accepted a tenure-track position last year to start working in...

URBANA — Described as a candidate with "outstanding" personal and professional qualities, James Holmes was accepted into the University of Illinois Neuroscience Program in 2011 and was offered financial support through a combination of fellowships, teaching and research assistantships, and tuition and fee waivers, The News-Gazette has learned. However, a few weeks after his visit to the Urbana campus in the spring of 2011 and one day after he was offered admission to the highly selective graduate program, Holmes declined to accept, without elaborating on the reasons or his plans for the future, according to university documents provided to The...

Documents show that unqualified student would have been allowed to transfer ### University of Illinois College of Medicine officials acknowledged Friday that an unqualified applicant pushed by Trustee Lawrence Eppley received an unfair advantage. An initial review of nearly 500 pages of documents released late Friday found no other examples of clout affecting medical school admissions decisions. *snip* Some of the records, however, were so heavily redacted that it was impossible to interpret them. But in the 2003 Eppley case, the student seeking to transfer to the Chicago-based medical school had "very poor grades" in the beginning of his college...

Board members backed applicants nearly 100 times in last 3 years ### In September 2006, the dean of the University of Illinois' law school e-mailed a colleague in admissions to say that a U. of I. trustee had "just called me about getting his [relative] into law school here next year." *snip* "Needless to say, this one takes velvet gloves," Hurd wrote, public records show. Schmidt's relative was admitted. *snip* Yet several of the trustees charged with fixing the system were among its most frequent users. Newly obtained records reveal nearly 100 instances where trustees backed applicants in the last...