Failed Efforts to Hide Behind Bureaucratic Formalism
By 
The University of Illinois cannot disavow having contractual obligations to Steven G. Salaita, the controversial scholar whose job offer it rescinded last summer before he could begin teaching on the Urbana-Champaign campus, a federal court ruled on Thursday.
In denying the university’s bid to have Mr. Salaita’s lawsuit against it dismissed, Judge Harry D. Leinenweber of the U.S. District Court in Chicago soundly rejected the university’s argument that it had never entered into a binding contract with Mr. Salaita because its offer to employ him as a tenured professor remained subject to approval by the university’s Board of Trustees after classes started.
See Corey Robin for more. Key point here:
Judge Leinenweber’s decision appeared mindful of the broader ramifications of the university’s argument, saying that such thinking, if applied consistently, would “wreak havoc in this and other contexts” and, for example, would let colleges offer the same job to several people at once.
“If the court accepted the university’s argument, the entire American academic hiring process as it now operates would cease to exist, because no professor would resign a tenure position, move states, and start teaching at a new college based on an ‘offer’ that was absolutely meaningless until after the semester already started,” Judge Leinenweber’s ruling said.
Although university administrators had told Mr. Salaita his employment there would be “subject to” the board’s approval, their letter to him did not apply such conditional language to the job offer itself, suggesting that what was up in the air was not the existence of a contract but the university’s ability to follow through on its end, the judge held.
If the university truly regarded such job contracts as hinging on board approval, he said, it would have the board vote on them much earlier in the hiring process, before paying a prospective faculty member’s moving expenses and offering that professor an office and classes. “Simply put, the university cannot argue with a straight face that it engaged in all these actions in the absence of any obligation or agreement,” he said.