Kram­pus is a horned devil who, in Alpine tra­di­tion, drags off naughty chil­dren around Christ­mas time.¹

It’s a long way from the German-speaking Alps to cen­tral Illi­nois, and from late Decem­ber to late July … but ’round about late last July in cen­tral Illi­nois some “Salaita Kram­pus” seem­ingly hoisted the lit­tle ‘babes o’ admin­is­tra­tors at the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois Urbana-Champaign (“UIUC”) onto his/her/its broom and flew off with them to “let’s un-hire Steven Salaita” land.

Who?  Well, as I’ve said before:

1. The emails obtained by FOIA from UIUC show that many Jews wrote in to state their opposition/concern about Salaita’s join­ing UIUC;
2. Some of those writ­ers were Jew­ish donors who raised Salaita’s hir­ing as a rea­son to stop con­tribut­ing to UIUC;
3. There­fore, a good many peo­ple argue it was the pres­sure exerted by these Jew­ish donors that caused UIUC’s Wise to un-hire/not-bring-aboard Salaita.

 

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On the other hand, the UIUC Dona­tions peo­ple were also involved from very early on, and you have to won­der how much pres­sure they brought to bear on the decision-making process.

Peo­ple have of course already noted the involve­ment of UIUC dona­tions admin­is­tra­tors, but there’s pre­cious lit­tle evi­dence to sup­port a strong con­clu­sion one way or another — a fact due in no small part to the appar­ently irre­sistible urge for UIUC to redact any­thing and every­thing that they’re FOIAed to produce.

 

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In this post I’m delv­ing down into the pos­si­bil­ity of the Salaita Kram­pus as the UIUC Dona­tions peo­ple, and not the Jew­ish donors.

And, I’m acti­vat­ing the DDoS-FOIA sig­nal, because there are FOIA fil­ings that could be done that would really help resolve this question.

 

1. The Jew­ish donor Steve Miller, who emailed Wise and also cced the UIUC Dona­tions Machine.

The most-argued-about Jew­ish donor is Steven Miller, whose iden­tity we know from incon­sis­tent redac­tions by the UIUC-FOIA office.  Miller’s donated prob­a­bly $750,000 to UIUC over the years, and, although he never raised the issue of his dona­tions when he emailed UIUC’s Chan­cel­lor Phyl­lis Wise at 4:31 pm on July 23, that sub­text must have been pretty clear from the fact that he cced a num­ber of peo­ple he likely met with dur­ing the process of deal­ing with UIUC’s dona­tions machine.

Specif­i­cally, Miller cced:

• Travis Smith, “Senior Direc­tor of Advance­ment, Smith’s pri­mary duty is to pro­mote fundrais­ing among the cam­pus’ 125,000 Chicagoland alumni;“²
• Tina Howard, Assis­tant Dean of Devel­op­ment at the UIUC Col­lege of Busi­ness;³
• Lawrence DeBrock, Dean of the UIUC Col­lege of Busi­ness;⁴ and,
• Dan Peter­son, Vice Chan­cel­lor for Insti­tu­tional Advance­ment at UIUC, and VP of the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois Foun­da­tion.⁵

Here’s a copy of that first email:⁶

 

 

2. An hour-and-a-half later, the UIUC Dona­tions Machine emails Wise to tell her to do [REDACTED].

Only about 90 min­utes after Miller sent his email (and after quit­ting time!), the UIUC dona­tion machine in the form of one of the cced peo­ple — Travis Smith – emailed Chan­cel­lor Wise to tell her that he — along with Dan Peter­son and Peterson’s coworker Molly Tracy (Asso­ciate Vice Chan­cel­lor for Insti­tu­tional Advancement, Associate Vice Pres­i­dent, UIF)⁷ — have dis­cussed Miller’s email, and believe that Wise needs to … [REDACTED]:⁸

 

 

I assume no one’s appealed this redac­tion, which I imag­ine UIUC-FOIA jus­ti­fied under the “pre­de­ci­sional dis­cus­sions” exemp­tion allowed under Illi­nois FOIA law.  So we’ll never know just what Dan, Molly and Travis told Phyllis.

What we do know is  that the dis­cus­sion Dan, Molly and Travis had must have been quite ad hoc, given that Miller’s email came in at 4:31 pm and their response came out at 6:11 pm.  You’d almost think they were … what’s that word, “scrambling.”

 

3. And the next day, Wise and the Trustees decide Salaita’s out/not-in.

In keep­ing with that scram­bling on July 23, the next day (July 24) Phyl­lis had a con­ver­sa­tion with the Board of Trustees, one that didn’t go well for Steven Salaita.  So to quote from the Com­mit­tee on Aca­d­e­mic Free­dom and Tenure (CAFT) “Report on Steven Salaita Case,” pages 6–7:⁹

 

 

4. So who’s the Salaita Kram­pus: 1) Steven Miller & the Jew­ish Donors; or, 2) the UIUC Dona­tions Machine?

I real­ize that causality’s a slip­pery thing, but clearly you can’t point the fin­ger at pres­sure by Jew­ish donors with­out won­der­ing how much pres­sure also came from UIUC Dona­tions about Salaita.  There was Jewish-donor pres­sure, yes, but how much was it that pres­sure at work, ver­sus the pres­sure that we can guess came from what Dan, Molly and Travis scram­bled to tell Phyllis?

Call it the “the­ory of the alter­nate Salaita Kram­puses.”  Either the Jew­ish donors swept Chan­cel­lor Wise and the Trustees away, or UIUC’s Dona­tions Machine was responsible.

 

5. How to iden­tify the Salaita Kram­pus — acti­vat­ing the DDoS-FOIA network.

A rel­a­tively straight­for­ward path for­ward would be to get UIUC to pro­vide an un-redacted copy of that email to Phyl­lis from Dan, Molly and Travis.

Well, good luck with that.

An excel­lent alter­na­tive would be to file FOIA with UIUC to obtain copies of all con­ver­sa­tions between Wise/the Trustees and UIUC Dona­tions, or even more simply:

1. All emails from Dan Peter­son a) regard­ing Steven Salaita or b) regard­ing let­ters from the pub­lic or alums regard­ing Steven Salaita;
2. As above, but for Travis Smith;
3. As above, but for Tina Howard;
4. etc.

Per­haps someone’s already sought this infor­ma­tion; if so, I haven’t seen any indi­ca­tions of this.

So, this post will serve as a kin­dling of the DDoS-FOIA sig­nal to anyone/everyone out there inter­ested in fil­ing such FOIAs.

As always, my email is [email protected]

 

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Mar­quee image avail­able at Greet­ings from Krampus.

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1. See Wikipedia on Kram­pus. [↩]
2. See UIUC_Travis_Smith. [↩]
3. See UIUC Tina Howard. [↩]
4. See UIUC Lawrence DeBrock. [↩]
5. See UIUC Dan Peter­son. [↩]
6. See page 292 of the c. 15mb con­sol­i­dated FOIA result set NGUYEN_443. [↩]
7. See UIUC Giv­ing. [↩]
8. See page 39 of the c. 15mb con­sol­i­dated FOIA result set NGUYEN_443. [↩]
9. Avail­able at 250857474-CAFT-Report-on-Steven-Salaita-Case.  Note that I’ve joined the rel­e­vant text sec­tions together, and omit­ted a foot­note in doing so. [↩]