U. of Illinois Will Pay Salaita $600,000 to Settle Lawsuits

[Updated (11/12/2015, 12:49 p.m.) with news of the board’s approval and a statement from Mr. Salaita.]

A settlement between the University of Illinois and Steven G. Salaita will pay the professor, whose tenured-job offer at the Urbana-Champaign campus was revoked last year, $600,000 to drop two lawsuits. The University of Illinois Board of Trustees on Thursday approved the settlement, which also stipulates that the university pay Mr. Salaita’s lawyers $275,000.

The deal follows more than a year of controversy over Mr. Salaita’s scuttled appointment after his anti-Israel tweets drew scrutiny. Mr. Salaita later filed two lawsuits against the university, the most recent of which alleged that university leaders and unnamed donors had conspired to deny him the position. A federal judge ruled in August that the university had violated its contract with the professor.

As part of the settlement, Mr. Salaita also agreed to “neither seek nor accept employment at the university now or in the future.”

“The university believes that reaching a settlement with Dr. Salaita is the most reasonable option to fully and finally conclude all of the pending issues,” the university’s interim chancellor, Barbara Wilson, said in a written statement announcing the settlement. “Although the amount is significant, it is less than what we would spend if the case were to continue and proceed to trial over the next year.”

In a statement on his Facebook page, Mr. Salaita said he was “deeply grateful” for the support he’s received in the past year. “The activists, students, academics, and others who spoke up with petitions, demonstrations, and investigations proved that grass-roots organizing can make a difference,” he wrote.

For more, see this Chronicle article.