A searchable index of publicly available materials regarding the Steven Salaita hiring controversy  is now available from the University of Illinois Archives.

The Steven Salaita Reference File and Index is comprised of preservation copies of documents, news stories, blog posts, social media traffic, and other materials, providing the most comprehensive source for material concerning the decision by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014 to rescind a job offer to Steven Salaita and the subsequent controversy and lawsuit regarding this decision.

This project was designed and launched in August 2014, with the goal of capturing in real time not only web-available news reports and institutional releases, but especially social media content from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like. Controversies create not only internal strife but a flood of reports, counter-reports, news stories, editorials, and blog posts not to mention social media postings.  Early on, the Archives realized that if we didn’t capture everything we could about the Salaita affair in real time, we would lose the ability to create an enduring, authoritative record of the controversy.

As of September 6, the resultant Salaita “clipping file” contains direct links to approximately 2,249 distinct documents from 653 sources in 14 separate categories, including news stories, responses to Freedom of Information Act requests, social media postings, videos, etc. The materials are intended for use in private research, teaching, and study. For all other uses, including but not limited to publication, broadcast, and distribution, users must obtain written permission in advance from the original author, creator, or copyright owner.

The Steven Salaita Reference File and Index can be found at https://archives.library.illinois.edu/social-media-archives/salaita-reference-index/.  This new collection is also described in our holdings database.