Steven Salaita

Steven Salaita (born 1975) is an American scholar, author and public speaker currently holding the Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut. He became the center of a controversy when University of Illinois withdrew its offer of employment as a professor of American Indian Studies after attention was drawn to his tweets on the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. The tweets were seen as criticism of the Israeli government by some, and as expressions of antisemitism by others.

As a result of his outspoken critique of the university's handling of his situation, Haaretz wrote that Salaita has established "celebrity status on the lecture circuit" for his talk "Silencing Dissent".

Salaita was born in Bluefield, West Virginia on September 15, 1975, to immigrant parents. His mother was born and raised in Nicaragua by Palestinian parents who originated in Beit Jala. He describes his own ethnic background as both Jordanian and Palestinian. An interviewer states that Salaita's father was from Madaba, Jordan. His maternal grandmother lost her home in Ayn Karim outside of Jerusalem in 1948.

Salaita received his B.A. in political science from Radford University in 1997 and his M.A. in English from Radford in 1999. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Oklahoma in Native American studies with a literature emphasis.

Following completion of his Ph.D., Salaita became an assistant professor of English at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he taught American and ethnic American literature until 2006. He was then hired as associate professor of English at Virginia Tech, and received tenure three years later. In addition to teaching English courses, Salaita wrote about themes of immigration, indigenous peoples, dislocation, race, ethnicity and multi-culturalism. Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times refers to him as a "respected scholar in American Indian studies and Israeli-Arab relations."

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