Does The University Of Illinois Really Need Another Medical School

On August 6, the same day a federal judge refused to dismiss professor Steven Salaita’s high-profile lawsuit against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, chancellor Phyllis Wise abruptly resigned.

Her departure was nearly as bizarre as the dismissal over tweets about Israel she’d handed Salaita a year earlier.

Salaita’s case—which continues to inspire boycotts and protests—is working its way through the courts. His federal lawsuit cites violation of free speech rights, breach of contract, and destruction of evidence, and he’s suing in state court over FOIA violations. He’s taken a one-year teaching job in Lebanon, and has written a book, Uncivil Rites, about his travails at the U. of I. that’s due out next month. He’ll talk about it at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Student Services Building (1200 W. Harrison) on October 12 and at the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center on October 13.

That’s a good idea, the UIC faculty and medical school studies conceded, but it would work better within the structure of the existing College of Medicine. They pointed out that the U. of I. already has a model for physician-scientist education in its Medical Scholars Program, which produces MD/PhDs who train on the Urbana campus. They took issue with estimates of cost and economic impact (the latter pegged at $1.4 billion annually by 2035), and concluded that building on current relationships between the medical and engineering colleges by, for example, creating a bioengineering institute would be the most efficient way to achieve the same ends.

In another e-mail she made this strategic suggestion: “If pointing out the good things about the current structure compromises our ability to demonstrate the critical need to establish our own COM [college of medicine]…I am not for pointing out the positives too much.”

Most of the university’s buildings are also in Urbana, Otto adds, and they don’t pay taxes either: “The city, school system, and parks are really strapped, because such a high percentage of our property is not on the tax rolls.”