Ally Owens, Jamie Shirley, Michael Marcin, Todd Gunzenhauser, Jenny Kerley

Why I was Fired

Authors Profile
Steven Salaita was a male professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign
He wrote this article to defend the reasoning of why he was fired
Made tweets and comments and there was an article made about him
representing his words to the university

Authors Claim and Reasons

Salaita was the one who was fired, so he has a first person point of view
Salaita believes there is something wrong with the system of universities
Salaita also believes the universities are focusing too much on administrators
instead of instructors
Salaita thinks higher education should be about treating the students as adults
and to be able to have intellectual conversations that form discussions and different
ways of thinking

Audience for the Article

Place of Publication: The Chronicle of Higher Education
The readers of this article are other instructors because it includes ways that
instructors could better teach critical thinking
Another reader of this article could include administrators because the article
includes how corrupt universities are
Teens and up because of the scholarly vocabulary
College students because of interest in higher education
Anyone following up who may have heard of his story about being fired for his
tweets

Genre and Conventions of the Article

The article is written as a first person story
It is written in paragraph form and provides examples of each argument the
author introduces
Provides specific quotes that are larger than the original text to provide emphasis
on what the author wanted the reader to know

Other Perspectives on the Issue that the Author Acknowledges

Instructors maybe focus on the information instead of teaching students how to
critically think
Have more diverse representatives to bring up more issues and problems.
Deciding not to appease power

Key Words
Why I Was Fired
Ally Owens, Jamie Shirley, Michael Marcin, Todd Gunzenhauser, Jenny Kerley

Steven Salaita
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Israel-Palestine conflict
Civil speech