The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has apparently revoked a job offer to a professor who went to Twitter to criticize Israel over the bombardment of Gaza.

The incident is reminiscent of the controversy last year when Kansas University professor David Guth wrote tweets critical of the NRA after a mass shooting.

Guth is still employed at KU, but criticism of his tweets led to a state policy in Kansas that allows the chief executive of a public university to terminate professors who use social media in a way that is contrary to the best interests of the school.

In the Illinois controversy, Steven Salaita, a former Virginia Tech English professor, wrote numerous tweets critical of Israel.

Here is one of the tweets: “When will the attack on #Gaza end? What is left for #Israel to prove? Who is left for Israel to kill? This is the logic of genocide.”

Salaita had been notified of the job offer from Illinois last year, but recently the offer was rescinded after the tweets appeared.

Here is a link to a story on the controversy in The Roanoke (Virginia) Times. link text