Statement from Salaita's lawyers here. Some portion of that settlement will go to legal fees (my guess would be around a quarter million). I'll have more to say later, once I get some more details.
ADDENDUM: The Urbana-Champaign newspaper reports that $275,000 goes towards Salaita's legal fees, and he gets $600,000. Note that that amount will be subject to federal (and probably state) tax. (Damages to compensate for physical injuries--say, in a medical malpractice case--are generally not taxable, but damages in a case like this [breach of contract, violation of constitutional rights) will be.) It's not clear yet whether there is any confidentiality agreement between the parties in place; hopefully not. I'll have more to say about the settlement later today.
ONE MORE QUICK ONE: My own view is that, with the settlement, there is no further productive reason for continuing to boycott the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
SOME FURTHER OBSERVATIONS: Notice that with roughly a year of litigation, just enough to survive the motion to dismiss, the case has already cost over a quarter million in legal fees. If Salaita had gone through discovery, other motions, then a trial and to a verdict, additional legal fees would have easily topped a million dollars (note that, according to the report, above, the University of Illinois has already spent well over a million dollars so far defending itself!). As I've noted previously, institutional actors have the resource advantage in cases like this. In a best-case scenario, if Salaita had gone to trial and gotten a verdict in his favor on some of his claims (as I expect he would), he might have gotten several million in damages and perhaps some legal fees (some of his civil rights claims might have included legal fees, other claims would not). All of this could easily have taken two or three more years. And, of course, there was a chance that instead of getting compensated for 30 years of employment, he might have gotten smaller damages and/or he might have lost. (If this had gone forward, one can rest assured that the University of Illinois lawyers would spend a lot of their time smearing Salaita even further, both by using his tweets and by pointing to his employment status [assuming, as seems likely, that he would not be able to secure permanent employment while the litigation was ongoing]--who knows how that might have played with a jury?)
At the end of the day, the question is: if, say, there is an 80% chance of getting three million dollars after three years, of which half the amount will go towards legal fees, and a 20% chance of a far worse outcome...well, you can see how the calculations would go. Salaita was deprived of a job that paid $85,000/year plus benefits (maybe worth another 25K?). In effect, he has gotten compensation for about six years without having to wait any further. He can hopefully resume his academic work and secure permanent employment, pointing to the legal and non-legal (e.g., AAUP censure) evidence that he was treated wrongfully. I hope a courageous private (or even public?) university will seize the opportunity to make a strong statement in support of academic freedom by hiring Salaita: in doing so they will get someone who was tenure-worthy at a major research university, and someone who also behaved with admirable courage and clarity of purpose when subjected to grotesque malfeasance by now disgraced university officials and Board members.
ANOTHER: Lawyer/philosopher John Bogart writes: "People often forget the appeal process. If the University lost at trial, it could easily afford the appeal bond, leaving Salaita to slog through the appeal. That is another couple of years and more fees. And if he gets a fee award for some but not all claims, then his fees have to allocated among the claims (to the extent reasonably possible)." All good points.
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