Free speech, academic freedom and the spider bites on the worldwide web

Steven Salaita, the professor whose job offer was revoked by the University of Illinois last, after his controversial comments went viral, has reportedly found a job with the American University in Beirut.
http://chronicle.com/article/Nearly-a-Year-Later-Fallout/231365/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Here be me, posting a blog that I will share via Twitter (where I have 1200 followers), Facebook (where I have a thousand friends), Linked In (where I have 1700 connections), as well as Pin It and Google Plus.   I do it to help sell my books and webinars.  But whatever, if anything, the social net is doing for my business, I am ever mindful that the Internet bites back.

It also can be helpful, as when a professor's academic freedom is disciplined.  The teeth are definitely two edged (to mix my metaphors).  Several years ago my student John Lanza and I documented that in an article which has since been the most-frequently downloaded contribution to the Journal of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education... almost 1400 downloads to date:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/14e504df0235268c

To mix those metaphors even more shamelessly, when we walk the worldwide web, we can expect to encounter the occasional spider.  And we all know what spider bites can do:

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Flaming+Lips/_/The+Spiderbite+Song