Sami Al-Arian, a tenured professor at the University of South Florida, has abused academic freedom. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Board of Trustees at the University of South Florida is going to court to see if it can fire Al-Arian for his supposed links to terrorism. The Board of Trustees should have fired him immediately last September because he has attracted negative attention for that university for almost a decade("U. of South Florida accuses professor of links to terrorism and asks court to approve plan to fire him," Aug. 22).
Al-Arian, who is of Palestinian descent, burst onto the national scene last September when Bill O'Reilly of the O'Reilly Factor accused Al-Arian of ties to terrorists, according to the Chronicle article. O'Reilly quoted a speech Al-Arian gave 10 years before in Arabic, in which he said "death to Israel." Al-Arian claimed that he did not mean death to Israeli civilians, but rather death to Israeli occupation. Since September 11, Al-Arian has made speeches in the Tampa area condemning the terror attacks. After the O'Reilly Factor, the university received numerous complaints, as well as a threat on Al-Arian's life.
Unfortunately the story gets murkier after this point. Without looking into Al-Arian's background, it would be reasonable to believe his claim that he was misquoted and leave it at that. But his past record raises a number of questions. But perhaps more importantly, his tenure at the University of South Florida shows a repeated histrory of negative attention and disruption for the university. These are the justifiable reasons for his dismissal.
Al-Arian has been in the middle of controversy before. According to another Chronicle report, a 1994 PBS documentary titled "Jihad in America" claimed that Al-Arian ran a charity group as a front for a fund-raising organization for terrorists ("Faculty ties to Islamic Jihad questioned at U. of S. Florida," May 24, 1996). The group, called the Islamic Committee for Palestine, was accused of supporting the Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in Israel. Al-Arian denied links to the Islamic Jihad. But the damage was done, and according to the 1996 Chronicle article, critics began to call the university "Jihad Univesity."
While Al-Arian has always denied links to terrorism, the same cannot be said of one of his former University of South Florida colleagues, Ramadan Abdullah. Abdullah previously had been an economics professor at the school and in 1996 appeared in Damascus, Syria as the new head of Islamic Jihad. Coincidently, Abdullah had been a top official of Al-Arian's World and Islamic Studies Enterprise.
In the 1996 Chronicle article, its author, Courtney Leatherman says, "Meanwhile, South Florida has tried to move out from under the embarrasing cloud." The University of South Florida was embarrased in 1996, now six years later, Al-Arian is still placing the university in a negative light.
Al-Arian was placed on a paid leave from 1996 until 1998 (according to another article from The Chronicle, "Professor linked to terrorist groups is placed on leave by U. of South Florida," Oct. 21, 2001). But by reinstating Al-Arian after he was cleared by an internal investigation, the university simply exposed itself to more controversy.
University of South Florida President Judy L. Genshaft wanted to fire Al-Arian last December, but the university did not follow through at the time because the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) threatened to censure the school if Al-Arian was dismissed because of concerns over academic freedom ("U. of South Florida accuses professor of links to terrorism and asks court to approve plan to fire him," Chronicle of Higher Education, Aug. 22). Now, not only does the University of South Florida have to defend itself against ties to terrorism, but it is being accused of violating academic freedom by trying to fire Al-Arian.
This stupidity must end. The University of South Florida should have fired Al-Arian years ago, when questions were first raised about his ties to terrorism. The issue is not about guilt or innocence. The issue is about disrupting a school and placing it in a negative light. The University of South Florida can either be accused of employing a professor with alleged ties to terrorism or of violating a professor's academic freedom. This is a lose-lose situation for the university, and Al-Arian should be fired for putting his employers in such a position by his questionable background.
(Harris Freier's column appears Fridays in
The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at
hfreier@cavalierdaily.com.)
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