A Test for Trustees
Re: "A Lesson in Self-interest" by Susan Edwards (Dec. 27-Jan. 2)
Thank you for your superb editorial on the Al-Arian fiasco. I'd like to have everyone with an IQ over 100 read it (and the Board of Trustees)!
Nancy Jane Tyson
Past President USF Faculty Senate
Associate Professor of English
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Thank you for the very fine article about the Sami Al-Arian dismissal. It is clearly written and comprehensive. I already intended to express my dismay to President Genshaft and others, and your article gives me additional points to cover.
Mary Berglund
St. Petersburg
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Your article was well written, and no more "slanted" than other viewpoints I have read. Teachers, tenured or not, should offer information and discussion, and not advocate any point of view. I should think that if I were in his native country, and events were reversed, that the options would have carried a harsher penalty. He would do well to remember that some "rights" are really just "privileges," and irresponsible use of rights always results in loss of privileges.
Rex Baldwin
Via e-mail
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Your editorial about Sami Al-Arian was indeed a breath of fresh air. As a tenured professor at the University of Nevada, I was myself shocked to read about the deliberate trampling of a faculty member's rights in our country where freedom of expression is considered sacred.
It is sad that USF's president and board acted so improperly and that AAUP (American Association of University Professors) seems to be leaning towards not challenging the decision.
If this were the '60s, the USF decision and AAUP's current stance would have set the precedent for the firing of a vast number of faculty members on our campuses. We would only have heard one side of the argument with respect to Vietnam, and it would have led to more innocent Americans being killed in the war. By removing Al-Arian, USF has silenced the voice of a whole side of the debate. This is not what America is about.
Sami Al-Arian's firing is one of the most deplorable incidents in U.S. academic history and in the history of the USF campus. We have violated everything we believe in and have fought for since the establishment of our great country. The message is clear: Shut up or else.
Dr. Rafik Beekun
University of Nevada
Reno
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I found your editorial very interesting and challenging. It made me reexamine my beliefs about just what academic freedom is. Along with that, there are the expectations of a parent who has sacrificed to send his children off to college for a well-rounded education.
A university professor has an inherent responsibility to provide his or her students with all the facts surrounding an issue, along with logical discourse that will enable the student to arrive at sound decisions.
Academic freedom, to me, then permits the professor to introduce unpopular ideas, so long as they're supportable and fairly balanced out by more conventional wisdom.
I would not want my children to attend classes where only one-sided propaganda is presented. To be sure, lectures can easily be structured for impressionable students to promote the values of Taliban, Nazis and sundry cults, as long as other views are suppressed or only their faults expressed. That is not an education to me.
Academic freedom was not the issue with Sami Al-Arian, but the integrity of the educational process, which he had put into question.
Dick Bulova
Oldsmar
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That was a fine article on the unjustified dismissal of Sami Al-Arian. It reminds me of the work ahead for all who are tired of all the wars going on and want to do what we can to bring real peace.
I am involved in an effort to revive political and activist music in the Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg area by working with Gloria Holloway of TAFEE (Tampa Acoustic, Folk, Etc. Enthusiasts) in bringing activist singer-songwriter David Rovics to Skipper's Smokehouse on Jan. 22.
Thanks for the very important article.
Jim Glover
Via e-mail
This article appears in Jan 9-15, 2002.