A Lesson in Self-interest

The University of South Florida Board of Trustees had an opportunity last week to set an example of courage in the face of adversity. They had a chance to teach a lesson in tolerance and in standing up for academic freedom and free speech, even though that speech may be unpopular and may cause hardship, fear and even — gasp — expense to the university.

Instead, they staged a kangaroo court, filled with half-truths and self-righteous speechifying. The accused was not even allowed to witness, much less rebut the systematic assassination of his character. The trustees and university President Judy Genshaft opted to put politics, money and image first, trampling on the rights of an employee, even as they invoked the documents that govern those rights.

The board assembled in an "emergency" meeting to decide whether they could legally fire Sami Al-Arian, a tenured professor and member of the faculty union. Al-Arian has always been a controversial figure, but the final straw for the university was negative public reaction to his Sept. 28 appearance on The O'Reilly Factor, in which the host grilled Al-Arian about his ties to terrorists. The show touched off a firestorm of criticism and withdrawal of financial support, as well as threats of violence to Al-Arian, and he was put on paid leave. To no one's surprise, the board voted to fire him, and Genshaft proceeded hastily to carry out their will.

The way the meeting was called constituted the first of many shameful violations, not just of Al-Arian's rights, but, in this case, of the public's right to have access to meetings in which public officials make decisions.

The university "announced" via an e-mail sent at 4 p.m. last Tuesday that there would be an emergency meeting the following morning at 9. The extremely short notice and the fact that the meeting was scheduled at a time when most of the students and staff had already left for winter break were clearly calculated to keep the public, the media, and as many students and staffers as possible out of the meeting.

The university was careful to try and cover its nether regions by labeling the meeting an emergency, which local media dutifully parroted without question in early reports, although Genshaft never gave a convincing explanation of the nature of the emergency. Even if the meeting truly were a response to an emergency, the short notice still violated the spirit of the Sunshine Law. The 2001 Government-in-the-Sunshine Manual states that even for emergency sessions, the public should have at least 24 hours reasonable notice.

Even if you hate Sami Al-Arian, this move should bother you — not on his behalf, but on your own. When a public body disregards the Sunshine Law, it is an offense against us all. The law is designed to make public officials accountable to the people they serve.

In her remarks to the board and statements to the public, Genshaft quoted freely from and virtually wrapped herself in the American Association of University Professors 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. However, she repeatedly violated its spirit as well as its specific instructions in the trustees meeting.

The document states, "Termination for cause of a continuous appointment (tenured position) … should, if possible, be considered by both a faculty committee and the governing board of the institution. In all cases where the facts are in dispute, the accused teacher should be informed before the hearing in writing of the charges and should have the opportunity to be heard in his or her own defense by all bodies that pass judgment upon the case. The teacher should be permitted to be accompanied by an advisor of his or her own choosing who may act as counsel."

The facts are clearly in dispute here, but Al-Arian was not given a chance to dispute them. Not only was he not informed of the meeting and the charges against him, he couldn't have attended even if he had been notified. The meeting was held on the campus, from which he has been officially barred. The fact that he went on campus after being suspended is one of the charges against him.

There was also no faculty committee to hear the charges leveled against Al-Arian, and no one was there to answer the charges on his behalf.

The Statement of Principles also states that "a final decision should take into account the faculty member's entire record as a teacher and scholar." Al-Arian's record as a teacher and scholar was never addressed at the meeting.

One of the reasons given for Al-Arian's dismissal was that he failed to indicate that he was not a representative of the university in his public appearances. The fact that the university is on shaky ground with the charge was revealed and then ignored at the meeting. Genshaft cited an Oct. 8 letter to Al-Arian, instructing him to identify himself as a private citizen in his public appearances. "We have no evidence that he ever did that, and he's spoken many times since then," she said. When asked if the university had any evidence that he didn't identify himself as instructed, she replied, "We have been in the process of trying to obtain evidence in that regard. It is our belief, based on what we know, that he did not."

Yes, that's the sound of political tap-dancing you hear. Al-Arian told a Weekly Planet reporter that he did specify that he was not speaking as a representative of USF.

The Statement of Principles also says: "A suspension which is not followed by either reinstatement or the opportunity for a hearing is in effect a summary dismissal in violation of academic due process." No such a hearing has never taken place.

There is not enough room in this column to address all of the half-truths that went unchallenged at the trustees meeting. Many of them could have been cleared up or at least disputed if the target had been allowed to be present. One example was a convenient omission in the "Timeline of Events USF, WISE and Sami Al-Arian" distributed at the meeting. After the date March 1996, the timeline states "The Oracle student newspaper receives a letter from a group claiming connections to the Islamic Jihad and neo-Nazis. The group threatens to bomb USF and kill a white female professor on April 29." The timeline goes on to say that on April 29, "USF closes most of the campus and moves the date of final exams because of the threat." Nowhere on the timeline will you find that on Oct. 6, 1996, Damian Hospital was arrested and charged with making the threats, or that this first-year student with no ties whatsoever to Islamic Jihad pleaded guilty in December of that year.

Faculty Union President Roy Weath- erford doesn't yet know what action the union will take. They are scheduled to meet Jan. 13 and will discuss options at that time. He said there are two issues to address: the union's (and Al-Arian's) formal legal recourse and the political question. "Not everything that is immoral and deplorable is forbidden by the contract," he said, indicating that even if the union doesn't take legal action, it might choose to issue a statement condemning the disgraceful manner in which the decision to fire Al-Arian was made. Weatherford was not officially notified of the meeting, he said, adding, "unless you count a call from the associate provost late the night before." No options besides firing Al-Arian were discussed at the meeting. Trustee H. Patrick Swygert, President of Howard University, did bring up the option of keeping Al-Arian on suspension without pay, but that issue was quickly dropped with no real discussion. Weatherford noted that the board avoided discussing the option of having Al-Arian teach via distance learning techniques, even though the safety of students and faculty was cited as a reason for his suspension and the cost of his suspension was cited as a reason to fire him. The university has the technology to allow Al-Arian to teach students from a remote location, and his teaching ability has been consistently praised. Sami Al-Arian is not a very sympathetic person to most Americans. He is everything we most fear right now: Arab, Muslim, Palestinian. The very words are synonymous with terrorism in many American minds, even though the vast majority of Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians are not terrorists. He has made some mistakes and said some inflammatory things.

But whether or not we like Al-Arian or agree with what he has said and done is not the point. The point is the outrageous lack of respect the university president and board of trustees showed for the time-honored traditions of institutional scholarship, the rights of a tenured faculty member, and academic freedom, despite all their posturing and protestations to the contrary.

Judy Genshaft has repeatedly said she supports, even reveres academic freedom and free speech. Yet she has repeatedly refused to defend those freedoms by her actions, excusing her behavior by saying the issue of Sami Al-Arian is not about his right to express himself. That is pure, meaningless political double-talk, and her actions speak far louder than her words. She did not respond to requests for an interview, nor to a faxed list of questions.

Gov. Jeb Bush has effectively staged a coup in Florida higher education by replacing scholars with powerful businessmen, who make decisions on issues that they clearly do not understand or respect. This time Sami Al-Arian was their target because, by their own admission, he was bad for business. This is just a taste of what happens when entrepreneurs run our universities as businesses rather than scholarly institutions where free thought and speech are valued and protected.

Editor Susan Edwards can be reached at 813-248-8888 ext. 122 or ed@weeklyplanet.com.

Staff Writer Rochelle Renford contributed to this report.

This article appears in Dec 27, 2001 – Jan 2, 2002.