Judy Genshaft's Ordeal
EDITORIAL Judy Genshaft's Ordeal Could be, back a year and a half ago, when Judy Genshaft was being recruited for the presidency of the University of South Florida, they simply forgot to mention...
...Actually, Judy Genshaft has conducted herself more than honorably in the Sami Al-Arian affair...
...But it's a means to "donate to the Islamic Jihad...
...Fourteen months later, Genshaft having made an unusually speedy personal mark on her campus, the university's future still looked bright...
...So Weatherford, no doubt by virtue of his investigations into the limits of human knowledge, figures his ignorance of a thing means that thing cannot exist— that he is free to write off this terrorism business as a total fantasy projected by "right-wing yahoos...
...Al-Arian were a moderate receiving threats from militant Muslims, there is little doubt that the university would stand up for him," snorts the New York Times...
...Their ritual invocation of the First Amendment, for instance...
...and "Death to Israel...
...And the media have been brutal...
...Almost immediately, AlArian started complaining about his exile...
...Perhaps, indeed, he has skipped over Sami Al-Arian's history entirely...
...Already a distinguished educational psychologist and college administrator, she now would assume leadership of the second largest university in the southeastern United States at the very moment when it seemed finally ready to start mattering...
...Evidence of Sami Al-Arian's disruption is overwhelming, of course—quite apart from the death threats...
...EDITORIAL Judy Genshaft's Ordeal Could be, back a year and a half ago, when Judy Genshaft was being recruited for the presidency of the University of South Florida, they simply forgot to mention it...
...And there was Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, who would soon relocate to Syria and succeed Shikaki's brother as jihadist-in-chief...
...USF's alumni are enraged...
...The College of Engineering received an apparently credible death threat against Al-Arian, the first of 12, forcing the school to close...
...But isn't this enough...
...Donations are drying up...
...There was Sami Al-Arian on the Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, identified as a "University of South Florida professor," stammering about rough treatment by the show's host...
...Supreme Court cases dating to Pickering v. Board of Education in 1968 make clear that when a public employee's interest in public debate about public matters is "outweighed by any injury the speech could cause" to his employer's performance of public duties, then the First Amendment does not apply...
...They "like to call it the Islamic Committee for Palestine here for security reasons," his host explained...
...How come nobody else does...
...This is true even when the employee in question is a tenured faculty member, like Sami Al-Arian, at a state university, like USF...
...By mid-December, school administrators, under attack from two directions, were spending half their time dealing with a single professor's sudden notoriety...
...Attending a rally in Cleveland around this time, AlArian was introduced as head of "the active arm of the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine...
...At best...
...Like that Al-Arian had once arranged an adjunct faculty position at USF for a man who later turned out to be secretary general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad...
...No university ever wants to make academic decisions in response to external pressure like this...
...Then there is the question of Sami Al-Arian's identity...
...The future looked bright...
...What nonsense...
...In short, a continuing fiasco...
...Al-Arian wanted these words understood "in context" and claimed to have been "shocked" when his former colleague emerged as one of the world's leading terrorists...
...If Mr...
...Isn't that the point, though...
...Issues that, just maybe, involved mysterious international money transfers and big explosions going off at crowded bus stops...
...There is a handwritten letter Al-Arian wrote in 1995 asking for financial contributions "so that operations such as these can continue"—referring to a recent bombing in Israel that had killed 22 civilians...
...With no end in sight...
...The school's lawyers and telephone operators are overwhelmed...
...Which history is rather unsettling, as even an abbreviated summary should make plain...
...Union president and professor of philosophy Roy Weatherford calls Genshaft's behavior "manifestly repugnant to the academic profession and the world community...
...Al-Arian arrived at USF in 1986 and promptly founded two (now defunct) organizations: an off-campus "charity" called the Islamic Committee for Palestine and a "think tank" called the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, which eventually became affiliated with the university...
...Judy Genshaft's critics proceed from the assumption that suspicions about Al-Arian's connection to terrorism are tenuous—at best...
...He might want to think about these questions a tiny bit harder...
...An ICP magazine, Al-Mujahid, baldly announced itself a "publication produced by the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine" and ran the group's logo on its front page...
...So long as the school reasonably fears the professor's speech will disrupt its essential operations, it may move against him...
...When it feels forced to, however, the fact remains, like it or not, that the Constitution is undisturbed...
...Actually, no...
...It is no exaggeration to say that Genshaft has since been crucified, coast to coast, as a traitor to the academy and a threat to the First Amendment...
...And the world community hasn't contradicted him...
...So "if you write a check, write it for the Islamic Committee for Palestine: ICP...
...USF's telephone and computer systems were jammed with hundreds of angry calls and email messages...
...But things didn't work out...
...And what if the great unwashed become persuaded, however mistakenly, that university tenure does have something to do with the likes of Sami Al-Arian...
...and so forth...
...ICP and WISE had overlapping senior officers...
...What possible benefit does Weatherford imagine will then accrue to the cause of academic freedom at state-funded institutions...
...The American Association of University Professors has notified Genshaft that it is "maintaining a close watch" lest she make any further encroachments on "academic freedom...
...But what do they know...
...So on December 19, the USF Board of Trustees voted 12-1 to recommend that Sami Al-Arian be fired—for activities "outside the scope of his employment" constituting "adverse impact on the legitimate interests of the university...
...Its graduate programs were achieving unprecedented recognition...
...It is a species of insanity for USF faculty members, in the name of academic freedom, to link themselves with Sami Al-Arian...
...And that Al-Arian himself had been captured on videotape delivering a speech on the righteousness of jihad, "Victory to Islam...
...Free thought demands protection from exposure to, and pollution by, an antithetical force like organized terror...
...And her willingness to pursue those complaints, the Times continues, represents a "betrayal" of academic protocol so grave as to "dishonor the ideals of public universities" generally...
...Muslim groups have accused Genshaft of bigotry...
...Editorial pages in the immediate Tampa-St...
...David Tell...
...All of which intensified the very crisis the university had been trying to quell...
...Judy Genshaft understands...
...The ACLU has warned it might sue...
...More than enough, we think, to settle any doubt about what genuine guardianship of academic freedom entails in the present circumstance...
...And there is a great deal more such evidence publicly available about Al-Arian's past...
...And the First Amendment will stand aside...
...Who, characteristically sharkish, was plowing forward with questions about, well, some things in the professor's past...
...Perhaps he has skipped a step somewhere...
...And, given the consensus of Tampa-area police departments that they would otherwise confront a grave public safety risk, university admin-istrators—with his concurrence—placed Al-Arian on a paid leave of absence...
...Hardly a week went by before he ignored its terms, at least as the university understood them, popping up on campus for a meeting with Muslim students...
...Issues that occasionally required the attention of campus, municipal, state, federal, and foreign law enforcement officers...
...But Weatherford hasn't seen the proof...
...All because of outside hostility Al-Arian alone has engendered...
...Judy Genshaft then informed Al-Arian that she intended to follow this advice...
...Is the desirability of murdering Jewish people the sort of "idea" university tenure is designed to protect...
...He and the rest of Judy Genshaft's hecklers might want to think about, dare we say it, the distinction between good and evil, as well...
...USF's faculty union has formally rebuked Genshaft for her willingness to "censor academic speech...
...But Bill O'Reilly was unimpressed and told his viewers there was "something wrong down there at the University of South Florida...
...Judy Genshaft took the job...
...USF's undergraduate divisions were turning away qualified applicants...
...Roy Weatherford, the philosophy professor, a specialist in epistemology, says that were it true AlArian had terrorist associations, then they could "line him up and shoot him for all I care...
...Petersburg area are a notable exception, of course...
...Then, on September 26, two weeks after the World Trade Center and Pentagon atrocities, that Palestinian computer scientist fellow showed up on national television, and everything went straight to hell...
...ICP, in particular, barely attempted to conceal its nature...
...And she had every reason to think it a plum...
...Judy Gen-shaft's accusers are ill-informed...
...Her faculty senate has formally refused to offer support for any pending action against Al-Arian...
...Whatever...
...Consequently, something really was wrong down there—the very next day...
...There was Bashir Nafi, now known to be among the original founders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad...
...Probably would have been helpful to know about such stuff in advance...
...Genshaft's complaints against Sami Al-Arian are "groundless," according to the New York Times...
...There was Khalil Shikaki, brother of that terrorist group's then secretary general...
...Actually, she has demonstrated what is, in the modern world of university administration, a virtually unexampled degree of high-minded courage—risking reputational suicide in her national news debut so as to safeguard precisely those "ideals" she stands accused of violating...
...And relevant law enforcement agencies were still unable to offer any guarantee—should that professor be allowed to resume teaching—that the safety of students, faculty, or staff would be secure...
...Does Roy Weatherford really mean to suggest that the City of Intellection will be leveled unless he and his colleagues can sit down in the cafeteria with a man who raises money for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad...
...The one who had certain, oh, issues, let's call them...
...The rest of American journalism has the matter firmly in hand: Judy Genshaft wears the black hat, simple as that...
...And hardly a day went by thereafter when Al-Arian and his friends failed to tell some reporter that USF's efforts to protect him from assassination were in fact, instead, an assault on free expression—a penalty for his advocacy of controversial ideas...
...You know: that Palestinian computer scientist fellow over in the College of Engineering...
Vol. 7 • February 2002 • No. 21
