Blaming the Victim?

A university vows to fire a tenured professor facing death threats in the wake of September 11

There are two Sami Al-Arians. To some, he is a hatemonger whose vile speech has disrupted the University of South Florida;

a tenured professor of computer engineering who has failed to meet his obligations to the university; a Palestinian who is an outspoken critic of Israel -- which has cost the institution time, money, and its own sense of security -- and an arrogant loner who ignored the warnings of administrators to make clear when he was not speaking on behalf of the university.

To others, he is a soft-spoken teacher and adviser who cares about his students; a community-spirited man who has worked to bring an understanding of the Muslim culture to his Christian and Jewish neighbors; and an intellectual who advocates pluralism.

Whoever he is, he has been banned from his classroom and the campus, had his life threatened, and been told that he is about to be fired.

Mr. Al-Arian is the pivotal character in a saga reflecting the challenges that have confronted campuses -- and the country -- since September 11. In a nation where a long-held sense of domestic security has evaporated, can dissent and difference flourish? Or will the fears that have suddenly made us so fragile lessen our tolerance for ideas that upset and offend us? Can academic freedom and free speech withstand attacks from those outside the university? Will administrators have to choose between a peaceful campus and diversity of thought?

“During the McCarthy period, the purpose of the firings was to get rid of people who would bring embarrassment to the university,” says Ellen Schrecker, a professor of history at Yeshiva University and the author of No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities. Now, she fears, “universities are going back to political correctness. ... It’s really political repression.”

If Mr. Al-Arian is indeed fired, he will be the first tenured professor to lose his job since September 11 because of words he has spoken. As of late last week, Judy L. Genshaft, president of USF, was still consulting with advisers and faculty members about her decision, even though she wrote in a January 7 e-mail message to the faculty that the 12-to-1 vote of the Board of Trustees to recommend the termination of Mr. Al-Arian was “the right decision.”

University officials say it is not Mr Al-Arian’s words, but their disruptive effect on the university, for which he must be fired. Those words, uttered more than a decade ago and replayed on television last fall, have created such a furor that it is impossible for the university to operate normally as long as he remains employed there, the officials say. Countless hours have been lost in dealing with questions and calls about the case. One floor of an engineering-department building was shut down for an afternoon following a death threat against Mr. Al-Arian; staff and faculty members there were sent home. Deans fear that prospective faculty members will not want to come to South Florida because of the controversy.

Faculty groups around the country, however, fear that Mr. Al-Arian’s case may presage a narrow reading of what kind of debate is to be allowed -- both on campus and off -- in a time of war. To fire a tenured professor because some people who disagree with him have threatened the peace of the university, they argue, is to punish the victim.

Who Will Pay?

The university will lose stature no matter what the final decision. If Mr. Al-Arian is fired, it will be seen as a blow to academic freedom, free speech, and tenure. If he stays, there will be a continuing outcry from those who detest the political positions he takes. Already, the university has been riven by the case. The faculty adviser to the provost has resigned because she cannot support the board’s decision to fire the professor. The American Association of University Professors has notified the president that it will investigate the case and may censure the university. The state university system’s faculty union has voted to support Mr. Al-Arian’s position, as well as to help pay his legal fees if he sues. On the other side, Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican, has issued a statement supporting the decision by the trustees. The student government and the USF parents’ association have also voted to support a dismissal.

The source of Mr. Al-Arian’s woes was that more than 10 years ago, he said in Arabic the following phrases: “Jihad is our path. Victory for Islam. Death to Israel. Revolution. Revolution until victory. Rolling to Jerusalem.” Those videotaped speeches were replayed on television after September 11.

The words must be considered in context, Mr. Al-Arian says. They are part of a litany of phrases that were spoken by many Arabs during the first intifada, the uprising of Palestinian Arabs that began in 1987 against Israel military forces in the occupied territories. In repeating “Death to Israel,” he meant death to the occupation, he says. “Israel does not equal Jews,” he says. “In the Arab psyche, the two are not the same. ... You’re talking about the system. I never said: Death to the Jews.’”

No one in the USF administration maintains that Mr. Al-Arian ever made such statements in classes or on campus, and he says he has not used such words since 1991. After September 11, he spoke to various Christian and Jewish groups in Tampa in his capacity as imam of his mosque and pointed out to them, he says, that Islam does not condone violence, and that the men who flew into the World Trade Center could not have been truly religious men.

The trustees of the university, the president, and the outside lawyer who advised them on Mr. Al-Arian’s dismissal all say that what Mr. Al-Arian said and when he said it have nothing to do with their position that he must go. In fact, they argue, the case has nothing to do with academic freedom or his First Amendment rights.

It is unlikely that Mr. Al-Arian, 44, could be dissuaded from talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict anyway. “I’ve always spoken out about the Palestinian situation,” he says. “But I’ve never spoken out on campus or discussed any politics with my students. ... I am totally against attacking civilians in any way, shape or form. On the other hand, the Palestinians have a right to armed resistance against the occupation. That’s recognized in international law.” He goes on to say that while he is against blowing up buses and pizza parlors, the right to armed resistance does include actions against armed settlers as well as soldiers.

But the real issue, says President Genshaft, is the disruption of the campus and the ability to provide for the safety of students and faculty. The disruption, she says, includes the time taken by administrators to respond to questions from hundreds of callers. “He violated the collective-bargaining agreement: His outside activities adversely affected the university. The community has reacted so emotionally and so strongly to September 11 that the consequences of his actions were experienced by the university.”

Later, Ms. Genshaft, who has been at South Florida since July 2000, notes that this semester can’t be separated from the rest of Mr. Al-Arian’s career. “It’s repeated behavior that’s been problematic.”

Then why, she is asked, wasn’t he fired before?

“I would love to know,” says the president.

From Calm to Chaos

In the low-slung, yellow-brick administration building at the University of South Florida, September 27 was not to be a normal day. In the courtyard, the palm trees swayed in the balmy air. The sprays of water in the garden fountains made their usual soothing murmur. But past the fountains and the palm trees and up a flight of stairs behind the big double wooden doors that lead to the president’s office was an administration in chaos. All day, the telephones were ringing. E-mail messages flooded in from alumni, donors, and local citizens. Administrators in the president’s suite ran from office to office, trying to devise a strategy to deal with the angry questions and verbal attacks.

The previous evening, Mr. Al-Arian had appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, a national television talk show. The host, Bill O’Reilly, accused him of associating with terrorists and asked about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe in the mid-1990s of two organizations that the professor had helped to found. (See excerpts from the show.)

What sparked many of the calls the next day, though, according to administrators, was Mr. O’Reilly’s recitation of the “Death to Israel” passage. Ms. Genshaft was alone in her office when a staff member came in to tell her that a receptionist in the department of computer science and engineering had received a telephone call threatening the life of Mr. Al-Arian. The president described herself as “alarmed and upset” at the news.

Safety Concerns

Since September 11, like other college leaders, she had been focusing on campus safety. Now a tenured professor had been threatened. What was already a difficult situation became pandemonium. Top administrators, along with the university police chief, the dean of the engineering school, and the associate chairman of computer science and engineering, were called in. The president’s office wasn’t large enough to hold them all, so they went to a conference room across the hall. The safety of the engineering building, the campus, and of Mr. Al-Arian himself all had to be considered. After determining that the professor should be put on paid leave and that the computer-science floor should be closed down, the administration set about dealing with the calls and the threats.

Ms. Genshaft says she still gets daily messages and phone calls from donors, alumni, and state legislators asking about the Al-Arian situation. “And we’ve gotten questions from funding agencies -- national funding agencies.” (She declines to say which ones.) “I respect, I value academic freedom, and I know this is an exceptional and unique case,” she says. “The dean and campus police have said there’s no way to bring him back. ... This man brings harm’s way with him when he comes onto campus. ... It’s unreasonable. ... I don’t want to wait for somebody to be killed or to be harmed to take action.”

Mr. Al-Arian, too, was concerned about his safety, but he wanted to continue with his classes. When he asked to teach via distance learning, however, his request was denied. Louis Martin-Vega, dean of the College of Engineering, explains that because Mr. Al-Arian is a tenured professor, he cannot fulfill all of his duties by working off campus.

As for the threats themselves, Michael Klingebiel, a spokesman for the USF police, says that of about 150 messages via e-mail and phone, some dozen may be considered threats. Some of those, he says, are vague, of the “take action or else” variety. Of the serious threats, three mention death or bodily harm to Mr. Al-Arian. When campus police consulted with the Hillsborough County state attorney’s office, they were informed that none of the messages rose to the level of a death threat that could be individually prosecuted. They are still being investigated. The most recent threat was reported to campus police on October 31.

The original threat against Mr. Al-Arian’s life that came into the computer-science department -- the one that led to his being put on paid leave and told not to return to the campus -- was retracted 25 minutes later. The unidentified caller said he had been angry and upset and meant no harm. According to the police report, he ended the call with the words, “God bless.” Neither Mr. Al-Arian nor the faculty was informed that the original caller had called back until it was revealed in a Faculty Senate meeting several weeks later.

Faculty Fury

Faculty members on both sides of the debate over Mr. Al-Arian’s case have lost sleep, some have lost weight, and all are worried about South Florida’s future.

“This has major national ramifications,” says Harry E. Vanden, a professor of political science and political affairs, who also writes and lectures on terrorism. He is concerned that should the AAUP censure the growing university, it will be difficult to attract the right scholars and administrators. “I’m a little disgusted that this could happen,” he says. “I’ve been here 26 years, and we’ve made this a highly respected university. We recently became a level-one research university [under classifications from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching] -- one of only three publics in Florida. In that environment, do you want to deny academic freedom, deny tenure?”

Asked whether he believes Mr. Al-Arian to be a terrorist, Mr. Vanden laughs. “Absolutely not. I’ve heard Sami speak in my church. He talked about how [September 11] is wrong and an evil act. He went on the O’Reilly Factor to show that American Muslims weren’t in favor of this. He never had the chance.”

Sara Mandell, a professor of religious studies and former president of the USF chapter of the United Faculty of Florida, says she supported Mr. Al-Arian’s right to speak before September 11, but not anymore. “I don’t believe this is a case of academic freedom. A person has academic freedom to go into his classroom and discuss issues that may be difficult -- freedom to teach unpopular things. But after 9/11, hate speech of the kind he set forth is like screaming Fire’ in a theater.”

As for dismissing Mr. Al-Arian, she says, the administration’s justification is the only one she could support: the safety of the students. “I assume that most of the threats are from kooks or crazies. But if a crazy kills you, you’re still dead.”

Other professors, though, have serious concerns about the official rationale for firing Mr. Al-Arian. “The reasons muddy the line between what is and isn’t acceptable conduct,” says Gregory Paveza, a professor of social work who is president of the Faculty Senate. “If we’re going to fire someone for disruption, then any faculty member who is a primary cause of a disruption must be fired, or you’re being arbitrary and capricious.”

He cites as an example the faculty members at South Florida doing research on human embryonic stem cells. “Say they appear on TV talking about their research, and a right-to-life group orchestrates a campaign to cause disruption and get rid of the professor. There are threats, protest rallies, people blocking the streets in the university. Finally, they get their pals who are donating money to withhold contributions. The only difference in that scenario is that the person doing the stem-cell research is doing something we like and bringing in millions of dollars in grants.”

There have been other cases in which there was actual harm done to professors and university property, or in which special security measures were needed because people opposed what a scholar had to say. David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale University, lost part of his right hand when a mail bomb sent by the Unabomber blew up at his office. Princeton University has taken extra precautions when speeches by Peter Singer, a bioethicist with controversial views on euthanasia, have drawn protesters. Neither professor has been fired, nor have others around the country who have expressed strong views on such topics as animal research, abortion, and fetal-tissue research. Many professors at South Florida say they have been unaware of any disruption of classes -- other than the reassigning of Mr. Al-Arian’s.

“Holding unpopular or provocative views is not disruptive,” says Alan Charles Kors, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit educational foundation that focuses on civil rights and is supporting Mr. Al-Arian. “Making death threats is disruptive.”

Free Speech?

It hasn’t helped Mr. Al-Arian’s defense that his history at the university is long and complicated, while many of those making the decisions have been in their jobs for relatively short periods of time. Ms. Genshaft, USF’s president, has not yet been there for two years. Mr. Martin-Vega joined the university from the National Science Foundation only last fall. Last spring, Florida’s Legislature dissolved the Board of Regents, which had governed higher education in the state. All of the members of the new Boards of Trustees of USF and the other state colleges and universities were appointed by the governor. With the exception of Connie Mack, a former U.S. senator; H. Patrick Swygert, president of Howard University; and a few others, most of the members of the USF board are local businesspeople; the chairman, Richard A. Beard III, is in real estate.

What’s more, some of Mr. Al-Arian’s defenders fear that decision makers may assume that the offending videotapes played on television after September 11 represent Mr. Al-Arian’s current feelings. “You could find a tape of me in 1968 at the Democratic National Convention burning an American flag,” says Mr. Paveza, the Faculty Senate president. “If I go on O’Reilly and the first thing he says is, You’re a flag burner,’ should I be fired? Mr. Al-Arian has not made statements like this in a number of years. To the best of my knowledge, he’s what I would consider slightly conservative. He believes the Palestinians are oppressed. Guess what? So do I.”

Asked what specific activities by Mr. Al-Arian have adversely affected the university, the president herself becomes emotional, waving her arms as if to take in the room. “Whatever he has been doing outside for a long time,” she answers. “For,” she pauses, " ... speaking activities.” Such as? She cites his going on the talk show and radio shows, and a speech he recently made in Largo, Fla.

The Largo speech was at a gathering of Amnesty International. He spoke about civil rights and especially about his brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, who has been imprisoned and held without bail since November 24 as one of hundreds of people the Justice Department is holding around the country for alleged immigration violations. He talked about his brother-in-law’s treatment as a prisoner, and he acknowledges referring to Attorney General John Ashcroft as “J. Edgar Ashcroft.”

Ms. Genshaft insists that Mr. Al-Arian had a responsibility to state in any such speech that he was not speaking for the university. The professor says he requested that the O’Reilly show use his title with a community group, but it identified him with the university.

No Stranger to Controversy

Many faculty members point out that they have spoken in situations where it was clear that they were not speaking for the university, though they have not said so explicitly. Most people, says Mr. Paveza, understand that only top administrators actually speak for the university.

A Palestinian refugee born in Kuwait in 1958, Mr. Al-Arian is quiet but not shy. He speaks quickly and with assurance and seems unusually calm for a man who has been told he will lose his job. His wife, Nahla, often interrupts or adds to what her husband says, although she asks not to be quoted. His son, Ali, 11, one of their five children, runs into Mr. Al-Arian’s office to ask for money for a soccer game. The professor has lived in the United States since 1975 and has been at USF for 16 years. His religious and personal views, he says, are for his life outside the university. His involvement as a leader of the local Muslim community is substantial. On a 14-acre compound at the end of a dead-end street is his mosque, his office, and the Islamic Academy of Florida, which he started 10 years ago. Printed under the name of the school on a big yellow sign is “Striving for Excellence,” in red letters. More than 200 students, from kindergarten through grade 12, are taught in several buildings and a half-dozen modular units. On two large playgrounds, kids in sneakers and jeans are closely watched by women swathed in hijabs.

Since September 11, the word “Islamic” has been painted over on the school’s two yellow buses, which now declare simply “Academy of Florida.”

Mr. Al-Arian is no stranger to controversy. In the mid-'90s, a grand jury sat for more than two years, investigating his ties to two organizations. One was the World Islamic Studies Enterprise (WISE), a think tank that was formed to establish a dialogue between Western and Muslim intellectuals, and which shared some resources with the university. The other was the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP), which Mr. Al-Arian says was founded to help represent the Palestinian cause in America. When newspaper articles and a PBS program raised questions about the organizations, a federal investigation ensued -- as did an investigation by the university. No charges were filed, and the university’s consulting lawyer found no evidence to support the allegations brought by the news media. Mr. Al-Arian was put on paid leave for two years during the investigations.

One of the questions put to the professor by Mr. O’Reilly involved Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, an economist who became associated with WISE in 1991 and was later hired as an adjunct professor in USF’s department of international affairs. In mid-1995, he returned to the Middle East, where he became the head of Islamic Jihad. According to the report by the university’s outside lawyer, Mr. Shallah’s emergence as leader of the group, which claims responsibility for terrorist acts against Israel, caught many by surprise, “including Israeli intelligence.” Mr. Al-Arian denies that he knew that Mr. Shallah had any connection with the group, as do other professors who worked with the economist.

In an FBI raid of the WISE offices at the time, 500 videotapes were seized, from which agents created a 13-minute composite tape of some of Mr. Al-Arian’s speeches. It was that tape on which O’Reilly found the “Death to Israel” statement.

For His Own Safety

In recent years, Mr. Al-Arian, according to faculty members who are among his friends, has spoken out to promote cultural understanding. He estimates that he has made dozens of speeches to groups or on radio programs in the past five years. Particularly since September 11, he has been called on to help explain Islamic beliefs.

Mr. Al-Arian did not seem surprised by the reaction to the O’Reilly show. He received a threatening phone call at home that night and immediately had his number changed. So when a campus police officer showed up the next day, the professor assured him that he was OK and called Mr. Martin-Vega, the engineering-school dean, who asked to meet him at a Bennigan’s restaurant. In addition to the dean, S. David Stamps, provost and vice president for academic affairs, was also present.

Mr. Al-Arian was told that for his own safety and that of the campus, he would be put on paid leave, and that if he spoke out on any issue from then on, he should make clear that he was not speaking on behalf of the university. (Mr. Al-Arian notes that all his statements for this article are his own and not the university’s.) Much of the rest of the conversation that day is in dispute. Mr. Al-Arian says he was also told that he was not under investigation and would be reinstated as soon as the threatening e-mail messages and telephone calls were investigated. But the provost says Mr. Al-Arian was told not to return to the campus. On the evening of October 5, he went to South Florida to meet with the Muslim Students Association, for which he is the faculty adviser. The university is using that visit against him in the dismissal case.

The Role of Politics

At 9 a.m. on December 19, the university’s 13 trustees met in an emergency meeting to consider firing Mr. Al-Arian. Under Florida’s sunshine law, the public must be given notice 24 hours before a board meeting, unless it is an emergency. The board had announced the meeting at 4 p.m. the day before.

Many faculty members had already left the campus for the holidays and found out about the trustees’ action only after they returned. “There was never any explanation of why it was an emergency,” says Nancy Jane Tyson, a professor of English and last year’s Faculty Senate president. “They wanted to do it when there were as few people around as possible. I think they very much underestimated the reaction of the students and faculty to such a move.”

Ms. Genshaft says the emergency meeting was called at the request of Mr. Beard, the chairman, because a report from the university’s outside lawyer about the board’s legal options regarding Mr. Al-Arian was ready. “We’ve got a man who’s been involved with terrorism organizations,” says Mr. Beard, who acknowledges that the evidence is circumstantial. “It’s imperative, under the conditions of 9/11 and the interruptions on the campus, that we act. It’s not about what he says. It’s about what he’s doing to this university. And he doesn’t seem to care.”

Many things were discussed at the meeting, according to a transcript. There was the issue of September 11, of Mr. Al-Arian’s academic freedom and freedom of speech, of his failure to say on the O’Reilly show that his views were not those of the university, of the effect that the controversy might have on hiring and raising money. Thomas M. Gonzales, a lawyer who has worked for the university for many years, told the trustees that many fund-raising activities -- alumni giving, direct-mail solicitations, telephone canvassing -- had already been affected. The USF Foundation, which raises funds for the university, had reported that its staff members were spending countless hours responding to donors’ concerns, he said. Ms. Genshaft said some donors had revoked their gifts outright or refused to honor their pledges because of Mr. Al-Arian’s statements.

But in the end, the trustees said, none of that could be considered.

Their vote, they said, following the lead of their lawyer, had to be based on whether Mr. Al-Arian’s acts had disrupted the university. “It’s a collective-bargaining question, because there has to be a cause to fire him,” says Mr. Gonzalez, who wrote the legal opinion that the board used in making its decision. “The cause was his disruption of the university. It’s not an issue of academic freedom.”

After lengthy discussion, the board voted 12 to 1 to recommend Mr. Al-Arian’s dismissal. The lone vote against firing was from Mr. Swygert, who declines to be interviewed on the subject but says through a spokeswoman that his vote speaks for itself.

The vote, and the process, stunned many faculty members. Elizabeth Bird, a professor of anthropology, was disturbed by the swiftness of the meeting and the board’s failure to consult with the faculty over such an important issue as firing a tenured professor. “I was there and saw the process,” she says. “The board treated the faculty with contempt.” Ms. Bird, who was faculty adviser to the provost, resigned her position to protest the move, saying she was not comfortable working with an administration that took such an action.

“The charges are a trumped-up pretext, because the real charges are illegal,” says Roy Weatherford, a professor of philosopy and president of the university’s chapter of the United Faculty of Florida. “The fundamental lesson is that local boards of trustees are more susceptible to local political pressure.”

The “disruption” reasoning is tantamount to blaming the victim, many USF faculty members argue. “He didn’t intend to cause disruption,” says Ms. Bird. “It was the people who called who were disrupting the campus. The board apparently now holds the fate of the faculty in its hands. The grounds on which this was done are very alarming. I think the decision won’t hold up.”

Once again, Ms. Genshaft is being bombarded with e-mail messages, this time many of them from faculty members around the country who oppose Mr. Al-Arian’s firing. On January 27, a New York Times editorial said the university and Governor Bush “dishonor the ideals of public universities. ... Wartime is precisely the moment when unpopular views and the role of a university as an open forum for ideas must be most vigorously defended.”

Even Mr. O’Reilly has said on his talk show that he thinks the university’s decision is unfair. He has called for Ms. Genshaft’s resignation.

Mr. Al-Arian says he plans to fight the dismissal.

“This is the United States of America,” he says. “We have some very important rights, and we’re not willing to give them up because of September 11 -- our constitutional protections, our rights, tenure. That would be a disaster. I will go wherever I have to go. I’m standing up for academic freedom.”

SAMI AL-ARIAN: CAREER AND CONTROVERSY AT SOUTH FLORIDA

January 1986: Sami Al-Arian is hired as an assistant professor of computer science and engineering by the University of South Florida.

1991: South Florida establishes the Committee for Middle Eastern Studies to promote dialogue after the Persian Gulf war.

1991: Mr. Al-Arian founds the World Islamic Studies Enterprise Inc. (WISE) as an Islamic think tank. It shares space and resources, and cosponsors lectures and events, with the committee.

1993: Mr. Al-Arian wins an award for outstanding teaching from the College of Engineering.

November 1994: A documentary, Jihad in America, runs on PBS alleging that Mr. Al-Arian is involved in terrorist activities.

May 1995: A two-part series in The Tampa Tribune questions ties between the university and WISE.

1995-96: Mr. Al-Arian takes a one-year sabbatical.

November 1995: Federal immigration officials search the WISE office and Mr. Al-Arian’s home and office.

January 1996: South Florida retains the former head of the American Bar Association, William Reece Smith Jr., to investigate the university’s agreements with WISE.

1996: Federal agents say in unsealed court documents that they have probable cause to believe the think tank and the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP), a group started by Al-Arian, may be fronts for international terrorists.

April 1996: The university places Mr. Al-Arian on paid leave effective in August, pending completion of a federal investigation. A federal grand jury sits for more than two years and brings no charges against Mr. Al-Arian.

May 1996: Mr. Smith issues a report saying that, from a legal point of view, the evidence available does not sustain the Tampa newspaper’s charges.

April 1998: The engineering dean tells the chairman of the computer science and engineering department that Mr. Al-Arian can resume his regular faculty duties in the fall of 1998. In August, Mr. Al-Arian does so.

October 2000: A local immigration judge found in a related case that there was no evidence that either WISE or ICP was a front for terrorists. “To the contrary, there is evidence in the record to support the conclusion that WISE was a reputable and scholarly research center and the ICP was highly regarded,” wrote Judge R. Kevin McHugh.

September 26, 2001: Mr. Al-Arian appears on Fox News’s The O’Reilly Factor. The host, Bill O’Reilly, questions him about alleged ties to terrorism.

September 27, 2001: South Florida receives angry phone calls and e-mail messages, some of them threatening, about Mr. Al-Arian.

October 28, 2001: NBC’s Dateline runs a segment on Mr. Al-Arian that includes taped speeches more than a decade old in which Mr. Al-Arian says, among other things: “Death to Israel” and “Jihad is our path.”

November 1, 2001: At the request of a trustee, South Florida asks an outside lawyer to determine whether the university can lawfully take disciplinary action against Mr. Al-Arian for the disruption of the university’s operations.

December 18, 2001: The lawyer determines that Mr. Al-Arian’s conduct could be grounds for termination. The same day, Richard A. Beard III, chairman of the Board of Trustees, calls an emergency meeting for the following morning.

December 19, 2001: The board votes 12 to 1 to recommend that Mr. Al-Arian be terminated.

January 9, 2002: The Faculty Senate votes not to support the trustees’ decision to terminate Mr. Al-Arian.

January 14, 2002: At a news conference, Mr. Al-Arian says that he has been denied due process and will fight the dismissal.

AN ILL-FATED TELEVISION INTERVIEW

The controversy surrounding Sami Al-Arian exploded after the University of South Florida professor appeared September 26 on a Fox News talk show featuring Bill O’Reilly. The next day, the university was bombarded with irate, and sometimes threatening, e-mail messages and phone calls. An edited transcript of the show follows.

Mr. O’Reilly: Now for the top story tonight. What is going on at the University of South Florida, a state-funded institution? Suspected terrorist Ramadan Abdullah Shallah actually taught classes there. He is now one of the leaders of the Palestinian Islamic jihad.

And the man who brought Shallah to the United States joins us now from Tampa. Dr. Sami Al-Arian is an associate professor of computer engineering at the University of South Florida.

All right. What say you, Professor? This guy is now a big shot in the Islamic jihad, they’re taking credit for all kinds of terrorist activity, and you know him pretty well. Got an explanation here?

Mr. Al-Arian: Well, I mean, when he came here, he came as a volunteer. He was working in an intellectual think tank, and he taught at the university, and then he left. He said that his father was sick and he was going back to the occupied territories, and then six months later, we were shocked like everyone else in the world in which he became the leader of the jihad movement.

Mr. O’Reilly: You were shocked! You were -- you couldn’t understand it.

He never told you that his views -- political views were that extreme. You were just taken by surprise?

Mr. Al-Arian: Everyone was. Everyone who knew him here at the University of South Florida, everyone who knew him personally was extremely surprised....

Mr. O’Reilly: In -- in 1988, you did a little speaking engagement in Cleveland, and you were quoted as saying, “Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel. Revolution. Revolution until victory. Rolling to Jerusalem.” Did you say that?

Mr. Al-Arian: Let me just put it into context. When President Bush talked about crusade, we understand what he meant here. The Muslim world thought he is going to carry a cross and go invade the Muslim world and turn them into Christians. We have to understand the context. When you say “Death to Israel,” you mean death to occupation, death to apartheid, death to oppression, death to

...

Mr. O’Reilly: But not death to any human being?

Mr. Al-Arian: No, absolutely not. Absolutely not.

Mr. O’Reilly: No.

Mr. Al-Arian: Absolutely not.

Mr. O’Reilly: All right. So now what we have here is you saying “Death to Israel.” You’re bringing a guy over here who gets paid by the good citizens of Florida and then goes back and becomes one of the lieutenants or generals of the Islamic jihad, but you don’t know nothing about it. ...

You know, Doctor, it looks to me like there’s something wrong down there at the University of South Florida. Am I getting -- am I getting the wrong impression here?

Mr. Al-Arian: You’re getting completely wrong impression, because you can pick and choose and interpret it, you know, different ways.

The fact of the matter is, we have been involved in intellectual-type activity. We brought dozens of people. All of them are intellectual type. You’re going to get the apple -- a bad apple or two, but that -- if you focus on them, you get one conclusion.

The fact of the matter is that we’ve been investigated by the FBI for many years ...

Mr. O’Reilly: Correct.

Mr. Al-Arian: ... and there has been no wrongdoing whatsoever even suggested.

Mr. O’Reilly: Well, I don’t know about that. Your -- your brother-in-law is going to be deported right now. I mean, it looks like he’s going to get kicked out of the country, correct?

Mr. Al-Arian: It has nothing to do with this. His deportation

...

Mr. O’Reilly: It doesn’t have anything to do with it? Your brother-in-law is going to get kicked out of the country, and it doesn’t have anything to do with it?

Mr. Al-Arian: No. Absolutely not.

Mr. O’Reilly: Does that come as a shock to you that he’s going to get kicked out of the country?

Mr. Al-Arian: It was, absolutely. As a Palestinian refugee, he lost his visa. He -- his status was not adjusted. It has nothing to do with all that.

His deportation had to do with the denial of asylum. It has nothing to do with any of the stuff we’re talking about.

Mr. O’Reilly: Yeah. Well, Doctor, you know, with all due respect -- I appreciate you coming on the program, but if I was the CIA, I’d follow you wherever you went. I’d follow you 24 hours ...

Mr. Al-Arian: Well, you don’t know me. You don’t know me. You do not ...

Mr. O’Reilly: That doesn’t matter. With all of this circumstantial evidence ...

Mr. Al-Arian: If you don’t know me, you can’t judge me by ...

Mr. O’Reilly: I’m not judging you.

Mr. Al-Arian: ... simply ...

Mr. O’Reilly: I’m just saying ...

Mr. Al-Arian: That’s exactly what you’re saying.

Mr. O’Reilly: I’m saying I’d be your shadow, Doctor.

Mr. Al-Arian: We’ve been -- we’ve been looked at, and a judge -- a judge has said that we are not a threat to national security.

Mr. O’Reilly: All right.

Mr. Al-Arian: Even the government itself said we’re not.

Mr. O’Reilly: OK. All right, Doctor. I’d still shadow you. I’d go to Denny’s with you, and I’d go everywhere you went. We appreciate you coming on.

Copyright © 2001 Fox News Networks, Inc.

http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Page: A10