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Jewish World Review Feb. 4, 2002 / 22 Shevat, 5762

Diana West

Diana West
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The professor's war

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com -- ONE way American residents used to get money into the pipeline for Islamic Jihad terrorists was to make a check out to the Islamic Committee for Palestine. The ICP was once "the active arm of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine," as a Cleveland imam named Fawwaz Damra put it while pitching for the ICP at a 1988 fundraising event that was captured on video and made public awhile back by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "We like to call it the Islamic Committee for Palestine here for security reasons," he explained.

Security reasons? No wink-wink or nudge-nudge necessary: The ICP, a U.S.-based "charity" affiliated with the state-funded University of Southern Florida, was a front organization for Islamic Jihad until the FBI shut it down in 1995. So, too, was the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, another campus-affiliated group until the middle 1990s.

Both ICP and WISE popped up in a Wall Street Journal roundup of American outposts of terrorism written by Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson last year. The two groups were described by William West of the INS as having been "fronts for the purpose of fund-raising activities for the Islamic Jihad and the Hamas terrorist organizations." Both groups, according to West, had another role: to bring terrorists into this country (including the leadership of Islamic Jihad) by helping procure entry visas. And both groups were run by a tenured University of Southern Florida computer science professor named Sami Al-Arian.

Al-Arian, who has never been accused of a crime and denies any links to terrorists, wasn't well known outside Southern Florida until he appeared on Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor last fall. Maybe it was because Al-Arian sounded so unconvincingly shocked, shocked that one of his institute invitees, Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, had become Islamic Jihad's top dog after returning from the university to the Middle East; or maybe it was because of his classic response to Bill O'Reilly's query whether it was true that Al-Arian had once roared, "Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel. Revolution. Revolution until victory. Rolling to Jerusalem." (Al-Arian prefaced his explanation by saying, "Let me just put it into context ... ") In any event, the professor's appearance prompted hundreds of angry phone calls to the university, including a dozen or more death threats and a dip in both donor contributions and student applications. USF president Judy Genshaft was persuaded to fire Al-Arian in December. Now, Al-Arian vows to get his job back.

Question: Should Al-Arian's role in two terror-linked organizations come under the protective cloak of "academic freedom"? In a word: heck no. First Amendment protections start wearing pretty thin once the speech in question goes toward raising not just eyebrows, but money for the latest in explosive-packed belts for the well-dressed suicide bomber. That is, there is little that is "academic" about activities that end up aiding and abetting those who seek political gain through the routinely grotesque slaughter of unarmed civilians.

Simple, right? Just leave it to the academics to complicate things. Rather than call for a definitive investigation into Al-Arian's activities, Genshaft fired him not for his connect-the-dots terrorist ties, but for a bogus-sounding contractual dispute -- something about his failure to stipulate that he wasn't representing the university when speaking publicly -- and safety concerns over his presence on campus. Meanwhile, the St. Peterburg Times reports that the faculty union has voted overwhelmingly "to throw its full support" behind the fired prof while the American Association of University Professors has threatened to censure the university. The AAUP's chief concern: that Al-Arian have "the academic freedom as a citizen to speak out on controversial topics."

Is this case really about "academic freedom"? Is working in support of Islamic Jihad and Hamas just a "controversial topic"? Americans have learned the hard way how easily terror networks have turned our own freedoms against us. We now need to learn how to safeguard those freedoms, to understand when their abuse is not a test of our virtue, but a smokescreen for their enemies. By fudging, not facing, the facts against Al-Arian, the University of Southern Florida is hardly leading by example.

JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

Up


01/29/02: Disconnected dialogue
01/23/02: Anti-Indiscrimination
01/18/02: How much is enough?
01/15/02: Oh brothers, where art thou?
01/10/02: Air on the side of caution
01/04/02: Blacks seeing red at Harvard
01/02/02: Clinton's campaign continues
12/26/01: A tale of two exhibitions
12/24/01: Taliban Idyll
12/19/01: Right is right
12/17/01: Hillary strikes out
12/13/01: Lost files, lost presidency
12/10/01: Revolutionaries never grow up
12/05/01: Immigration reform talk is not just for 'haters' anymore
12/03/01: A new symbol of justice
11/30/01: Beyond morality
11/26/01: Can't keep a good man down
11/20/01: Tough talk at the United Nations
11/19/01: Hollywood's other battle
11/14/01: What's the matter with Sara Jane?
11/09/01: A beef with bin Laden's Beef Noodles
11/07/01: Facing up to the FBI's past mistakes
11/02/01: A school that teaches patriots to shutup
10/30/01: The gap between Islam and peace
10/26/01: The ties that bind (and gag)
10/24/01: This war is more than Afghanistan
10/22/01: The fatuous fatwa
10/19/01: Left out
10/16/01: Whose definition of terrorism?
10/11/01: Post-stress disorder
10/08/01: How the West has won
10/01/01: Good, bad or ... diplomacy
09/28/01: Drawing a line in stone
09/21/01: Prejudice or prudence?
09/14/01: When our dead will finally rest in hallowed ground
09/07/01: We want our #$%^&*() audience back!
08/24/01: The transformation from Green Mountain State to Green Activist State is all but complete
08/17/01: Enlightenment at Yale
08/10/01: From oppressors to victims, a metamorphosis
08/03/01: Opening the dormitory door: College romance in the New Century
08/01/01: How-To Hackdom: The dubious art of writing books about writing books
07/20/01: Hemming about Hemmings
07/13/01: Justice has not been served in the Loiuma police brutality case
06/22/01: When PC parades are too 'mainstream'
06/22/01: When "viewpoint discrimination" in our schools was not nearly so gnarly a notion
06/15/01: Lieberman flaunts mantle of perpetual aggrievement
06/07/01: Is graciousness the culprit?
06/01/01: The bright side of the Jeffords defection
05/29/01: Campus liberals should be more careful
05/18/01: 'Honest Bill' Clinton and other Ratheresian Logic
05/11/01: Dodging balls, Bugs, and 'brilliance'
05/04/01: Foot in mouth disease and little lost Tories
04/20/01:The last classic Clinton cover-up
04/20/01: D-Day, Schmee-Day
04/06/01: For heaven's sake, a little decency!
03/30/01: The sweet sound of slamming doors and clucking feminists
03/23/01: America's magazines and the 'ick-factor'
03/09/01: Felony neglect
03/02/01: Who's sorry now?
02/23/01: 'Ecumenical niceness' and other latter-day American gifts to the world
02/16/01: Elton and Eminem: Royal dirge-icist meets violent fantasist
02/12/01: If only ...

© 2001, Diana West