Word: arian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...your report on the firing of Muslim professor Sami al-Arian from the faculty of the University of South Florida because of his anti-Israel stand [SOCIETY, Feb. 4]: This firing is a violation of First Amendment rights, to say nothing about al-Arian's being a tenured professor. When self-righteous citizens like the university president who dismissed al-Arian disregard the law and ignore the Constitution because they disagree with an individual's opinion, they become the very terrorists they profess to abhor. PHIL WILT Van Nuys, Calif...
...call al-Arian's views pro-Muslim is slightly wrongheaded. One who rants "Death to Israel" and attracts notorious leaders of Islamic Jihad is not pro-Muslim but a militant hatemonger. We want our teachers to be positive role models for our children. Diabolic creeps like al-Arian do not belong in U.S. institutions of higher learning or any educational institution at all. PAUL HARDY Tacoma, Wash...
...last fall al-Arian was an obscure computer prof again--until the Fox Network's Bill O'Reilly angrily asked him in September to explain the FBI probe. Al-Arian condemned the Sept. 11 attacks but repeated his support for the intifadeh. Afterward, U.S.F. suspended him, using the somewhat tenuous claim that he had linked the school to his politics by letting Fox identify him as a U.S.F. professor. New U.S.F. president Judy Genshaft chafed as outsiders began to call her school "Jihad U" and "University of Suicidal Fanatics." Critics noted that al-Arian's brother-in-law, Mazen...
...forfeit her school's academic credibility? Genshaft won't comment, but al-Arian has received a flood of support from First Amendment experts and academic groups, including U.S.F.'s faculty union, which has voted to join al-Arian's legal battle. Its president, Professor Roy Weatherford, says he disagrees with al-Arian's militancy, but he calls the firing "cowardly." "It's clear," he says, "that the real reasons were political...
Genshaft hardly risks undergraduate riots. Although many students describe al-Arian as a popular teacher, 22 of U.S.F.'s 48 student senators voted to support his ouster (the rest abstained or didn't bother to show up). "The students are the ultimate consumers of the university, and they're more concerned about safety," says student senate president Sammy Kalmowicz, 23, a political-science major. Perhaps. But should Kalmowicz someday become a college professor, how safe will he feel, after the al-Arian firing, to speak his mind...