Word: arians
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...hard to guess which portrait of al-Arian garnered more media attention after Sept. 11--or which finally got him fired from the University of South Florida in Tampa, despite his position as a tenured professor. The dismissal, which al-Arian said last month he will fight, adds the free flow of ideas in academia to the catalog of freedoms that civil libertarians say is at stake in post-Sept. 11 America. "If this [firing] happens," says al-Arian, 44, "then every single tenured professor across the country could be terminated, especially Arabs...
...defense, the university argues that its physical and financial security are at risk. Al-Arian's views, it says, have provoked death threats against him. Moreover, the school fears, donations could dry up. Why, asks U.S.F.'s lawyer, Tom Gonzalez, should the university "be made to bear the burden" of the controversy al-Arian created...
...Arian, who arrived in the U.S. at age 17, first sparked controversy more than a decade ago at the start of the intifadeh, the Palestinian uprising against Israel. He insists that his "Death to Israel" rants, which he has since dropped, were "political rhetoric against Israeli oppression" and not a call to violence against civilians. But terrorists did visit his conferences. Among them: Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, later convicted in the WTC bombing, and economist Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, who helped direct al-Arian's U.S.F.-based World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE) and turned up in Syria...
...They burned us," al-Arian insists, arguing that even U.S. and Israeli intelligence were unaware of Shallah's double life. After a documentary film on terrorism raised questions about al-Arian that year, the FBI investigated but found nothing to charge him with. WISE disbanded, and U.S.F. put him on a two-year paid leave...
...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...