With almost two years left in office, you would think critics of George W. Bush have enough current policy disagreements to keep themselves content. Turns out that some are already looking to argue about his legacy.
In December, the committee tasked to select a location for the Bush presidential museum decided on Southern Methodist University. The proposed library will house Bush's papers, as well as a research institute to further "domestic and international goals" such as "compassionate conservatism, the spread of freedom and democracy throughout the world, and defeating terrorism."
Sounds admirable enough - unless you're a faculty member at SMU. Last fall, two theology professors wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper asking, "Do we want SMU to benefit financially from a legacy of massive violence, destruction, and death brought about by the Bush presidency in dismissal of broad public opinion?"
A letter sent to SMU's president signed by 68 faculty members took the same stance.
It worried about "certain actions and attitudes of President Bush during his term in office," including (brace yourself) "the erosion of habeas corpus, denial of global warming, disrespect of international treaties, alienation of longtime U.S. allies, environmental predation, disregard for the rights of gay persons, a pre-emptive war based on false premises and other perceived forms of disrespect for the created order and the global community."
Ah, universities. Where else would people protest a self-financed library that will inevitably bring prominence and prestige to the host school?
It's hardly the first time this debate has raged. In 1981, Duke refused to host the Richard Nixon library, fearing the university would become affiliated with the disgraced former president's policies. Lyndon Johnson's library opened at the University of Texas, Austin, in 1971 to a welcome wagon of thousands of protestors. And Stanford surely deserves an award in this department. Not only was Herbert Hoover forced to move his library to Iowa due to fears of a leftist faculty-led assault on his legacy, but the usual suspects blocked a proposal for Ronald Reagan's papers, too.
As Stanley Fish has pointed out, it's especially ironic that academics, "who are by profession the custodians of the long-range view, should rush to make short-term judgments born of the passions of the moment." By hosting a library, a university is not offering wholesale endorsement of a former president's views. It's merely agreeing to serve a repository of information that historians can sort through to determine the merit of those views.
Too often, though, faculty members hide their raw political disagreements under the guise of academic integrity, usually on issues far less momentous than the construction of a presidential library. For instance, when the University of Minnesota needed a professor of constitutional law for a semester, it offered a position to Robert Delahunty, a respected lawyer with a long record of government service.
Nine faculty members objected. Their reason? Delahunty had served in the Bush administration, and wrote a memo arguing that neither the Geneva Convention nor the federal War Crimes Act applied to detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Though they acknowledge in their protest letter the memo was authored "outside of any academic function," the law professors nonetheless argued that "hiring an individual like Robert Delahunty, whose credentials are tainted, places at risk not only the reputation of the Law School but also that of the law faculty and student body."
If it sounds vaguely Stalinist, well, it is. The question is not whether Delahunty's qualified to teach (he clearly is and has held other professorships), but whether he has views that are similar to the faculty's. So much for academic freedom.
The crass politicization so evident in this and the battle over the Bush library only hurts universities in the end. Bush can find plenty of places to store his papers, but SMU probably will not get another chance to have a research institute of presidential stature on its campus. Unfortunately, it may realize this too late.
Duke did. In 2002, the Durham university hosted a conference on Richard Nixon's presidential achievements. It would have been awfully nice to have had that library.
Andrew Buttaro is a Heights staff columnist. He welcomes comments at buttaroa@bc.heights.com.
