Opinion: The Al-Arian factor

University of South Florida officials finally are being more honest about their reasons for wanting to get rid of professor Sami Al-Arian. The real issues always have involved Al-Arian's apparent links to terrorist groups, but USF president Judy Genshaft originally fell back on side issues that muddled the case, alarmed faculty groups and civil libertarians and threatened to set a troubling precedent for academic freedom at USF.

Wednesday, Genshaft dropped the pretexts, which was a step in the right direction. There were no more strained arguments that Al-Arian should be fired because he failed to make clear during his public appearances that he did not speak for the university, or because he caused a few nuts to make campus bomb threats. But Genshaft also tried to pass the buck to the courts. That course only prolongs the Al-Arian controversy and weakens the university's authority.

The courts may well refuse USF's unprecedented request for a ruling, before the fact, on whether firing Al-Arian would violate his First Amendment rights. In that case, Genshaft may finally have to make and defend her own decision. She certainly won't lack for in-house legal counsel. She brought a phalanx of lawyers to Wednesday's announcement to protect her from answering questions about USF's revised case against Al-Arian.

Genshaft has made matters messier than they had to be, but she was not served well by her predecessors. Al-Arian, a computer science professor, created problems for the university several years ago when he caused it to become affiliated with an Islamic studies think tank that federal investigators later accused of having links to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups. The think tank was disbanded after the FBI raided it in 1995, but a subsequent USF inquiry -- which turned out to be more of an exercise in damage-control than fact-finding -- led to no action against Al-Arian or the USF officials who allowed his think tank to become associated with the university. After two years on paid leave, Al-Arian was reinstated to the faculty in 1998. Now he is on another extended paid leave as his case drags on. It's good non-work if you can get it.

Genshaft and Dick Beard, chairman of USF trustees, talked in the present tense Wednesday in alleging Al-Arian's links to Palestinian terrorist groups. Genshaft said Al-Arian "is using academic freedom as a shield for improper activities." Beard said Al-Arian has been "associated with terrorists for the last 15 years." Federal authorities are still investigating Al-Arian, and his activities in the late 1980s and early 1990s give them plenty to examine. However, no one has produced evidence that Al-Arian has engaged in any improper activity since his think tank was shut down in the mid-1990s -- unless one counts his bumbling appearance on a cable talk show a few days after last September's terrorist attacks.

Al-Arian's looking foolish on The O'Reilly Factor embarrassed USF on a national stage, but that is not a firing offense. Unless evidence of more serious recent impropriety emerges, Genshaft will have a hard time justifying firing Al-Arian for actions that already were exonerated by one USF inquiry.

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