Al-Arian case not first to bedevil a USF chief

TAMPA -- Forty years ago, Sheldon Grebstein found himself in a situation similar to the one now faced by Professor Sami Al-Arian.

Grebstein, then a 34-year-old University of South Florida professor, had been placed on paid leave and was waiting for the school's president to decide whether he would be fired or reinstated.

The English professor was accused of distributing salacious materials in a writing class to students and of violating a policy regarding selection of classroom material.

"I couldn't believe it myself," Grebstein said Thursday from USF. "I was incredulous that this piece of writing could have created such a fervor."

His case led the American Association of University Professors to censure USF, something the group has threatened to do this year over the Al-Arian case.

The faculty union invited Grebstein, now a retired president of the State University of New York Purchase, to visit the school in the wake of the Al-Arian case, considered by some to be the latest threat to academic freedom at USF.

About 100 people crowded into a lecture room at the library, some sitting on the floor and standing in the hall, to hear Grebstein's 30-minute talk Thursday afternoon about his experiences four decades ago. The crowd included Al-Arian's wife, Nahla, and one of his daughters, Leena, a USF student.

Al-Arian, a tenured computer science professor, was suspended last year after allegations that he had ties to terrorism were aired on Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor two weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was placed on paid leave from his $67,500-a-year job after the appearance.

USF president Judy Genshaft took the unusual step last month of filing suit in Hillsborough Circuit Court, asking a judge to determine whether firing Al-Arian would violate his First Amendment rights.

Grebstein, who answered questions Thursday for more than an hour, never spoke of the Al-Arian case but talked about academic freedom and how surprised he was that his case became a cause for students and faculty in the 1960s.

"I wasn't an egghead living in an ivory tower," he said. "I was in the front trenches, and the battle was over people's minds."

USF president John Allen suspended Grebstein in 1962 for using a literary review, which was critical of beatnik writing and gave samples of writing which contained mild profanity.

"I couldn't believe what I was hearing, the suddenness of it, the incredibility of it," Grebstein said about his suspension without an investigation.

State Sen. Charley Johns and his investigative committee, which had investigated influences and morals at other state universities, referred the case to the state universities' governing body, the Board of Control. That led to the suspension.

The Johns committee searched for students and faculty at universities who were sympathetic to Communism, but also looked at other issues such as sexual deviancy.

"I wasn't a sexual deviant ... just an ordinary guy going about his work," he said.

Grebstein was reinstated after a nine-member faculty board studied the case and said he should return to work. Months later, he left for Harpur College of the State University of New York in Binghamton. He later became a dean and then a president.

USF spent four years on the AAUP's censure list in the 1960s based on the Grebstein case, and after Allen refused to hire a political scientist who had written a book critical of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War.

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