Tenured Radical No More

As university professors, we value academic freedom, acknowledging — as did the authors of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)'s influential 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure — that liberty has meaning only in relation to its being “fundamental to the advancement of truth.”

On February 28, Al-Arian — formerly a tenured associate professor of computer engineering at the University of South Florida — entered a guilty plea to conspiracy to procuring “funds, goods, or services to or for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Specially Designated Terrorist [Organization], in violation of 18 U.S.C. §371.” On May 1^st, Al-Arian, 48, was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, though he will get credit for the three years and three months he already has served. His attorney had asked U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr. to release Al-Arian now for immediate deportation, as was made possible by the plea agreement, but the judge refused.

After Al-Arian was arrested in 2003, his university did something it should have done long before (more on this later): it revoked his tenure and terminated him. The firing earned USF president Judy Genshaft and her colleagues a resolution from the AAUP's annual meeting, condemning them for “grave departures from association-supported standards that resulted in serious professional injury to the professor.” The righteous dons further determined that USF's actions were “based on political issues entirely apart from any legitimate academic concerns.”

Now that al-Arian has entered a plea “freely and voluntarily,” some of our colleagues stubbornly refuse to acknowledge its full significance. Two months after al-Arian signed his agreement with prosecutors, and over two weeks after its details were published, the Chronicle of Higher Education laments the former professor's “three-year ordeal behind bars” and reports on a range of people who found his additional prison sentence “very disappointing” and “really devastating.” What happened to our duty to “advance the truth?” Does this duty not include the truth about Sami Al-Arian?

The really “devastating” truth about Sami Al-Arian is that in his plea agreement he concedes the key element in the government's charge: that he conspired to aid Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), even after the Clinton administration issued Executive Order 12947 on January 23, 1995, declaring PIJ a “specially designated terrorist” organization. That Order outlawed all support for PIJ by anyone subject to US jurisdiction.

PIJ is considered by many counterterrorism experts to be the single most radical terrorist group operating among Palestinians. It blends nationalism with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and the revolutionary ideas of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. According to the teachings of the group's “spiritual” guide, Sheikh 'Abd al-'Aziz 'Awda — named in the Al-Arian plea — the Holy Land is currently the locus of an epic confrontation between Muslim forces (haq) and Jews and Christians who embody the forces of apostasy (batil). To annihilate batil, PIJ not only sends suicide bombers after civilian targets but also indiscriminately launches Qassam rockets into Israel from Gaza — sending 56 onto civilian lands in April 2006 alone, despite Israel's voluntary withdrawal from that territory.

Al-Arian now admits not only that he was associated with PIJ during “the late 1980s and early to mid-1990s, but that he continued to perform services for the terrorist group” in 1995 and thereafter. Indeed, one of Al-Arian's co-defendants, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, enjoys — thanks to a November 1995 determination by the Clinton administration — the dubious distinction of being a “specially designated terrorist.” [It emerged that he was no less than secretary-general of PIJ, his cover in the US being executive director of the World and Islamic Studies Enterprise (WISE), a “think tank” at USF founded by Al-Arian.]

Al-Arian's services for the terrorist group included “filing for immigration benefits for individuals associated with PIJ, hiding the identities of individuals associated with PIJ, and providing assistance for an individual associated with PIJ.” Buried in the legalese, a disturbing series of facts emerge about what these “services” entailed. For example, Al-Arian and co-defendant Mazen Al-Najjar deposited funds into WISE's account to create a salary required to renew co-defendant Bashir Musa Mohammed Nafi's visa. So much for the AAUP's claim that the activities of Al-Arian and WISE created no “legitimate academic concerns” for USF administrators…

Al-Arian's jury trial ended in disarray last December — the jury, clearly confused by the defense's legal obfuscations and possibly inclined toward nullification, found the former professor not guilty on eight counts while deadlocking on nine others. But his plea agreement stipulated that the defendant “is pleading guilty because [he] is in fact guilty. The defendant certifies that the facts set forth below are true, and were this case to go to trial, the United States would be able to prove those facts and others beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Judge Moody should be applauded for his moral and legal clarity in rejecting the request by Al-Arian's lawyer that the court consider letting the defendant off with “time served.” Instead, the judge imposed the maximum allowable sentence under federal sentencing guidelines, and delivered a stinging rebuke to Al-Arian from the bench. It deserves to be quoted at length:

Dr. Al-Arian, as usual, you speak very eloquently. I find it interesting that here in public in front of everyone you praised this country, the same country that in private you referred to as “the great Satan.” …You are a master manipulator.

You looked your neighbors in the eyes and said you had nothing to do with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This trial exposed that as a lie…. The evidence was clear in this case that you were a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad…

When Iran, the major funding source of the PIJ, became upset because the PIJ could not account for how it was spending its money, it was to your board of directors that it went to demand changes. Iran wanted its representative to have a say in how its money was spent. To stop that, you leaped into action. You offered to rewrite the bylaws of the organization…

But when it came to blowing up women and children on buses, did you leap into action then? … No. You lifted not one finger, made not one phone call. To the contrary, you laughed when you heard about the bombings, what you euphemistically call “operations”…

And yet, still in the face of your own words, you continue to lie to your friends and supporters, claiming to abhor violence and to seek only aid for widows and orphans. Your only connection to widows and orphans is that you create them, even among the Palestinians; and you create them, not by sending your children to blow themselves out of existence. No. You exhort others to send their children… You are indeed a master manipulator.

If AAUP and Al-Arian's academic fellow travelers were as concerned about “the advancement of truth” as they profess to be, they might reflect on the judge's words. In 2002, Salon Magazine wrote that the only question raised by Al-Arian's firing was whether a university could “punish controversial speech by one of its professors.” No, Salon, that's not quite it. The only question raised by the Al-Arian firing is whether the academics once duped by this dangerous terrorist will have the courage to admit the truth. If they don't, what good is their tenure?

Michael I. Krauss is professor of law at George Mason University School of Law. J. Peter Pham is director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University. Both are academic fellows of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies