Spring Break
Focusing the discussion on the Bush Institute, NOT the Library
Janis Bergman, David A. Freidel, and Valerie A. Karras
Issue date: 1/19/07 Section: Opinion
One of us served as Faculty Senate President in 1989-90, in the wake of a crisis in governance brought on by a football scandal. We survived that crisis and were a stronger, better community for the bonds of trust the faculty forged with the administration and trustees. We respectfully ask that the Bush Foundation entrust us with the responsibility of ensuring that the Bush Institute pursues truth as we all do here. SMU's motto, cast in bronze at the center of Dallas Hall, is "the truth shall make us free."
In brief, three important issues emerge with respect to the proposal for the Bush Institute:
1) How can an ideological, partisan institute/think tank independent of SMU be consistent with our university's mission statement and with academic freedom and process? The issue is not, as President Turner suggested in his remarks, whether the Bush Institute would directly impinge on SMU's academic freedom-it wouldn't have that authority.
Rather, the issue is whether the university can remain consistent with its own commitment to academic principles if it allows on its campus an institute which is not itself governed by academic principles, e.g., by publishing and promoting only those position papers, histories, lectures, and other works which pass an ideological litmus test, or by hiring as research fellows only those with certain political or ideological views. (In fact, as proposed by the Bush Foundation, the Foundation would hire the director of the Institute, and the director in turn would hire the fellows of the Institute.)
At its heart, academic freedom requires a commitment to diversity in methodology and views. Academic principles require that, in the aggregate, scholarly communities carry out exhaustive research, present all relevant facts and positions, and consider them thoroughly. The Bush Institute, proposed as an autonomous, ideological think tank, would fail to meet these standards by not representing a diversity of views and by promoting a specific ideological agenda with respect to political history and public policy initiatives.
In brief, three important issues emerge with respect to the proposal for the Bush Institute:
1) How can an ideological, partisan institute/think tank independent of SMU be consistent with our university's mission statement and with academic freedom and process? The issue is not, as President Turner suggested in his remarks, whether the Bush Institute would directly impinge on SMU's academic freedom-it wouldn't have that authority.
Rather, the issue is whether the university can remain consistent with its own commitment to academic principles if it allows on its campus an institute which is not itself governed by academic principles, e.g., by publishing and promoting only those position papers, histories, lectures, and other works which pass an ideological litmus test, or by hiring as research fellows only those with certain political or ideological views. (In fact, as proposed by the Bush Foundation, the Foundation would hire the director of the Institute, and the director in turn would hire the fellows of the Institute.)
At its heart, academic freedom requires a commitment to diversity in methodology and views. Academic principles require that, in the aggregate, scholarly communities carry out exhaustive research, present all relevant facts and positions, and consider them thoroughly. The Bush Institute, proposed as an autonomous, ideological think tank, would fail to meet these standards by not representing a diversity of views and by promoting a specific ideological agenda with respect to political history and public policy initiatives.
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