I have resisted commenting on the Bush Library – in part because my opposition would come as a surprise to no one, in part because others have argued against it much more articulately than I could and also in part because as a non-tenured lecturer, my opinion matters about as much as that of the feral cats that live around the over-crowded Clements Hall, which houses not only Dedman advising, foreign languages and math, but also education, honors, ESL, women’s studies, African-American studies, ethnic studies and Mexican-American studies – have I left anyone out? (Do you think W. will share part of his space?)
Not to mention that lecturers serve at the pleasure of the university president – not unlike the recently ousted generals who opposed the Iraq surge served at the pleasure of President Bush.
So, do I think the Bush Library will be good for SMU? In theory, yes. In principle, no. In theory, presidential libraries are good for universities. The only problem is we haven’t had a president for the last six years. We’ve had a dictator who would be king.
Kings build monuments of narcissism to warehouse their egos – like the (fallen) Colossus of Ramesses II, which Shelley so eloquently mocks in his sonnet.
The discussion taking place on campus is little more than window dressing disguised as debate, not unlike the Baker-Hamilton Commission, which the president treated with the same interest he might treat an ugly blind date foisted on him by his father.
That is not to say that there aren’t those – on both sides of this issue – who aren’t sincere. But to call what is taking place a debate is akin to calling the Bush presidency a democracy. There is neither debate nor democracy when the outcome is pre-determined.
While the faculty attempts to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, the iceberg has already torn open the hull of the ship.
If 70 percent of the American public, the Baker Hamilton Commission, and a majority of retired and active-duty generals were not enough to dissuade a contumacious frat-boy-turned-president from escalating an already losing war in Iraq, the chances that a group of liberal academics could influence his decisionb are as remote as Bush’s misguided expectation that history will vindicate his legacy.
Not surprisingly, Drs. Hopkins and Ippolito, chairmen respectively of the departments of history and political science, have weighed in on the controversy.
Needless to say, the opinions of the chairmen whose departments, as they point out in their recent article, will be “vitally engaged in the scholarship to emerge from the Bush Library” matter.
It is unfortunate, however, that what began as an intellectual argument in favor of the library ended with a maudlin plea to sentimentalism.
“We should be honored,” they write, “that SMU will have the opportunity to be a major documentary repository that will over time allow generations of scholars and their audiences to understand better the undeniably crucial years of the Bush presidency.”
If that is the pre-construction rhetoric, I can only imagine how pathetic the dedication ceremony will be.
There is no honor in hosting a library for a president whose tenure has been marked by corruption, abuse of power, neglect of its citizenry, dishonesty, deception, cronyism, divisiveness and bellicosity.
As for the think tank, what the Bush cabal plans to build is more likely to be a war center, considering the neocons’ penchant for waging war as a vehicle of foreign policy or an US-Arab chamber of commerce, considering the list of donors.
Ultimately, when all is said and done (read: built), people will come – not unlike a new Wal-Mart on the outskirts of a small town. But at what price?
Drs. Hopkins and Ippolito allude to the “caveats and concerns” associated with the library. The fact that his department is grooming students who think that liberal professors should be routedc should be a primary concern for Dr. Ippolito, not to mention a scary portent for every professor.
There is no question that SMU will become more conservative when the library is built. An ideological shift in the faculty will be inevitable as forces wreak havoc from above and below – not unlike the Bush administration has wrought havoc on the environment, foreign policy, civil liberties, the middle class and the working poor.
The question is how conservative will the George Bush mega-mall make an already largely homogeneous student body.
How long before the moral conscience of Methodism is replaced by the moralizing intolerance of rightwing fundamentalism?
How long before SMU becomes GBU?
Endnotes:
a) youtube.com/watch?v=YNo0_klkzis
b) youtube.com/watch?v=slowrojlmbs
c) yahoo.com/s/ap/20070113/ap_on_re_us/bush_library
About the writer:
George Henson is a Spanish professor at SMU. He can be reached [email protected].
