On Dec. 21, SMU President R. Gerald Turner informed the university community that the George W. Bush Presidential Library Search Committee had chosen to enter into exclusive negotiations with SMU. On Jan. 5, President Turner notified the university community that the project now included a proposal for a Bush Institute, independent of SMU and answerable only to the Bush Foundation (the funding arm for the library).
Faculty Senate President Rhonda Blair convoked a special faculty meeting Jan. 9 to discuss the proposal. A list of questions and concerns was prepared, which President Turner addressed on Jan. 17 at the spring general faculty meeting. His remarks have not allayed some of these concerns.
Much of the SMU community and the broader public have been misled by publicity suggesting faculty opposition to SMU’s hosting the future George W. Bush Presidential Library. What is true is that many faculty members are concerned about the Bush Foundation’s proposal for an autonomous, ideologically-driven policy institute.
According to President Turner’s letter of January 5: “Some presidential libraries are associated with academic schools created in conjunction with each library … Instead of a new school at SMU, under discussion is the establishment of a George W. Bush Institute. Although some comparisons have been made between this entity and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a key difference would be that the Hoover Institution reports to Stanford University, while the proposed Bush Institute would report to the Bush Foundation.”
The professors signed below represent a diverse group of faculty who strongly feel the need for a broader campus discussion of the issues at the heart of the proposal for an independent Bush Institute. We stand for the principles of academic freedom and intellectual integrity central to any university. President Turner insists that these principles will be preserved if we accept the current proposal. We believe they will be preserved only if the proposed Bush Institute is accountable to our president, trustees and faculty, as is the case with all other institutes on our campus.
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.
2) President Turner addressed the issue of potential joint appointments between the Institute and SMU departments and schools. As he asserted, of course it would be necessary for any joint appointments to follow SMU academic appointment procedures. But the deeper issue is whether such appointments should even be considered.
Joint appointments would, over time, potentially skew the ideological balance of the faculty of certain departments, such as economics, history and political science. This would be particularly true if such joint appointments were to be funded by already existing faculty lines, which President Turner suggested as a possibility.
Normal academic process for faculty appointments calls for an open search focused on identifying someone with recognized expertise in a certain area of study, regardless of the scholar’s particular views on that topic. Joint appointments with the Bush Institute would result in hiring scholars who, by definition-in virtue of their position at the Institute-would be wedded to a particular ideological viewpoint regarding that area of study.
3) The above issues underlie what perhaps should be of deepest concern to all stakeholders in SMU. While President Turner enumerated the economic and other benefits of the Bush Library’s being housed at SMU, his list of advantages omitted a crucial item specifically connected to the proposed Institute. Has there been any consideration of whether an autonomous and academically unaccountable Bush Institute on SMU’s campus would heighten – or, by contrast, would lessen-SMU’s academic reputation?
Relying on the administrative independence of the Bush Institute from SMU is disingenuous. Such a legal distinction between the Institute and SMU would be largely unknown by and irrelevant to the public and its perceptions. In fact, it would simply allow the Bush Institute to reap the benefits of the intellectual and academic credibility in the public eye which SMU could provide, without being accountable to SMU to maintain the university’s own academic standards of research, teaching, and publishing. This will not escape the notice of the academic community, including potential future faculty and students.
Given the conditions of independence and unaccountability currently demanded by the Bush Foundation for the Institute, what would the university’s association with an autonomous Bush Institute do to SMU’s intellectual and academic credibility, and thus to its ability to attract the highest-quality faculty and students, both undergraduate and graduate, of whatever ideological stripe?
This is, or should be, one of the most significant long-term concerns for SMU’s trustees, donors, administrators, faculty, and students.
About the writers:
Janis Bergman-Carton is an associate Art History professor in Meadows. She can be reached at [email protected].
David A. Freidel is a University Distinguished professor of Anthropology in Dedman. He can be reached at [email protected].
Valerie A. Karras is an assistant professor of Church History in Perkins. She can be reached at [email protected].
