A large number of faculty, loyal alumni and United Methodist Church members are deeply concerned about the proposed package that includes the Bush Library and think tank at SMU. According to President Gerald Turner’s Jan. 5 letter, the operation of the think tank will not be accountable to SMU or the United Methodist Church that owns the University. It will report to the Bush Foundation.
There needs to be an open debate about the project, both on the campus and among the 11 million members of The United Methodist Church. SMU is the only university among the 123 educational institutions that are related to the UMC that has the Methodist name in it. What the university chooses to do will reflect on the church that founded the university.
According to the New York Daily News, “President Bush and his truest believers are about to launch their final campaign-an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive for the Bush presidential library” (1-2). Bush loyalists have already identified wealthy heirs, Arab nations and captains of industry as potential “mega” donors who can give $10 to $20 million each, and they are pressing for a formal site announcement expected early this year (1-2).
The President’s allies believe they need enormous funds to shape how history views Bush’s legacy. A Bush insider said, “The more [money] you have, the more influence [on history] you can exert.” Much of the funding will be used to build a “legacy-polishing” think tank, which several Bush insiders have called the Institute for Democracy. Bush’s institute will hire neo-conservative scholars and “give them money to write papers and books favorable to the President’s policies” (1-2).
Former senior vice president at the Heritage Foundation Burton Yale Pines has called think tanks like the one proposed at SMU “the shock troops of the conservative revolution” (3). Think tanks are like universities minus the systems of peer review and other mechanisms that academia uses to promote diversity of thought and honest intellectual debate. Ethical academics are expected to conduct their research first and draw their conclusions second, but this process is often reversed at free-standing think tanks. In general, research from think tanks is ideologically driven in accordance with the interests of its wealthy benefactors, in this case “mega” donor Bush loyalists.
The United Methodist Church has been under attack from a comparatively small neo-conservative think tank called the Institute on Religion and Democracy for 25 years, which spends about half million dollars a year relentlessly bashing the UMC for its social conscience. Yet President Bush told Time Magazine in 2005 that the founder of IRD and present board member, neo-conservative Catholic priest Richard John Neuhaus, is a trusted advisor (4).
When President Bush met with religious journalists in May 2004, the religious authority he cited most often was not a fellow United Methodist or even another Protestant. It was a man the president affectionately calls “Father Richard” who, the President explained to Time in 2005, “helps me articulate these [religious] things.” A senior administration official confirmed to Time that Neuhaus “does have a fair amount of under-the-radar influence” on such policies as abortion, stem-cell research, cloning and the defense-of-marriage amendment (4).
Imagine what IRD and other neo-conservatives could do with $500 million and the ex-president’s continued support at SMU!
Southern Methodist University’s mission statement says “The University is dedicated to the values of academic freedom and open inquiry and to its United Methodist heritage. Those who have been loyal to SMU and the United Methodist Church deserve to have an open and comprehensive debate about the Bush project over the next several months before any formal agreement is approved.”
About the writers:
Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D., is a United Methodist minister and research psychologist living in New York City. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a 1978 graduate of Perkins School of Theology at SMU. He has co-authored 12 books including: Counseling Survivors of Traumatic Events (Abingdon, 2003) and Reflections on Grief and the Spiritual Journey (Abingdon, 2005).
George W. Crawford, Ph.D., Professor of Physics, SMU, 1963-1992, Professor Emeritus teaching one course per year, 1993-2005. Elected to serve on the Methodist Board of Christian Social Concerns (now Church and Society) from 1960-72. Long time member of Northaven United Methodist Church in Dallas.
References:
(1) W library in record book $500M center would be priciest for a Prez by Thomas M. DeFrank, nydailynews.com/front/story/ 475052p-399492c.html.
(2) Dubya’s Tower of Babel by Bill Berkowitz, mediatransparency.com/story.php?storyID=171.
(3) Battle Tanks: How think tanks shape the public agenda. Center for Media and Democracy by Bob Burton, prwatch.org/prwissues/2005Q4/battle-tanks.
(4) Neocon Catholics target mainline Protestants by Andrew Weaver, mediatransparency.com/story.php?storyID=142.
