I Am Ashamed

Amarillo College has been on the AAUP (American Association of University Professors) list of censured institutions since 1968. All of the principals who violated an Amarillo College faculty member's due process rights in an arbitrary dismissal case are deceased. There are few faculty members at Amarillo College today with first-hand memory of the darkest moment in the College's history. Nearly 40 years later, I am ashamed to be associated with an institution that has done nothing to remove this black mark. As the president of the University of Central Arkansas says within this report: ..."I personally believe that there is a national stigma that is associated with being on the censure list," he says. "The first reaction is 'Why?' Any inquisitive, intelligent person is not going to dismiss it. Any prudent faculty member applying at a university is going to ask why." And that is what I ask:
WHY?

[x CHE]
July 11, 2003

Censure, Be Gone

By SCOTT SMALLWOOD

Getting blacklisted by the American Association of University
Professors does not usually make college presidents quake in their boots -- at least not publicly.

Professors would love it if a censure imposed by the nation's leading faculty group prompted immediate change. But college presidents are more likely to call the association biased and misguided. They complain that the association doesn't really
have the right to be investigating and censuring anybody.

When Savannah College of Art and Design was censured in 1993, administrators said the "AAUP is out of the mainstream of modern American thought." Five years later, when Brigham Young University was censured, a spokesman complained that the group had "a history of antipathy toward religious colleges."

Then, last year, in comments that were blunt even for a college president whose institution was about to be put on the blacklist, George Kidd Jr., of Tiffin University, said the censure was meaningless. The AAUP is "a very old-fashioned group that is still dealing with a 1940 book of rules," said Mr. Kidd, who retired shortly afterward after 21 years as president. "Education has moved beyond the AAUP in spite of
their desire to prevent progress."

So forgive the professors at the University of Central Arkansas for being a bit surprised when their new president last year said his absolute first priority was to get the institution off the censure list. For Lu Hardin, a former state senator and previously a tenured professor at Arkansas Tech University, the censure was far from meaningless.

"I personally believe that there is a national stigma that is associated with being on the censure list," he says. "The first reaction is 'Why?' Any inquisitive, intelligent person is not going to dismiss it. Any prudent faculty member applying at a university is going to ask why."

Now, after just a year with Mr. Hardin in charge, and just three years after the censure was imposed, the AAUP can't stop praising Central Arkansas, calling the new faculty handbook a model. And at its annual meeting last month, the association removed the institution from the list of academic bad boys.

No Advisory Role

The trouble began back in the late 1980s, professors at Central Arkansas say. That's when Winfred L. Thompson took over as president.

Rebecca Williams, an English professor who has taught at the university since 1975, says that the faculty's influence waned under Mr. Thompson. Professors had less say on promotion decisions and on changes like the consolidation of departments, she says.

In 1994, Mr. Thompson lost a vote of confidence by the faculty, but it didn't faze him. According to one professor, the president often said he cared about only four votes -- the four that constitute the majority of the seven-member Board of
Trustees. "If faculty didn't agree with the administration, they were ignored," says Mike Schaefer, an English professor and former president of the Faculty Senate. "We had lost our advisory role."

Clint Johnson, an economics professor and member of the local AAUP chapter, says Mr. Thompson "approached the university from a lawyer's perspective, essentially an adversarial perspective." During his 14 years at the helm, Mr. Thompson never upheld a faculty grievance committee decision, according to Mr. Johnson.

The former president, who is now the chancellor of American University of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, did not respond to requests for an interview.

Despite all the criticism, Mr. Thompson did have a positive effect on the university in some ways, say faculty members. Mr. Johnson, for instance, praises the improvement of the music and art programs, as well as the former president's
aesthetic eye. "The campus looks great," he says. But Mr. Thompson's relationships with the faculty members fell apart.

Frustrations came to a head in 1998. That's when Mr. Thompson proposed a system in which he would give new faculty members the ability to choose a tenure-track job or a higher salary without tenure. While the plan earned national attention for being innovative, faculty members derided it as an attempt to
destroy tenure.

That same year, the university fired a tenured English professor for his disruptive behavior, including growling and spitting at colleagues. The AAUP investigated that case after concerns about due process were raised. The association also
investigated the case of a professor who had been denied tenure but was kept on in a different position. The association found that one underlying element in the decision of her tenure committee was how many other tenured professors
were in her department -- a motivation that violates an AAUP guideline.

Finally, the association examined the cases of two lecturers who, after eight years at the university, were told they would not be hired for a ninth year.

The investigation led to the university's being placed on the censure list in 2000. The association censures colleges where it believes "conditions for academic freedom and tenure are unsatisfactory." Nearly 200 institutions have been censured by
the association since 1930, and 49 are on the list now. The names of the censured institutions are published regularly in the AAUP's magazine, Academe, and several academic associations mention that a college has been censured when advertising job openings.

"We were pleased that there was going to be a kind of national spotlight on the problems," says Mr. Schaefer. "Obviously you don't want to be censured, but I thought it was helpful that outside people recognized that we had problems here."

However, members of the Board of Trustees, like scores of leaders of blacklisted colleges in the past, dismissed the censure as unimportant. One said the board would "pretty much ignore it." Another called it "a nonevent." And Mr. Thompson
was defiant: "The university's policies, practices, and procedures will not be dictated by the AAUP."

'A Model Case'

While Mr. Thompson may have cared little about the censure, it did get the attention of Lu Hardin, who was then the state's director of higher education. He told a newspaper reporter at the time: "Obviously, I have respect for the AAUP, and you
take any vote like this seriously. The only measure of the effect any vote like this ever has is does it deter faculty from coming."

Two years later, Mr. Hardin got the chance to do something about it when he was appointed president of Central Arkansas following Mr. Thompson's retirement. Throughout the interviews and then when he arrived on the campus in September 2002, he emphasized five goals. The first one was to get off the censure list. Nine months later, he sounds like a spokesman for the AAUP.

"Academic freedom is still one of the most important tenets of a university," he says. "Academic freedom and due process are what we're about. If free speech and due process do not exist without qualification on a university campus, then where do they exist?"

Faculty members and administrators agree that Mr. Hardin deserves much of the credit for improving the relationship with the faculty and getting off the AAUP's blacklist.

"He had his hands outstretched," says A. Gabriel Estaban, the provost. "He's been very open with the faculty, and the faculty have a better sense now that the administration is willing to listen, not just pay lip service."

Immediately after Mr. Hardin took office, a faculty committee -- composed of three members appointed by the Faculty Senate and three from the AAUP chapter -- began meeting with the president and other administrators to discuss the policy
changes that needed to be made.

First, the individual cases that the AAUP was investigating had to be resolved. The fired professor had already settled his lawsuit against the university. The professor denied tenure in 1998 was granted tenure. And the two instructors who
had not been hired were given financial compensation.

But more daunting, the president says, was fixing what he called "an ambiguous and outdated faculty handbook."

The committee and administrators, including the university's general counsel, met every other week for most of the academic year. In the end, they created a handbook -- which publicly states the university's policies toward its faculty -- that
they say greatly strengthens the protections for non-tenure-track faculty members. That group, 160 professors, had grown in recent years, but they had few due-process rights. After seven years of service, they get many of the
same protections that tenured faculty members enjoy. "They can't be fired at will anymore," says Mr. Schaefer.

The university also changed the makeup of the faculty grievance committees. Mr. Thompson had appointed equal numbers of professors and administrators. They are now entirely composed of faculty members again. The controversial program
that gave higher salaries in lieu of tenure -- which very few people ever chose -- has been scrapped. And faculty committees have been established to examine gender equity and equipment needs.

The changes came so quickly that even the AAUP seems stunned. "We consider this a model case," says Jane Buck, the association's president. "This is one of the most dramatic examples that we've seen of a president doing the right thing. ... He has changed that campus from one where almost everything was done wrong to one where everything is done right."

Better Morale

While the changes in the handbook are important, faculty members also point to the much improved morale that has made coming to work enjoyable again.

"The environment is simply different," says Ms. Williams. She was on the faculty committee that worked on the new handbook and was involved in hammering out most of the actual wording with the university's lawyer. "There's a breath of fresh air now. It's been a long time since the faculty could say there has been good faith."

The morale is so much better at Central Arkansas that the local AAUP chapter recently asked the administration if it could help organize a party to celebrate the removal of censure. The two sides plan to hold a special reception in the
fall, when Mr. Hardin gives his annual address to the faculty.

Mr. Hardin says improving the relationship with the faculty will help the university reach other goals, including getting support from the legislature and raising private donations, because even outsiders can sense the changes. Most important,
he says, may be the precedent that has been established. "Long after I'm gone and the faculty members are gone," he says, "we will have a model for the succeeding presidents and faculty members."

Ultimately, most of the colleges placed on the blacklist will still play down the significance, claiming that the AAUP is a bunch of outsiders. At Central Arkansas, though, shame was a powerful motivator. Mr. Hardin says, "I didn't want to be a president of a university on censure."

Copyright 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
.

William Safire's View of W (through the eyes of Richard M. Nixon)

July 7, 2003
Nixon on Bush
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Reached by cellphone in purgatory, where he is still being cleansed of his sin of imposing wage and price controls, Richard Nixon agreed to give his former speechwriter an analysis of the political strategy of the present occupant of the Oval Office.

Q: With unemployment rising and the federal deficit ballooning — and all the Democratic candidates accusing him of having gone to war under false pretenses — how come Bush's approval rating hasn't nose-dived?

RN: Because he keeps his eye on the ball in center court. He's a war president fighting a popular war and doesn't let anybody forget he's winning. Afghanistan and Iraq are the first two battles in that war on terror. The more the elites here and in Europe holler, the solider the Bush support gets.

Q: But he's obviously moving to the political center, with his prescription drug entitlement and his education spending and the billions for AIDS in Africa — and he even liked the court's split decision on affirmative action. What's going to happen to his core support?

RN: Your conservative base will forgive you all kinds of liberal lurching if they know you're reliable on the one big thing. Look at me — I gave the lefties the first real school desegregation, funded the arts, offered a guaranteed annual wage, went for all that environmental garbage. And members of my political base never worried — hell, they helped re-elect me in a landslide — because they knew I always had my eye on one great crusade: anti-Communism.

Q: And the equivalent for Bush is his pursuit of Al Qaeda? You think that's what is keeping together the social conservatives, the economic conservatives, the libertarian fringe, all of us?

RN: You've been too long at The Times, Bill. Taking charge of the world will dominate the center, intimidate all but the looniest left and keep him high in the polls. But the way Bush protects his base on the right — the voters he can never afford to lose — is to continually hammer away on tax cuts.

Q: That would appeal to the business types, and the upper middle class in suburbia, but what attraction does a tax cut have for the religious right? What's it got to do with abortion, with same-sex marriage and all the social issues that turn out the troops?

RN: Tax cuts and terrorism — and his just not being Clinton — will keep 'em in line. Add to that the evangelicals' love affair with Israel, where George W. is a world apart from his old man. And toss in some faith-based programs that don't cost much but show his heart's in the right place. Cut the death tax and dividend tax and jack up the child credit this year, and campaign next year on making them permanent, and Bush is home free.

Q: But won't that cause a huge deficit and scare the economic conservatives?

RN: Let me say this about that. When the jobless rate is going up, to hell with the deficit. I take a class here from John Maynard Keynes, who's dead in the long run, just like he said. What will the Democrats do, try to raise taxes just before the election? Never happen. And whenever the economy turns, Bush can say his tax cuts did it.

Q: What's your media advice to Bush?

RN: Continue with no formal press conferences; he's killed that tradition and you guys have given up nagging. Come the late fall, he should make a big vision speech at some dramatic occasion like Saddam's funeral, or Bin Laden's, or a Middle East breakthrough, or some love fest with Blair and Chirac and Schröder and the new Iraqi leader.

Q: What's the theme?

RN: Invite the world to join the U.S. in seeking a new generation of freedom. Not just anti-terror, but pro-democracy. Refine the white paper on pre-emption, which is just a response to a present danger, and think big, as Woodrow Wilson did: explore the criteria for constructive intervention and the limits of tyrannical sovereignty. Get the grand design from Rummy and Cheney — they started out with me, you know.

Q: You're fading, but quickly — what's your reading of the Democratic field?

RN: Kerry can't smile and Lieberman smiles too much. Gephardt has no eyebrows and Edwards comes across as tricky. Dean would be a godsend for us, blowing his cool in debate. Joe Biden would give Bush the most trouble, but he's waiting too long. Gotta run to Keynes's class. Where's the damn button to turn this thing off?

Copyright 2003 The New York Times

Revisionist History?

[x NYTimes]
July 6, 2003
What I Didn't Find in Africa
By JOSEPH C. WILSON 4th


WASHINGTON

Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?

Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council.

It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me.

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.

In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.

The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq — and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.

I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.

Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.

(As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors — they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government — and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)

Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.

Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.

I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.

Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.

The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.

Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.

The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. (It's worth remembering that in his March "Meet the Press" appearance, Mr. Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons.") At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted.

I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program — all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed.

But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.



Joseph C. Wilson 4th, United States ambassador to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, is an international business consultant.