Bush library tiff ongoing

It seems that Southern Methodist University in Dallas is to be the new home of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, but heated debates over the bid has faculty and students at odds over whether the plan is an asset or an albatross for the university.

The long-running disagreement may still cause a change in the library’s location as an official announcement has yet to be made. Currently, SMU and Baylor University in Waco are still in the running for the bid.

Since last November when some professors from SMU’s Perkins School of Theology said that the library would “enshrine attitudes and actions widely deemed as ethically egregious,” the tiff has been the subject of media spotlight and punditry for several months.

The opposition was first publicized as an opinion piece published in SMU’s newspaper, the Daily Campus, last fall. It admonished the university’s leadership to consider the Bush administration’s political record before bidding for the library.

"What does it mean ethically for SMU to say a war violating international law makes no difference?” wrote William K. McElvaney, professor emeritus of preaching and worship and Susanne Johnson, associate professor of Christian education.

They purported that housing the library would be glorifying “a legacy of massive violence, destruction, and death brought about by the Bush presidency.”

The professors and other opponents of the bid disagreed with the proposition on political and moral grounds. But criticizers of the protest say they are taking the focus off the advantages of having the $500 million library, museum and Bush Institute think tank that are planned for Bush’s legacy.

One such criticism came from former first lady Barbara Bush, who in an interview with The Bells said the benefits of housing the library are obvious. She rejoined that SMU’s faculty opposition was missing the point by focusing on partisan opinions.

"It’s really so stupid, because you don’t have to be political,” she said. “The Reagan library did not go to Stanford because their faculty disagreed. That’s a great stupidity.”

Bush compared her son’s prospective library to that of his father’s at Texas A&M University.

"We don’t only have Republicans (who visit). We have world leaders come to the library. What we’re trying to do at A&M is that we don’t want our university to be solely conservative. We want it to reflect the world, and I think that’s important to do because you should want to hear both sides.”

Though there has been talk of “legacy polishing” among the critics of the bid, it is not the library that poses the biggest problem for the university protesters.

The Bush Institute think tank that will be governed by a family foundation, not the university, has been called a “strongly partisan body” by opponents of the bid.

Designed after the Hoover Institution, a Republican policy research center at Stanford University, the institute’s purpose is to promote democracy and financially support scholars to join in brain storming solutions to the myriad of problems facing today’s world.

Opponents claim this is in direct violation to SMU’s mission to be nonsectarian in its teaching and committed to academic freedom. However, the library plan is a package deal with the institute.

In a letter to The Chronicle of Higher Education, David J. Weber, professor of history at SMU, criticized the faculty members who have protested the Bush library plan as taking sides more on political than moral grounds.

"My colleagues who object suggest that an institute would compromise academic freedom by becoming a propaganda mill for conservative view,” he wrote. “My understanding of academic freedom suggests that conservative views, even if they take the form of propaganda, should compete in the marketplace of ideas, where they will rise and fall on their merits. I doubt that my colleagues would object so vociferously to a Clinton or Kerry institute.”

Despite the lively debate among faculty, the Mission Council of the United Method Church’s South Central Jurisdiction voted 10-4 in favor of leasing the land for the library, one of the last steps the school needed before officially sealing the deal. However, President Bush has not made a final announcement, and the debate continues on the campus of SMU as well as on The Bush Library Blog at http://bushlibraryblog.wordpress.com/, a Web site developed as a free forum for discussion of the proposed buildings.

Though Bush has said he favors SMU as a site for his library, due partially to his wife Laura Bush’s ties to the university as an alumna and trustee, there is still one other school in the running for the bid.

Baylor University in Waco still hopes to steal the library with the ongoing tumultuous situation at SMU. Tommye Lou Davis, the director of Baylor’s Bush Library Project said that they will continue to be optimistic about the possibilities until the final announcement.

"No final decisions have been made, so we are still hoping to come out on top.”

Unlike SMU, Davis said the Baylor faculty and staff are unified behind the library bid.

"We view it (the library) as a national treasure considering all of the history that has happened during the Bush administration,” she said. “We can’t even fathom the opportunity that it would bring to Central Texas.”