In a feature piece coming this Sunday in The New York Times Magazine, James Traub explores the uproar over the soon-to-arrive "Freedom Institute" established by former President George W. Bush at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, which will sit astride his presidential library there. Critics on and off campus have denounced it for various reasons, including the fact that it has been set up to pursue and defend his policies and record, not for scholarly research.
It will begin operating this fall and the George Bush Foundation which runs it will name an executive director soon. Some profs at the school are half-convinced that Bush will appoint Karl Rove to the post. With that in mind, some there see Condi Rice as an acceptable alternative.
Another historian there charges: "The Bush circle has done so much damage to every institution they've touched, it would be naive not to worry about the damage they could do to SMU."
It came into being at the school with a free hand only because a faculty resolution failed to pass by one vote.
Traub points out, "the prospect" of being identified "in perpetuity" with Bush's agenda "freezes the blood of some of the university's leading academics. Everything about the planned institute reminds them of what they detested about the Bush administration. It will proselytize rather than explore: a letter sent to universities bidding for the Bush center stipulated that the institute would, among other things, 'further the domestic and international goals of the Bush administration.'"
Also it will report to the Bush Foundation rather than to the university, as other such institutes - even ones associated with former presidents - do.
Students, too, are alarmed. Susanne Johnson asked in the school paper: "Do we want SMU to benefit financially from a legacy of massive violence, destruction and death brought about by the Bush presidency?"
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Greg Mitchell's new book is "Why Obama Won," which includes a good deal of HuffPost-related material. He is editor of Editor & Publisher.
Call it "The American Ideals Institute". It doesn't have to be a large bricks and mortar palace. An online presence for systematic collection and indexing of documents and evidence, study and learned commentary, persisting over decades, would be a long term "Truth Commision" would reach far more people. It could focus on the myriad ways Bushco violated our Constitution, the rule of law, international treaties, and the human tragedies caused by their contempt for America.
It could be funded with affordable membership like the ACLU and I'd want John Dean or someone of his caliber to lead it.
It doesn't have to remain focused on Bush. It could study future movements and politicians who advance the same tyranny. Think Progress provides a good model for public outreach in that regard.
Exhaustive documentation of BushCo's rape of our world would counteract the lying liars and be a real gift to the future.
The name and the association with Bush, whose policies failed, costing us much in $ and lives --- it just makes SMU look bad. Realistically, this makes SMU look like some narrow-minded provincial bastion of ignorance.
And then there is the Methodist connection -- For hundreds of years the defining dictum of Methodism, what distinguished it from other Protestant branches, was the phrase, "Ye shall know them by their works." That is, Methodism emphasized works over "faith" in contrast to some other Protestants, such as the fairly recent wave of dispensationalist fundamentalists that largely populate the Religious Right.
It was a pretty nasty affair-with some board members kowtowing as fast as they could.
There's a cabal in Texas that rules the roost, many big fish in very little pond.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LksuKTD8y0o