By Bill Zeeble, KERA reporter
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-732797.mp3
Dallas, TX – Sparks could fly this morning between United Methodist leaders over the planned George W. Bush Institute at Southern Methodist University. That's the controversial part of the Bush Library and Museum complex planned for SMU. Opponents want Methodist delegates meeting in Dallas to reject the proposed think tank. They say it'll hurt the church-owned SMU because it's partisan.
Bill Zeeble, KERA reporter: What's not widely known about SMU's future George W. Bush Presidential complex, is that there are 3 parts to it: The Bush Institute, the Presidential Library, and the Museum. Just about everyone, from faculty and church officials down to SMU students, like Anne France, praise the Presidential Library and Museum.
Ann France , student: I think it's pretty awesome the campus will be able to have a presidential library. So, I'm excited about it.
Zeeble: Some faculty members and United Methodists are NOT excited by the proposed Bush Freedom Institute. Officially independent of SMU, it's expected to go up on campus near the stadium. It'll stress Bush policies on war, energy, human rights, and other issues. Assistant Professor Valerie Karras, with SMU's Perkins School of Theology, argues it's a partisan think tank outside of SMU's control. Therefore it violates University and Church rules.
Valerie Karras SMU Perkins School of Theology: To have on the university campus an institute that's explicitly articulated as being ideological in nature, but to have it independent of the university means we have no way of insuring this institute will meet normal academic standards.
Zeeble: No other college-based Presidential Library operates with such independence. Political Science Professor Cal Jillson worries it'll damage his school's reputation. He says SMU initially proposed a Bush school of government. But the Bush Foundation rejected the idea, he says, insisting on the institute to advance the president's reputation and agenda.
Cal Jillson, SMU Political Science Professor: That fits less well with a college campus, because college campuses are about the free exploration of ideas. They're not about building monuments to particular sets of ideas.
Zeeble: SMU administrators, and faculty favorable to the entire Bush complex, are not worried. Jillson's Political Science colleague Matthew Wilson says the Institute will serve the educational mission.
SMU's Matthew Wilson: SMU students & faculty will be invited to participate in discussions, and will contribute to the intellectual climate on campus that'll redound to everyone's benefit.
Zeeble; Wilson believes opponents are over reacting.
Wilson: If the administration believed there was any serious danger to SMU's academic freedom or mission, they would have pulled the plug on this.Under worst case scenario, even if the policy institute were to become a laughable hard line right wing partisan hack institute, which I don't think it'll be, but even were that to be the case, I still don't see how that would affect at all the curriculum we offer to students, the people we hire for faculty, because this institute is independent.
Zeeble: Faculty opposed to the institute already fought the administration but failed. Their last chance is for the United Methodist delegates to reject the plan, on the grounds it violates Church policy. The Church's South Central Jurisdictional Conference is currenlty meeting here. But Bishop Scott Jones, president of the College of Bishops and an SMU trustee who approved the deal, says all the rules were followed.
Bishop Scott Jones: Our job as a church is not to micro-manage the University. Our job is to trust trustees who then empower the administration to do what's in the best interest of the university. Our church has said you have permission to lease the land. I've read all the legal documents. And I believe that the SMU administration has acted to enhance the mission of SMU.
Zeeble; Anyway, as Matthew Wilson says, that boat has sailed. Approval was granted a year ago. Even opponent Tex Sample, a past Methodist delegate to this conference, is not optimistic.
Tex Sample, retired clergy, former sjc delegate. Frankly I think we're fighting up hill.
Zeeble; Roughly 300 United Methodist delegates could vote on the issue to reject the Bush Think Tank later this morning. Approval though, is not expected. Bill Zeeble KERA news.