[R-G] A Library Worthy Of The Bush Legacy: Censored & Only Fiction Permitted

[Richard Menec]

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/progressreport

A Library Worthy Of The Bush Legacy

In Nov. 2006, President Bush launched "an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar
drive" to raise funds for his presidential library. That campaign finally
paid off last week when officials at Southern Methodist University (SMU)
announced that the Dallas-based university will be home to Bush's $200
million library -- despite protests from faculty, administrators, and staff.
The library facility will also contain an institute that will sponsor
programs designed to "promote the vision of the president" and "celebrate"
Bush's presidency. University of Louisville Professor Benjamin Hufbauer, an
art historian who has studied presidential libraries, said the model agreed
to at SMU was "totally different" from the approaches at other universities
with presidential libraries. The institute that is part of the complex "has
a partisan agenda -- that's very significant," he said, adding, "academics
everywhere should be concerned about this" because it "goes against the idea
of dispassionate inquiry." Dr. Susanne Johnson, an associate professor at
SMU, explained, "The whole purpose of a library is for unfettered, unbiased,
critically reflective academic inquiry into the administration of a given
presidency. It's not to cheer-lead for a particular president. It's not to
be groupies."

BUSH'S THINK TANK: When asked about his post-presidency plans in January
2006, Bush said, "I'd like to leave behind a legacy -- or a think tank, a
place for people to talk about freedom and liberty and the [Alexis]
DeTocqueville model of what DeTocqueville saw in America." (Ironically, the
French philosopher DeTocqueville wrote, "I know of no country in which there
is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in
America.") A Bush insider confessed that the mission of the institute will
be to hire conservative scholars and "give them money to write papers and
books favorable to the President's policies." Bush's institute has rankled
the university's faculty because it will be independent of SMU's academic
governance. In the run-up to the formal agreement between SMU and the Bush
foundation, critics "suggested making the institute completely separate from
SMU or bringing it under SMU's control." The final agreement "does neither,"
however, because "Bush's representatives had made clear to SMU" that the
library and the institute were "to be a package."

THE MARK OF ROVE: Compounding fears that the institute will trade academic
scholarship for partisan praise of Bush, Mark Langdale -- president of the
Bush library foundation -- said recently that former Bush political advisor
Karl Rove is advising the project in "an informal capacity." Langdale said
Rove is "a critical resource about what happened in the administration, and
he has a lot of good ideas about programming and positioning." Rove has
already set out on a course to whitewash Bush's legacy, arguing in recent
months that it was Congress -- not the President -- who rushed into the Iraq
war. Many aspects of the "programming and positioning" that the Bush library
will feature have raised serious concerns. For one, the institute has made
an arrangement with SMU to ensure that the academic faculty will not serve
as a counterbalance against the partisan mission of the library.
Additionally, SMU's sole representative on the institute's board will be
solely chosen by Bush's foundation. Dr. Johnson said that clause "abdicates
all power" to the Bush foundation, allowing it to "cherry-pick
representatives from SMU to fit their ideological purposes" while reducing
faculty representation "to something that's meaningless."

A CENSORED LIBRARY: An executive order Bush signed in 2001, "which gives
presidents and their families more control over presidential papers, could
result in material being censored" from the library. The order gives Bush --
as well as former presidents -- "the right to veto requests to open any
presidential records" and to take "an indefinite amount of time to ponder
any requests." One historian called Bush's order a "disaster for history."
Referring to the executive order, Rev. William McElvaney -- professor
emeritus at SMU's theology school -- asked, "What self-respecting university
would accept a censored library?" "From the very get-go its purpose is to
rationalize and promote programs and policies of a certain presidency rather
than do a strictly analytical, critical assessment of it," Dr. Johnson said.
"It's going to create an ethos where the students who are more progressive
in terms of religion and politics will feel even further silenced and
invisible than they already feel." She added, "We all know very well that
this institute -- which has no lines of accountability to the faculty -- is
about getting some scholars lined up to put window dressing on the
presidency of George Bush.

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