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Tampa Bay Online - Dec 22, 2003
Al-Arian issue could haunt Castor in race
By WILLIAM MARCH
TAMPA - Betty Castor's tenure as president of the University of South Florida is a major building block as she assembles support in her run for the U.S. Senate.
But one episode in that presidency could come back to bite the candidate: Castor's handling of the case of Sami Al-Arian, the former professor accused of operating a support cell for Palestinian terrorists while at USF.
Castor essentially left the matter up to law enforcement, choosing not to challenge Al-Arian in light of the twin employment protections of a union contract and academic freedom. Her administration's stance was controversial.
So far, early in the campaign, Castor's Democratic primary rivals and Republicans in the race have not tried to use the issue against her publicly.
And a number of interviews with people who were concerned and knowledgeable about the case in the mid-1990s - USF faculty and regional or statewide Jewish leaders - uncovered little or no inclination to blame Castor for any failures.
``I think she did the best that she could do under the circumstances, and I'm a big supporter of Betty,'' said Stephen Bragin of Clearwater, a retired businessman and USF fundraiser who, at the time, led a delegation of Jewish leaders to discuss the issue with university officials.
Some Republicans, however, say the issue could provide ammunition for attack ads. They draw bold lines even though Al-Arian has not been convicted of any crime.
``I absolutely think her using academic freedom as an excuse'' will be a campaign issue, said Rick Wilson, a Republican consultant in Tallahassee and Washington. ``I'd tie it to her like an anchor.''
Republicans aren't unanimous about that. Strategists for two GOP Senate candidates, state Sen. Daniel Webster of Winter Garden and former U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum of Longwood, said they don't know enough about the case to talk.
Geoffrey Becker, the state party's executive director, called it ``a little obscure'' but said he believes Castor ``stood by the sidelines as the case unfolded, and left it to the current president'' to act.
The current president, Judy Genshaft, who has Republican ties, fired Al-Arian - but only after he was indicted this year. Genshaft treated the case as an employment issue, and sought unsuccessfully to get court approval to fire the tenured professor before the federal indictment.
Republicans have other reasons to tread cautiously on the issue: President Bush has a history with Al-Arian.
In 2000, well after Castor left USF, the Bush campaign actively courted Muslim voters, and Bush was photographed with Al-Arian at the Florida Strawberry Festival in Plant City.
In 2001, Al-Arian attended a meeting in the White House complex with senior presidential adviser Karl Rove and Abdurahman Alamoudi, later charged with laundering money from Libya.
USF had hired Al-Arian to teach computer science eight years before Castor arrived in 1994. It also had made academic agreements with a think tank he founded: World Islam Studies Enterprise. WISE shared key officers, a postal box and work space with an organization later identified by law enforcement as an Islamic Jihad fundraising front.
Al-Arian collected a public salary and taught off and on at USF until this year. Even when he was indicted, and Genshaft fired him, USF nearly was censured by the American Association of University Professors - a punishment that can hurt a school's academic reputation.
Many USF faculty members sided with Al-Arian for years on the grounds of academic freedom, so they supported Castor's decision to leave the matter to law enforcement.
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