Case Could Bring Back Angst Of Al-Arian Era

By WILLIAM MARCH The Tampa Tribune

Published: Sep 1, 2007

TAMPA - The indictment of a University of South Florida student on terrorism-related charges threatens to reawaken a painful episode in the university's past.

In the mid-1990s, the case of Sami Al-Arian led critics to brand USF "Jihad University." Al-Arian was a former computer science professor with ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for dozens of suicide bombings and hundreds of deaths in Israel's occupied territories.

The Fox News network's Bill O'Reilly called the university "a hotbed of support for Arab militants" as he pilloried Al-Arian. The controversy dragged on for a decade, kept alive by critics of former USF President Betty Castor when she ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004.

Contentions that the university was unfairly tarred were drowned by the wave of antiterrorist outrage that swept the nation following the Sept. 11 attacks and led to Al-Arian's trial and conviction.

Today, university advocates again are saying criticism of the institution is unfair.

USF spokesman Ken Gullette said he expects inflammatory comments aimed at the university similar to those of the past now that students Ahmed Mohamed and Youssef Megahed have been indicted on explosives charges and Mohamed faces an additional terrorism-related charge.

"It is just grossly unfair," Gullette said. "With many thousands of people who come through here every year, inevitably, somebody's going to do something wrong."

Gullette noted that the men were in the country legally - one as a permanent resident and one on a student visa - which means they had gotten the proper clearances from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

"We're not investigators, we're educators," Gullette said. "We don't do background checks on students."

Sherman Dorn, president of USF's faculty union, also expects renewed criticism.

"I'm sure there are plenty of people who will make outlandish claims without any evidence," Dorn said.

Public relations experts, however, say USF faces a problem, at least with regard to its reputation if not its policies, and needs to deal with it.

"They need to take some commensurate action that demonstrates zero tolerance," said Eric Dezenhall, a Washington public relations consultant and expert on crisis management. "We don't want to hear them pontificating."

He and other public relations and school safety experts said university officials must convince the public that these recent incidents don't mean the school is an incubator for terrorist activity.

Dezenhall said the university should take definitive action, such as suspending the students and outlining its policy about what happens to students or staff charged with crimes.

Kenneth Trump, president of National School and Safety Services in Cleveland, said education officials tend to make such situations harder on themselves by refusing to talk openly about troubling incidents.

Schools generally have a policy of "downplay, deny, deflect and defend," he said.

"The public relations will improve when you show that you are doing something positive about it."

USF's image problems began in 1994, when Steve Emerson, a freelance journalist who investigates domestic terrorism support networks, reported having found a network at USF, centering on Al-Arian.

Skepticism greeted his findings, and a Tampa Tribune report in May 1995 generated criticism when it traced Al-Arian's connections.

The links gained credence when Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, who had worked at Al-Arian's World and Islam Studies Enterprise think tank and as an adjunct USF professor, left Tampa in June 1995 then emerged as head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The failure of federal authorities either to dismiss the case or bring it to trial left the community stewing for years in an unsettled dispute between Al-Arian's defenders, including much of the USF faculty, and antiterrorist critics.

In 2003 and 2004, the issue became a political football. Castor was vilified by opponents who said she hadn't handled the Al-Arian situation properly - first then-Rep. Peter Deutsch, running against her in the Democratic primary, then Republican Mel Martinez, who eventually won the Senate seat.

After a mistrial in 2005, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to reduced charges in April 2006.

The two cases bear one tangible link: a house in Temple Terrace, where some of Mohamed's possessions were seized and where Al-Arian kept the headquarters of his think tank.

Tribune reporters Adam Emerson and Baird Helgeson contributed to this report. Reporter William March can be reached at (813) 259-7761 or wmarch @tampatrib.com.