can't say i blame them!

Being identified with Bush’s agenda ‘freezes the blood’ of some SMU professors.

Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell previews a New York Times Magazine piece set to come out this weekend that “explores the uproar over the soon-to-arrive ‘Freedom Institute’ established by former President George W. Bush at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.” The article says that some SMU professors are “half-convinced” that Bush will name Karl Rove as his foundation’s executive director yet “see Condi Rice as an acceptable alternative.” The article also provides further testimony that SMU faculty are extremely uncomfortable housing Bush’s library and “Freedom Institute” at their university:

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.” […]

[The article] 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.’”

(Think Progress)