A report released last month by the American Association of University Professors says the University of South Florida violated the academic rights of a controversial professor who it suspended and later dismissed without giving him an opportunity to respond to charges made against him.

The findings follow a year-long investigation by AAUP's committee on academic freedom and tenure into the university's actions against Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian-born computer science and engineering professor with alleged ties to terrorism.

Al-Arian was arrested earlier this year following his indictment by a federal grand jury, charging him and others with criminal activities relating to international terrorism.

"The criminal charges against him, while manifestly very serious, remain to be proven in a court of law," AAUP's report says. "With respect to his dismissal, its implementation before he had any opportunity to defend himself against the administration's charges is fundamentally at variance with (AAUP's) long-standing insistence on academic due process. Beyond that, the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' ought to be observed in our institutions of higher learning no less than it is in our courts."

Despite the recent criminal charges against Al-Arian, AAUP's investigating committee says the USF administration acted in disregard of academic due process by "not having consulted with an appropriate faculty body before notifying Professor Sami Al-Arian of its intent to dismiss him," and by not "allowing him an opportunity to be heard."

Al-Arian's troubles began in the fall of 2001, when he appeared on a Fox News program and was accused of having links to terrorist organizations. He denied the accusations, but soon after received an anonymous death threat which prompted the university to suspend him, claiming his presence on campus raised safety concerns.

But, the AAUP report says even when safety concerns subsided, Al-Arian remained on suspension for another 15 months, "an unconscionable amount of time."

AAUP's committee found "the administration had for all practical purposes already removed him from his tenured position at the university without having afforded any of the basic elements of academic due process."

Last August, the university administration took the unprecedented step of asking a Florida state court to rule whether firing Al-Arian would violate his constitutional rights. At that time, USF alleged Al-Arian was using his academic position at the university to "raise funds for a terrorist organization." The case was thrown out.

After his arrest in February of this year, Al-Arian was fired by the university.

In a written response to AAUP's report, USF president Judy Genshaft and provost David Stamps deny the university violated any of the professor's academic rights.

"The university's termination of Professor Al-Arian does not relate to his discussion of controversial topics within the classroom, his extramural utterances, or the impact of those utterances," they say. "The action was based on misconduct ... outside the classroom: misconduct that Professor Al-Arian has avoided contesting."

AAUP will present its findings at the association's annual meeting in June, at which time a vote will be held to determine whether the University of South Florida should be censured for its handling of the case.