“We view the appointment [of Donald Rumsfeld] as fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, disinterested enquiry, respect for national and international laws and care for the opinions, property and lives of others to which Stanford is inalienably committed.”
That's how the petition read as hundreds of Stanford University students and faculty protested the naming of Donald Rumsfeld to Stanford's conservative Hoover Institute.
This from the New York Times.
PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 19 — The appointment of Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, as a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution is drawing fierce protests from faculty members and students at Stanford University and is threatening to rekindle tensions between the institution, a conservative research body, and the more liberal campus.
Some 2,100 professors, staff members, students and alumni have signed an online petition protesting Mr. Rumsfeld’s appointment, which will involve advising a task force on ideology and terrorism. Faculty members say he should not have been offered the post because of his role in the Bush administration’s prosecution of the Iraq war...
...John Raisian, director of the Hoover Institution since 1989, defended the appointment...
...“I appointed him because he has three decades of experience, of incredible public service, especially in recent years as it relates to this question of ideology and terror,” Mr. Raisian said.
Mr. Raisian said Mr. Rumsfeld had accepted the appointment, which would last one year.
Such short-term appointments, whether by the institution or by an academic department, do not require the extensive review that a tenure decision might...
...At times, though, there have been tensions. In the late 1980s, some students and faculty members successfully fought a proposal championed by the director of the Hoover Institution to place Ronald Reagan’s presidential library on the campus. Last year, Mr. Bush planned to visit fellows at the Hoover Institution before having dinner with George P. Shultz, a former secretary of state who is also a fellow. But after protests, the meeting was moved to Mr. Shultz’s home.
Another potential conflict could involve Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, a former Stanford provost and Hoover fellow. Ms. Rice, who is on leave from a tenured faculty position, has said she would be interested in returning to Stanford after leaving the Bush administration. In a letter to Stanford’s undergraduate newspaper in May, a professor wrote that she should not be welcomed back...
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