Disputed Bush library: Southern Methodist U.

The Swamp

by Mark Silva

It’s official.

The George W. Bush Presidential Library will be built at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, alma mater of First Lady Laura Bush.

It’s also still controversial.

Bishops and retired bishops within the Methodist Church who parted ways with President Bush over the war in Iraq, and some members of the SMU faculty as well, have opposed the placement of the Bush library at the campus because of the research institute that will be attached to it – a think tank pursuing the philosophies of the 43rd president.

“When he dedicated the first presidential library,’’ Bush said of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in a letter today to SMU President Gerald Turner, Roosevelt said “he hoped the public would use it to ‘learn from the past’ and ‘gain judgment in creating their own future.’ I hope the same will be true of this library.’’

Yet many academicians at the Methodist Church-owned university worry that some of the lessons of the Bush administration’s past pursued in future studies at the new Bush institute will tarnish their own reputation for independent scholarship and forever associate the school as a sponsor of the controversial Bush administration’s ideologies.

"I’m more optimistic about winning this fight now than I’ve ever been,’’ the Rev. Andrew Weaver of New York, a pscyhologist and Methodist minister fighting the library, said today.

The school had been singled out long ago as “sole finalist’’ for the library and institute and the architect selected. Yet the selection has stirred a controversy on campus and within the church which still stirs with disputes over methods used to obtain the permission of the Methodist boards that oversee the university property.

Opponents, including current and retired bishops and faculty members opposed to Bush’s policies, in particular the war, insisted that church rules required that the 290 elected delegates to the church’s South Central Jurisdiction had to approve the deal.

And Weaver, a research psychologist in New York and anti-war activist opposed to the library, said he had collected 11,200 signatures on petitions opposing the project. But SMU officials maintained they already had the church’s approval, through the jurisdiction’s mission council and college of bishops.

"It’s extremely clear that, by church law, and the lawyers are telling us, under civil law, the church owns the property and has every right to vote,'' Weaver said today. "Telling these people to drop dead and they don’t have any rights is the last thing they should have done …

"The short of it is, we’ll need to get a big chunk of money,'' Weaver said. "We’ll have to take them to civil court and protect the rights, we’re told, of these voting folks, the members of this jurisdictional conference.... The Methodist Church owns this property lock, stock and barrel… and in the history, if you go back, there has never been anything of any significance that has been passed without these votes, in the history of the university.

"The odds are even now, but pretty much on our side, that we would win.''

SMU maintains that the deal is leagal, and that the school’s academic independence will not be jeopardized by its association with a research institute dedicated to the promotion of Bush’s policies.

“The George W. Bush Presidential Library will provide the public and scholars a facility to access papers documenting the Bush Administration and to learn more about the Bush Presidency and the times in which he served,’’ the foundation said in a statement released today about the formal selection. “It will also be accompanied by a policy institute that will be a forum for scholarly study and the exchange of ideas.

"We chose this site because of the location,'' said Don Evans, a longtime friend of Bush, former Commerce Secretary and head of the library site selection. " As an international city and as one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country, Dallas is perfectly positioned at the crossroads of industry and education, tourists and researchers. And SMU’s strategic and historic location in the heart of Dallas makes this choice all the more perfect. We want this to be a place to see for the public and a place to be for the researchers.''

Also considered: Baylor University, in Waco, Texas A&M (site of the 41st President Bush’s library and museum), the University of Texas, and the University of Dallas. “Each offered many good ideas and creative thinking that will help make the George W. Bush Presidential Library a great success,’’ Evans said.

George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation President Ambassador Mark Langdale said the library “will serve scholars studying the Bush presidency, provide the public a place to learn more about our 43rd president and the times in which he served, and offer a forum for world leaders, historians, and experts to discuss, debate, and advance public policy ideas.”

Situated in Dallas, they say, the “library will be easily accessible for scholars and tourists from all over the world. Additionally, the President and Mrs. Bush have strong personal ties to SMU and the Dallas community. Mrs. Bush is a graduate of SMU and the President and Mrs. Bush are former residents of Dallas.’’

The Bush's home church, the stone Highland Park Methodist Church, sits at a corner of the gracious, brick Georgian-styled and leafy campus on the north side of Dallas. It is believed that the Bushes are building a house in Dallas as well.

Fundraising for the library will occur in two phases, the foundation says – the first a capital campaign to raise funds for the actual construction and start-up costs of the library, the next for endowment tol fund ongoing operations of the library, museum and policy center.

Robert A.M. Stern has been selected to design the presidential library and museum as well as the associated policy institute. The landscape architect: Michael Van Valkenburgh.

Posted by Mark Silva on February 22, 2008 4:15 PM

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