SMU Profs: Bush Library Will Be A ‘Censored Library’ And Will ‘Cheer-lead’ For The President

[CatWoman]

In Nov. 2006, President Bush launched “an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive for the Bush presidential library. That campaign finally paid off last week when officials at Southern Methodist University announced that the Dallas-based university will be home to Bush’s $200 million library — despite protests from faculty, administrators and staff.

However, the George W. Bush Presidential Center will come with a catch. It “will also feature an institute — independent of academic governance of the university — to sponsor research and programs designed to promote the vision of the president” and “celebrate” Bush’s presidency. One university professor said that “cademics everywhere should be concerned about this” adding that it “goes against the idea of dispassionate inquiry”:

Benjamin Hufbauer, an associate professor of art history at the University of Louisville and author of Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory (University Press of Kansas), said that the model agreed to at SMU was “totally different” from the approaches at other universities with presidential libraries. The institute that is part of the complex “has a partisan agenda — that’s very significant,” he said.

“Academics everywhere should be concerned about this. Clearly this goes against the idea of dispassionate inquiry, of looking at things on the basis of fact and merit. If it’s ideological, that’s opposed to the mission of a university,” Hufbauer said.

Unfortunately, the caveats to Bush’s library don’t end there. The executive order Bush signed in 2001 “which gives presidents and their families more control over presidential papers, could result in material being censored.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/25/smu-profs-bush-library-will-be-a-censored-library-and-will-cheer-lead-for-the-president/

[sakabatou]

1. Who'd'a thunk?

[NC_Nurse]

2. 50,000 copies of My Pet Goat.

:eyes:

[TheCowsCameHome]

4. Each one with unintelligible scribbling and drool all over it.

[NC_Nurse]

5. LOL!

[Warpy]

3. I've long said that the library will mostly be a vault

with a time lock set to 100-500 years in the future and round the clock guards to make sure none of the family papers will be disturbed until every member of the family alive today is dead and long gone.

The accessible parts will feature photos of Stupid shaking hands with foreign dignitaries and copies of newspaper puff pieces.

[Horse with no Name]

7. Yep

And understand those will be ARMED guards--most likely Blackwater.

[ljm2002]

11. Will 500 years be long enough?

I read somewhere that vampires have very long life spans, well over 500 years...

:evilgrin:

[melody]

6. Ought to give the job to the Creationist "Museum" morons

They believe Dino was a real dinosaur.

[marmar]

8. Thank goodness for the academic community....They're going to be great cellmates for us at Gitmo.

.... after George Joseph Adolf Mao Thatcher Pinochet Bush II sends us all there.

[rucky]

9. I'm an SMU alumnus.

and they will never see another penny from me.

[Buzz Clik]

10. The following policies will be in place in this "library"

• The names and addresses of all patrons will be recorded along with the collections they examine.
  
• All visitors will be video taped and fingerprinted.
  
• Conversations will be recorded.
  
• There will be no overdue fines. Violators will be detained and will forfeit all rights.
  

[Ilsa]

12. These presidential libraries are so much bullshit. When did they start

building them, anyway? They are just monuments the ex-presidents build for themselves with other peoples' money.

[Poiuyt]

13. This will be nothing but a think tank whose mission is to rewrite history