Today, the delegates to the South Central Jurisdictional Conference of the United Methodist Church meeting in Dallas affirmed their Mission Council’s earlier decision to lease land to the President George W. Bush Presidential Center. It also passed a petition said to protect the integrity of both SMU and the jurisdiction itself by indicating that the proposed institute "does not speak" for either.

A thorny issue will confront at least one of the five Jurisdictional Conferences of the United Methodist Church that will be meeting this week. These quadrennial regional meetings—held this year in Dallas (TX), Grand Rapids (MI), Harrisburg (PA), Lake Junaluska (NC), and Portland (OR)—have as their main business electing and assigning new bishops.  

When the South Central Jurisdiction convenes in Dallas tomorrow, in addition to electing bishops, they will have to decide what to do about the actions their bishops took to approve the lease of land to SMU for the Bush library, museum and institute. The General Conference in May referred a petition opposing the action to the jurisdiction for action. This means the assembled folk in Dallas will have to do something on record, something I suspect that they wanted to do even less after the story of bribes to pay for the library broke in Sunday’s London Times.

Meet Diane Smock—member of the Greenville City Council in South Carolina, attorney and former judge. She’s also a member of a United Methodist Church where she considers herself an "average" member. She has served on church committees and taught Sunday School, but she hasn’t been involved in the regional and national workings of the church. Until now, that is.

Meet George W. Bush, soon to be retired president of the United States, and his wife Laura, graduate and member of the board of trustees at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Also meet Dick and Lynne Cheney, who like George and Laura claim membership in the United Methodist Church.

A special connection was created between these United Methodists when Smock learned that SMU was the proposed site for a presidential complex. She did something she had never done before; she sent a petition opposing the plan to the denomination’s top lawmaking body, the General Conference.

Read below to see what happened.

[Digg and Reddit this story]

Here's what's at stake, as described by Andrew Weaver*, at Media Transparency in a new, June 19 2008 story (Media Transparency is a part of Cursor):

"To obtain the George W. Bush presidential library, Southern Methodist University has been required to accept an autonomous partisan institute on campus. Karl Rove is in the middle of the planning of and fund-raising for this Trojan horse project. The institute will give Rove the resources he needs to try to re-write the narrative of the Bush presidency, as well promoting his larger vision -- the domination of the right-wing of the Republican Party in American politics. In July the United Methodist Church, which owns SMU "lock stock and barrel," has one last chance to stop Rove." [emphasis mine]

The final vote in the Library and attached think tank is due to occur in Dallas on July 15-16.

(Cross-posted with author’s permission from WallWritings  Friday, May 9, 2008)

Guest Column by Andrew Weaver

Milo’s Note: Andrew is one of the originators of the protest to locate the Bush library at Southern Methodist University and has been a primary source for several of my diaries on the subject.  Andrew is a United Methodist minister and research psychologist living in New York City. He is a graduate of The Perkins School of Theology, SMU.

Read beneath the fold.

Last night Progressive Witness had a wonderful post about the Loneman School Book Drive. If you missed it, you owe it to yourself to check it out. I was particularly struck by this comment about the Indians of North America book series from Chelsea House:

While any books we send will surely be put to good use, I can think of few resources that might be more valuable to Loneman's library than this accessible, scholarly, and extensive series on Native American history and culture.

While I absolutely agree, it also made me think. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if EVERY school library had a set of these books? I am not familiar with the series (and it isn’t in my public library, either), but I will take PWs word on its quality. In my experience, quality information about Native Americans is largely missing from most of our schools.

This is short but sweet. Please excuse the diary's brevity.

Update: The Dallas Morning news is reporting that the story isn't true, and that the vote was only to refer the matter to the South Central Jurisdiction's conference scheduled for July in Dallas. H/tip Hprof.

Well at least we know.

The People of the United Methodist Church organization has met in Fort Worth, Texas and voted overwhelmingly to reject [by a vote total of 844-20] the proposal to house the Bush Presidential Library at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

This has got to be a devastating blow to the organizations who have fervently campaigned for this -- not to mention the frat-boy-in-chief. Bush had wanted to locate his library at a prestigious location close to Crawford. It ain't happening. Get over it, shrub.  

Original article here.

As an alumnus of Southern Methodist University, I received a letter from President Gerald R. Turner saying that he wanted me to hear directly from him that after a competition with seven other institutions, SMU had been chosen as the site of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, Museum and Institute. He wrote:

Only a handful of cities and universities host presidential libraries. For Texas to have three of them gives our state a unique triumvirate of resources for studying presidential history during pivotal times. The Presidential Center is another way in which SMU can serve our community, the nation and the world.

But will it serve the community, the nation and the world? Or will it simply continue the obfuscation that has become the Bush administrations most distinguishing feature? (Check here and here for my earlier posts on this controversy.)

The Chronicle of Higher Education has sponsored a "back-of-the envelope" contest for suitable architectural designs of the new institution:

In yesterday’s diary I reported on the George W. Bush Foundation’s attempt to place a library, museum, and think-tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. One of my sources was a letter and press release from some of the proposal’s opponents. Because it was not located on a website anywhere, I asked for a copy from its author and am including the full text in this blog.

On January 30, 2008, Andrew J. Weaver sent "An Open Letter to SMU Petition Signers." Weaver organized and maintains the petition opposing the Bush proposal to build a library and partisan think tank at Southern Methodist University.  A graduate of SMU, Weaver is an ordained United Methodist minister and research psychologist living in New York City. So far, there are over 11,200 petition signers representing every state, including 28 United Methodist bishops, several hundred graduates of SMU and thousands of clergy, church members, and people of conscience.

What’s the big deal about President Bush establishing his presidential library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas?  After all, he claims to be United Methodist and his wife, Laura, is a trustee at SMU. Well, for starters, an article titled "Tempest in a Texas Teapot" in U.S. News & World Report last week put it this way:

The plan to include a partisan think tank in the proposed George W. Bush presidential library at Southern Methodist University has provoked an outcry from many SMU faculty and alumni as well as concerned United Methodist clergy and laypeople from around the country. In a press release circulated last week, some of those critics charged that the proposal of the George W. Bush Foundation was approved without being put through procedures required by United Methodist church law.

The planned Bush library that would be created, along with an explicitly partisan think tank, at SMU would be controlled by devoted Bush loyalists and there is no precedent for attaching such a blatantly biased institution, purporting to represent the legacy of an American presidential administration but obviously dedicated to a heavily slanted political agenda, to a major university.

In the end the effort seems to be part of a gathering trend, in the GOP, to prioritize partisan politics over truth.

Who would have believed it?  An anti-war protest that was well attended, in the heart of The State of Bush?  Yes, friends and neighbors, I speak the truth.  I would have to say that our little peace rally, in the giant city of Dallas, was a real success.

Sure, at first it sounds like something any university would want.  After all, Dubya has talked about raising half a billion dollars for it, with $250 million coming in contributions of ten to twenty million from very rich donors.  Sounds like some very impressive buildings.  What else is going to come with it?

According to AP via Yahoo, Methodist ministers across the nation are rallying to object to the Bush Library at Southern Methodist University:

A group of Methodist ministers from across the nation launched an online petition drive Thursday urging Southern Methodist University to stop trying to land George W. Bush's presidential library.

Is this another fracture in the right wing/Christian alliance?

"Methodists have a long history of social conscience, so questions about the conduct of this president are very concerning," said one of the petition's organizers, the Rev. Andrew J. Weaver of New York, who graduated from SMU's Perkins School of Theology.

It's nice to see that the religious community is waking up to the Bush administration's nightmarish abuses of what most people consider "Christian Values".

If you are a Methodist (or not), you can support the effort through a petition drive...

Dallas.

What  images does the city conjure up to the rest of the United States?

The Cowboys?  No doubt.  Tom Landry.  America's team.  Roger Staubach.

And, of course, there was that period of time that it meant J.R. Ewing, Bobby Ewing, and Sue Ellen.  And all of that "who shot J.R." hoopla crap of the late seventies.

But, for many of us who are older, it was forever stained as "the city that killed Kennedy."  A still-conservative - trying-to-vie with other escalating major metro areas, but still embracing some of those nutty, post-Confederate ideals - city that Oswald (or whoever) nested within to commit one of the most awful deeds in this country's history.

But, there are so many in Dallas who are now cheerleading for a return to those dark and dank days by doing high-fives for Big D, specifically SMU, to be the home of the Bush Library.  And, unless something drastic happens, SMU and the deeds of Bush will be forever joined at the proverbial hip.

(There's more ...)

Cross-posted from www.freeexchangeoncampus.org.

Faculty at Southern Methodist University in Texas are up in arms over talks to determine whether SMU will serve as the site of the George W. Bush presidential library. As first reported in the SMU newspaper, the Daily Campus, the administration's negotiations with the presidential library search committee have been conducted under a veil of secrecy, leading many to wonder if the future library will reflect the values of the academic institution or the imperial presidency.

"So it’s a center run by Bush and his associates without regulation — an ideological center to burnish a president’s reputation — does that fit with the academic mission of SMU?"

--Benjamin Hufbauer

In "History vs. Hagiography," Inside Higher Ed observes:

Professors at Southern Methodist University who are worried about plans to create a George W. Bush policy institute there have said that they don’t want a partisan center to hurt the institution’s academic reputation. SMU officials are now saying that the center will not be part of the university, and will report to the Bush’s foundation. The question for faculty members is whether this independence insulates the university from a political taint or insulates the institute from academic oversight.