COULD BE, back a year and a half ago, when Judy Genshaft was being recruited for the presidency of the University of South Florida, they simply forgot to mention it. You know: that Palestinian computer scientist fellow over in the College of Engineering. The one who had certain, oh, issues, let's call them. Issues that occasionally required the attention of campus, municipal, state, federal, and foreign law enforcement officers. Issues that, just maybe, involved mysterious international money transfers and big explosions going off at crowded bus stops. Probably would have been helpful to know about such stuff in advance.

Whatever. Judy Genshaft took the job. And she had every reason to think it a plum. Already a distinguished educational psychologist and college administrator, she now would assume leadership of the second largest university in the southeastern United States at the very moment when it seemed finally ready to start mattering. USF's undergraduate divisions were turning away qualified applicants. Its graduate programs were achieving unprecedented recognition. The future looked bright. Fourteen months later, Genshaft having made an unusually speedy personal mark on her campus, the university's future still looked bright.

Then, on September 26, two weeks after the World Trade Center and Pentagon atrocities, that Palestinian computer scientist fellow showed up on national television, and everything went straight to hell. There was Sami Al-Arian on the Fox News Channel's "O'Reilly Factor," identified as a "University of South Florida professor," stammering about rough treatment by the show's host. Who, characteristically sharkish, was plowing forward with questions about, well, some things in the professor's past. Like that Al-Arian had once arranged an adjunct faculty position at USF for a man who later turned out to be secretary general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And that Al-Arian himself had been captured on videotape delivering a speech on the righteousness of jihad, "Victory to Islam!" and "Death to Israel!" and so forth. Al-Arian wanted these words understood "in context" and claimed to have been "shocked" when his former colleague emerged as one of the world's leading terrorists. But Bill O'Reilly was unimpressed and told his viewers there was "something wrong down there at the University of South Florida."

Consequently, something really was wrong down there--the very next day. USF's telephone and computer systems were jammed with hundreds of angry calls and e-mail messages. The College of Engineering received an apparently credible death threat against Al-Arian, the first of 12, forcing the school to close. And, given the consensus of Tampa-area police departments that they would otherwise confront a grave public safety risk, university administrators--with his concurrence--placed Al-Arian on a paid leave of absence.

But things didn't work out. Almost immediately, Al-Arian started complaining about his exile. Hardly a week went by before he ignored its terms, at least as the university understood them, popping up on campus for a meeting with Muslim students. And hardly a day went by thereafter when Al-Arian and his friends failed to tell some reporter that USF's efforts to protect him from assassination were in fact, instead, an assault on free expression--a penalty for his advocacy of controversial ideas. All of which intensified the very crisis the university had been trying to quell. By mid-December, school administrators, under attack from two directions, were spending half their time dealing with a single professor's sudden notoriety. And relevant law enforcement agencies were still unable to offer any guarantee--should that professor be allowed to resume teaching--that the safety of students, faculty, or staff would be secure. In short, a continuing fiasco.

So on December 19, the USF Board of Trustees voted 12-1 to recommend that Sami Al-Arian be fired--for activities "outside the scope of his employment" constituting "adverse impact on the legitimate interests of the university." Judy Genshaft then informed Al-Arian that she intended to follow this advice.

It is no exaggeration to say that Genshaft has since been crucified, coast to coast, as a traitor to the academy and a threat to the First Amendment.