(July 16, 2008)--Some ministers and professors opposed to a think tank planned as part of the president’s library complex at Southern Methodist University mounted a final offensive Wednesday.
The critics pleaded their case to 290 delegates in the church's South Central Jurisdiction.
The delegates are scheduled to vote on a smaller church group's decision last year to allow the school in Dallas to lease land for the project.
Valerie Karras, an associate professor of church history at SMU's Perkins School of Theology, says SMU has faculty and research fellows who represent a wide diversity of ideological and political views.
She says that's undermined when you have an institute on campus that promotes one particular ideology.
SMU officials say the library complex is a done deal.
In March 2007, the Methodist church's mission council gave its blessing for SMU to lease the land for 99 years to the Bush Foundation.
The president and first lady chose SMU as the site for the library and think tank over the two other finalists, the University of Dallas, which later withdrew its bid, and Baylor University.
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