After losing a $1.5 million grant to fund a chair in Islamic studies last month, Temple University’s religion department has attempted to right its stumble, with Catholics.

The university announced it has received a new gift from a former Catholic seminarian to fund an interfaith dialogue, to the tune of a familiar number: $1.5 million, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Harry Halloran, 68, who took a single religion course at Temple 30 years ago, has offered the sum to finance the so-named Leonard and Arlene Swidler Chair of Interreligious Dialogue. Leonard Swidler, an authority on ecumenism, has been a professor at Temple for more than 40 years.

Halloran, a Villanova resident and chairman and CEO of American Refining Group, an oil and alternative energy company, has gone 300,000 steps farther, by offering that amount toward the previously offered $1.5 million Islamic studies chair through his philanthrophy, Enlightened World Foundation.

A Muslim organization had offered that total, but withdrew after Temple delayed in responding. Swidler was one who suggested that University President Ann Weaver Hart gave into pressure from trustees, who had fears of receiving money from a Muslim organization, this the International Institute of Islamic Thought, which had been included in a federal probe but never directly involved in any indictment.

The situation gets muddier. Art Hochner, president of the Temple Association of University Professors, has mentioned concerns over whether the academic side of the university was included enough in these decisions.

The International Institute of Islamic Thought, a nonprofit research group based in Virginia, has revoked its large $1.5 million offer for an endowed chair in Islamic studies to honor respected Temple religion professor Mahmoud Ayoub, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Negotiations for the offer, which came last spring, were derailed when university trustees and others were suspiscious of the group’s involvement in a government probe into the funding of suspected terrorists back in 2002.

In a university statement, President Ann Weaver Hart said that “Temple decided to neither accept or reject this generous offer,” instead waiting to hear the federal investigation is completed.

IIIT revoked the offer late last month.

“There’s no reason to believe there’s an investigation of IIIT,” the group’s attorney, Nancy Luque, told the Inquirer.

IIIT was one of 20 nonprofits investigated by the government almost six years ago regarding their relationship with Sami Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor suspected of funding Palestinian terrorists.

However, IIIT was never prosecuted, nor was anyone directly affiliated with the organization. No assets were frozen, according to Luque. 

The group approached Temple initially because of Ayoub, a highly respected scholar born and educated in Lebanon before coming to Philadelphia for a master’s degree in religous thought from the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s. The group itself has Temple ties, considering Ismail Al-Faruqi, who founded Temple’s Islamic studies program, cofounded IIIT. Al-Faruqi and his wife were stabbed to death in their Wyncote home in 1986. It is a case that has never been solved. 

Anti-Islamic sentiment has raged over the decision in some sectors. In a letter to President Hart from late December, Professor Lenoard Swidler, who teaches Catholic thought for Temple’s religion department, called the situation shameful, the result of Hart absorbing pressure from, “Islamophobic persons on the board of trustees,” according to the Inquirer.

Temple University Press is part of a group of university publishers banding together to reduce costs in order to increase output, according to the Library Journal, a trade publication for librarians.

The collaboration, funded by a $1.7 million Mellon grant to be spread out over five years, is focused on reducing the costs of scholarly publishing by establishing a “joint operation” for copy editing and design.

In addition to Temple, the university presses of Rutgers, Virginia, Fordham and New York University, which will manage the grant, are all participating.

This is the first of other planned partnerships between university presses. Two mentioned in the report were a joint Slavic studies collective between Northwestern University Press, University of Pittsburgh Press and the University of Wisconsin Press, in addition to an ethnomusicology effort partnering Temple with Indiana and Kent State.

A Philadelphia-based civil liberties organization with a mission of defending individual rights at American universities issued its annual report recently, as first reported by the Philadelphia Bulletin.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which rates universities by either ‘red light,’ ‘yellow light’ or ‘green light’ standards listed Temple in its middle category, citing language in its sexual harrassment code.

In September, FIRE filed a brief compelling the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to uphold a decision by a lower court that Temple University’s former speech code was unconstitutional. Temple’s code prohibited, among other things, “generalized sexist remarks and behavior,” according to FIRE.

Temple’s code was actually revised while the original suit, filed in February 2006 by the Alliance Defense Fund on behalf of former Temple student Christian DeJohn, was making its way through the court system the first time. Still, the university upholds its original language was constitutional. No decision has been rendered. As previously reported by The Temple News, DeJohn contended that his graduate work was intentionally delayed by Temple’s history department because of DeJohn’s military service, which interupted his coursework. 

“Yellow light colleges and universities are those institutions with at least one ambiguous policy that too easily encourages administrative abuse and arbitrary application,” according to the organization’s own standards.

Through this summer, former university President David Adamany was still listed as Temple’s chief, and the school was considered a ‘red light’ college. Adamany was replaced by current university President Ann Weaver Hart July 1, 2006.