But that wasn't the end of the saga. Apparently still hoping for pay dirt, Tampa FBI officials decided to arrest Sami Al-Arian's brother-in-law, a soft-spoken scholar named Mazen Al-Najjar, for unspecified terrorist associations. Al-Najjar -- the brother of Al-Arian's wife, Nahla -- had arrived at Tampa in 1981 and earned a doctorate at USF. Al-Najjar was arrested under then new antiterrorism laws allowing suspects to be held on the basis of secret evidence, without the precise charge being revealed in court. For the next three and a half years, Al-Najjar would remain in Bradenton prison without anyone -- not his lawyers, not even the judge -- ever seeing the purported evidence against him.

The secret-evidence arrest of his brother-in-law galvanized Al-Arian and his family. While continuing to teach at USF, Al-Arian threw himself into building a national effort to challenge such cases. "The whole idea of secret evidence," he recalls, "was so repugnant, such a repudiation of everything we thought the American system stood for." The radical campus speaker evolved into a canny coalition-builder, winning friends in Congress ranging from the liberal David Bonior to conservatives like Henry Hyde and Bob Barr and rallying Tampa religious leaders to the case. Indeed, prior to September 11 Congress was close to passing a bill sharply restricting secret-evidence trials.

In May of 2000, a no-nonsense federal judge declared Al-Arian's brother-in-law's detention unconstitutional, an immigration judge declared the terrorism charge unfounded and a year ago December Mazen Al-Najjar at last went home to spend Ramadan with his family.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001. The terror attacks on New York and Washington left Al-Arian and his family both sickened and fearful. "This is un-Islamic by every definition, to have innocent people being killed. I don't see anyone who can claim religion here. This is an evil act," he told local papers. Members of the mosque donated blood, and Al-Arian helped organize an interfaith service. Muslim schools in the area immediately received threatening calls. "This is worse than any nightmare could be," brother-in-law Mazen Al-Najjar told a reporter. "I am sad for every reason, for what happened to the victims, for what happened to the world."

It was, Al-Arian thought, to talk about the Islamic community's response to the attacks that he agreed on Sept. 28 to appear on "The O'Reilly Factor," a show he had never seen. Instead, host Bill O'Reilly peppered him with the very charges from 1996 that had long ago been discarded by the FBI and discredited by a federal judge. The transcript is almost comic in its crude tabloid-like melodrama: USF "may be a hotbed for Islamic militants," O'Reilly warned his audience. He quoted a speech Al-Arian gave 15 years ago: "You did a little speaking engagement in Cleveland, and you were quoted as saying Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel. Did you say that?" Al-Arian tried gamely to defend himself, saying that "death to Israel" meant "death to occupation, death to apartheid." He also tried to point out how similarly incendiary President Bush's talk of a "crusade" seemed to much of the Muslim world.

O'Reilly wasn't having any of it. "I appreciate your coming on the program, but if I was the CIA I'd follow you wherever you went. I'm saying I'd be your shadow, doctor."

In a sense, that was exactly what happened. O'Reilly's interview, and several Fox rebroadcasts, inspired hundreds of e-mails and calls to USF, and numerous death threats. That barrage of mail landed on the desk of USF's president, Judy Genshaft, who had taken the job just 18 months earlier. And Genshaft was faced with a dilemma: How to balance those threats with the tradition of academic freedom?

Genshaft's initial response, three days after the O'Reilly show, was to suspend Al-Arian with pay. It was, she declared, a step designed to protect both professor and campus. "I will protect this university as a safe and secure learning environment," she said, and pointing out that Al-Arian was not under any investigation by the FBI or police.

In retrospect, it seemed a move designed to buy time. And it didn't work. After O'Reilly, the Tampa Tribune -- the more tabloid of the area's two major newspapers -- decided to make a crusade of its own, ressurecting the years-old charges in its editorial pages and news columns, branding Al-Arian a "hate-monger" in its headlines. (By contrast, the more sedate St. Petersburg Times, while criticizing his old speeches, declared that Genshaft's "first responsibility" was to protect an academic's right to speak.) Soon the university changed its tune from protecting Al-Arian and the campus to protecting the campus from Al-Arian, warning him in an October letter that he risked disciplinary action should he even set foot on campus after hours.

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