Exclude Shultz, Arab Group Asks Stanford

An Arab group, angered over Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s refusal to grant Yasser Arafat a visa to enter the United States, wants Stanford University to bar Shultz from its classrooms.

The South Bay Arab American Organization, in a letter to Stanford President Donald Kennedy, said Shultz, a professor in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, should not be allowed to teach when he returns from a leave of absence.

“It is our strongest feeling that a university is a place of academic freedom and a forum which allows for the open exchange of opposing views,” Victor Ajlouny of the Arab group wrote. He called Shultz’s decision to deny U.S. entry to the Palestine Liberation Organization leader “an affront to these basic principles.”

Rich Kurovsky, a spokesman for the Graduate School of Business, said, “George Shultz is a full professor and holds an endowed chair in the department, and everyone expects that he will return to his position here.”