"Free Saad Ibrahim!": Former DePauw Professor's Friends Gather for 'Teach-In'

June 2, 2001

June 2, 2001, Greencastle, Ind. - About 80 former students and associates of jailed human rights activist Saad Ibrahim gathered at DePauw University today for a "teach-in" and to sign petitions, calling on Egyptian leaders to free Ibrahim and his 27 colleagues from the Ibn Khaldoun Center. DePauw President Robert G. Bottoms has also sent a letter to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and U.S. President George W. Bush, “to set In motion through the appropriate agencies in your governments the steps that will result in the freeing of Dr. Ibrahim from prison, along with his associates.”

Ibrahim taught at DePauw University between 1967 and 1974 and was recently sentenced to seven years in prison in Egypt on charges of tarnishing Egypt's image, accepting foreign money without government approval and embezzling funds. Ibrahim says the charges are politically motivated and without merit. His former students and colleagues, who formed an overflow crowd in an East College classroom during Alumni Reunion Weekend agreed. Jen DeWitt, a 1996 graduate of DePauw and an attorney in California, says she knew little about Ibrahim's case before the teach-in. She vows to return home and let others know what she's learned. "Hopefully we can mobilize other people in San Francisco, especially in the legal community, to understand this case and the injustices it involves."

William L. Morrow, who was a teaching colleague of Ibrahim's at DePauw, sent a statement calling the jailing, “the most flagrant of injustices ... Saad Ibrahim had solid evidence that the Egyptian electoral process was dysfunctional by even the most cursory procedural democratic standards,” Morrow wrote. “Everyone who appreciates the freedoms and fruits of a free society should sing Saad Ibrahim's praises and condemn the forces that have led to his imprisonment.”

Anne Wright Schmidt of Oak Park, Illinois, is a 1971 DePauw grad who was taught by Prof. Ibrahim and was a classmate of Barbara K. Lethem (now Ibrahim's wife). "It speaks to both of them that all of these people who they knew thirty years ago are really concerned about what's happened. He made a big impression on this campus in the few years that he was here."

Another 1971 alumnae, Lynne A. Tweedie, says the professor impacted many lives. "I came from a Chicago suburb and didn't realize there were other points of view until I took his class. The world opened up and I learned to think in new ways, because of Saad." Tweedie says even then, Ibrahim was focused on humanitarian issues and the need to stand for principles. "I think what makes us proud is he is still fighting this battle."

Dr. Robert Calvert, professor of political science at DePauw, offered after the event, "What did we accomplish? We may never know. The point was not to get together and recall old ties, it was to energize people to take this message back home with them and spread the dialogue." The teach-in, he says, was "not a flash in the pan. It takes a long time to work these things out. The more people who know about this injustice, talk about it, and cry for change, the greater chance Saad will be set free. But it will take time."

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