The University of South Florida violated Sami Al-Arian's academic rights when it suspended and later fired the professor without giving him an opportunity to respond to the university's charges against him, the American Association of University Professors concludes in a report released on Thursday.

The findings, which follow a yearlong investigation by the association's committee on academic freedom and tenure, were originally sent to administrators at South Florida for their response on February 12. Eight days later, Mr. Al-Arian was arrested by federal law-enforcement officials and on charges of raising money to support Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group that has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. Justice Department (The Chronicle, February 28).

The charges against Mr. Al-Arian, contained in a 50-count indictment, allege that he was responsible for managing money for the group. The indictment also accuses him of using the university and two of its now-defunct entities as fronts for terrorist activities. Mr. Al-Arian is being held without bond in a federal prison facility near Tampa.

"The criminal charges against him, while manifestly very serious, remain to be proven in a court of law," the AAUP investigating committee says in an update to its report, which was written after the indictment. But, it notes, "with respect to his dismissal, its implementation before he had any opportunity to defend himself against the administration's charges is fundamentally at variance with" the AAUP's rules on academic due process. "Beyond that," it continues, "the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' ought to be observed in our institutions of higher learning no less than it is in our courts."

The university responded that the AAUP's report is premature and should be tabled until after Mr. Al-Arian's criminal trial, which could take years.

Mr. Al-Arian's troubles at the university began on September 26, 2001, when he appeared on Fox News's The O'Reilly Factor. The host of the program, Bill O'Reilly, questioned him about alleged ties to terrorism and showed clips of speeches Mr. Al-Arian had made more than a decade earlier saying, in Arabic, "death to Israel" and "Jihad is our path." Mr. Al-Arian said his words meant death to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and not to individual Israelis.

Shortly after his television appearance, Mr. Al-Arian received a death threat, which was soon retracted, and the university barred him from coming to the campus, saying his presence caused safety concerns for the entire university. But after those worries subsided, the AAUP committee says, the suspension continued for more than 15 months, "an unconscionable amount of time." Even before his indictment, it says, "the administration had for all practical purposes already removed him from his tenured position at the university without having afforded any of the basic elements of academic due process."

"It was a strong case of not following the rules," says Jordan E. Kurland, associate general secretary of the AAUP. "This could in no way be called a suspension. It acquired a permanence of its own that was in fact a dismissal."

The case came to be debated on many campuses as an example of the challenges to academic freedom and free speech that lingered after the events of September 11.

Along the way, the university's stated reasons for dismissing the controversial professor changed. In August 2002, South Florida filed a lawsuit in state court seeking a ruling on whether dismissing Mr. Al-Arian would violate his constitutional rights. At that time, it notified the professor that it intended to dismiss him because he had used his academic position "to raise funds for a terrorist organization." The judge threw the case out.

Finally, the university fired the professor, just days after his arrest, citing the indictment and saying the charges confirmed what university officials had believed all along.

In a written response to the AAUP's committee report, Judy L. Genshaft, the president of the university, and David Stamps, the provost, denied that there had been any violation of the professor's academic freedom.

"The Sami Al-Arian case is unique in academic history," they say. "We know of no other tenured university professor investigated and charged by a federal grand jury with aiding and abetting terrorism, knowingly assisting an organization committed to murdering innocent men, women, and children, and doing so by using his university affiliation."

The committee that investigated the case will next make a report to AAUP members at the organization's annual meeting in June. At that time, the group's members will vote on whether to censure South Florida for its handling of the case. Censure -- a serious black mark against a university's commitment to academic freedom -- could make it difficult for the university to attract top-notch scholars and administrators, some faculty members fear.