iPouya

[If I was a Stanford alum, student, or faculty, seriously, I’d be embarrassed. (thanx Maryam)] 

SF Chronicle: Donald Rumsfeld is coming to the Bay Area.

President Bush’s former defense secretary, who resigned in 2006 amid escalating criticism over the war in Iraq, has been appointed to a one-year stint as a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, joining fellow conservatives George Shultz and Newt Gingrich.

“Don has had immense experience in public service, and has much to contribute to society as a result,” said the institution’s director, John Raisian. “I am pleased that he will spend time during the coming year in thinking, writing and advising on important matters of public policy.”

While he’s at Stanford, Rumsfeld will participate in a task force examining national security and world peace in the post-Sept. 11 era, Raisian said.

Some Stanford faculty and students said they were outraged by Rumsfeld’s appointment, saying he lacks the academic credentials to be at the Hoover Institution and criticizing his central role in the Iraq war.

“I’m appalled,” said Stanford history Professor Barton Bernstein. “He is a profoundly immoral man. The Hoover Institution has long been a refuge for right-wing Republicans, but what makes this unusually disgraceful is Rumsfeld’s involvement in a war started for reasons unprovable, unproven and demonstrably wrong.”

Rumsfeld was unpopular in the hometown of UC Berkeley in March, when the Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to support prosecuting him for war crimes.

Rumsfeld might soon be joined at Stanford by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said in recent interviews that she’s looking forward to returning to Stanford to teach in 2008. Rice is on leave from Stanford, where she served as provost for six years until she joined the Bush administration in 2005.

Excerpts: “Overwhelming numbers of Iraqis say the U.S. troop buildup has worsened security and the prospects for economic and political progress in their country, according to a poll released Monday that provides a strikingly bleak appraisal of the war. Forty-seven percent want American forces and their coalition allies to leave the country immediately, the survey showed, 12 percent more than said so in a March poll as the troop increase was beginning. And 57 percent — including nearly all Sunnis and half of Shiites — said they consider attacks on coalition forces acceptable, a slight increase over the past half year. Seventy percent in the survey said they believe security has worsened where the added forces were sent, with another 11 percent saying the buildup has had no effect. Similar numbers said security in other parts of the country has deteriorated and that overall economic and political conditions have declined.”