Here are some possible ways to involve others, especially out-of-staters like myself:

* The Drudge Report (www.drudgereport.com) offers a list of links in the middle of the page to national columnists. Those likely to be sympathetic to your cause include the following: Jonathan Alter, Sidney Blumenthal, Jimmy Breslin, Eleanor Clift, Joe Conason, Walter Conkrite, Stanley Crouch, Maureen Dowd, Susan Estrich, Nat Hentoff, Christopher Hitchens, Arianna Huffington, Molly Ivins, Mickey Kaus, Michael Kinsley, Joe Klein, Mort Kondrache, Paul Krugman, Mary McGrory, Anna Quindlen, William Raspberry, Richard Reeves, Tom Shales, Andrew Sullivan, Helen Thomas. Not all these columnists have direct e-mail links, but many do. The more notes they receive from people, the more likely this is to become an issue on the national consciousness.

Arts and Letters Daily (www.aldaily.com) offers a similar list of columnists in its left margin. This website also contains links to serious newspapers and magazines from throughout the world.

* Involving academic senates from throughout the region should be a top priority.

* Involving professional associations (especially those not in the "liberal arts" or "humanities") should be a top priority.

* Insofar as possible, academic officers around the region (including deans, provosts, and presidents) should be encouraged to take a public stand. Their support will seem less self-interested than support from other professors.

* Writing to the governor (governor@governor.state.ms.us) can’t hurt. He may not be innately sympathetic, but he surely won’t like the idea of his state gaining a world-wide reputation as a backward place.

* In discussing the issue with citizens of the state, the point should be stressed that the damage being done is being done to the state as a whole, not simply to USM or to the particular professors involved. If President Thames prevails, Mississippi will come out of this looking like a very poor place for outsiders to want to invest or do business. If he prevails, he will have set back the state immeasurably by making it seems hostile to higher learning and also by making it seem a place where basic fairness does not prevail.

* Although conservatives may seem natural allies of President Thames, surely conservatives in Mississippi cannot be happy to see one of the state’s most important institutions being torn asunder. Whenever I, as an outsider, thought of Mississippi, I always thought of USM (along with Ole Miss and other colleges) as one of its leading lights; now my perception has changed radically. In addition, conservatives cannot, in principle, be happy with an administration that seems marked by nepotism, cronyism, and favoritism. These are not conservative principles; instead, conservatives claim to favor fair and open competition, with the best-qualified (not the best-connected or best-protected) rising to the top. Conservatives should be appealed to in light of their stated commitment to such principles.

* The point should be stressed repeatedly that neither Gary Stringer nor Professor Glamser is a wild-eyed radical; both men apparently have reputations, both on the USM campus and elsewhere, as calm, sensible, reasonable people. For the same reason, every effort should be made, when arguing for your cause, to use moderate, reasonable language and to avoid emotional appeals and personal attacks. The more you allow yourselves to be painted as "radicals," the more easy you make President Thames’s job of defeating you.

Good luck in your struggle!