Editorial: Institute reaches out

Friday, April 27, 2007 | 7:19 a.m.

I n the four years after opening its doors, the UNLV Institute for Security Studies was careless in accounting for how money was spent and did little to move toward its key goal of creating an anti-terrorism think tank. After articles last year by the Las Vegas Sun showed how the embattled institute had largely failed to make progress, university officials made significant changes and in October brought in Scott Smith, a retired Army major general, to run the institute.

The institute is starting to move in the right direction and, as Jeff German reported in Wednesday's Las Vegas Sun, will today hold a seminar on limiting terrorism risks in Southern Nevada. That is an important step forward, given the institute's past. After receiving millions of dollars in federal grants, the institute fell far short of expectations and faced questions from federal officials who wanted to know what the institute was doing.

Part of the problem was that the institute was acting as if it were autonomous, but after the Sun's stories, state university system and UNLV officials jumped in, grabbing the reins. One of the institute's biggest critics, former state homeland security director Jerry Bussell, said he has seen a change, as noted by today's forum, which is to gather government officials, homeland security experts and university leaders and professors.

"I think they're on the right track," Bussell said. "They weren't reaching out to professors and the body of knowledge present at UNLV in the past, but it looks like they've changed that."

From the initial appearances, it looks as if things are changing, and we hope that continues. When first conceived, it was anticipated that the institute would become a leading academic authority on homeland security. Hopefully under the new leadership, that can still happen.