As federal prosecutors consider whether to retry a former college professor and accused terrorism supporter, Sami Al-Arian, some on and off the University of South Florida campus are suggesting he should be able to seek his job back there if he is freed.

A jury acquitted Mr. Al-Arian last week on eight charges, including conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism, and could not reach a verdict on nine other counts. The outcome reignited a debate over whether the former computer engineering professor and Palestinian Arab activist was treated fairly when he was suspended and later fired by the state-funded university.

An attorney with a civil liberties group that has criticized the university’s handling of Mr. Al-Arian’s case said the acquittal undermines the school’s claims that the professor was linked to terrorism.

“The underlying reason why they fired him is gone,” the legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Greg Lukianoff, said. “They initially denied him the right to due process and they continue to. In the interest of fairness, he is due a hearing, with a chance to respond.”

After the jury failed to convict Mr. Al-Arian last week following a five month trial, the University of South Florida issued a statement saying it did not expect him to return. “USF ended Sami Al-Arian’s employment nearly three years ago, and we do not expect anything to change that,” a spokeswoman for the Tampa-based school, Michelle Carlyon, said.

Soon after the tenured professor was fired in 2003 over his alleged links to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the school’s president, Judy Genshaft, seemed to leave the door open to his return. “At the least, it seems both prudent and fair to await the outcome of the criminal process before further decisions are made,” she wrote.

A group that backed Mr. Al-Arian in his dispute with the university, the American Association of University Professors, complained that the school appears to be drifting away from its commitment to consider the grievance filed over his firing. “The university spokesman’s statement in response to the jury’s statement seems tantamount to closing the door,” an official with the professors’ group, Jonathan Knight, said. He also added, “It could be they were just acknowledging a hard reality.”

Mr. Knight said that even if all charges against Mr. Al-Arian are dropped, disclosures at the trial could affect his ability to continue at the university. “An individual can be convicted of crime or exonerated of a crime but still leave very important questions open for the administration to decide,” Mr. Knight said.

Mr. Al-Arian’s former colleagues said they expect the faculty to be split over whether the ex-professor should return.

“There will be people who want him back; there will be people who want him dumped in the Atlantic,” a professor of mathematics, Gregory McColm, said in an interview. “On campus there is every conceivable view of Al-Arian.”

Mr. McColm said many professors thought the university treated Mr. Al-Arian unfairly, by first suspending him out of alleged concern for his own safety, and then firing him over his alleged involvement with terrorists.

“The rationale kept changing, and it was not entirely clear what he was being dismissed for,” Mr. McColm said. “When someone is being dismissed by a process that seems to be sort of outside the contract or indifferent to the contract, then we start getting worried.”

An attorney for Mr. Al-Arian, Robert McKee, said the former professor’s grievance over his firing is still pending, but the two sides agreed to put it on hold until the criminal case concluded. Asked if Mr. Al-Arian is still eager to return to the university, Mr. McKee said, “I’m sure that he is. He didn’t want to leave in the first place. I don’t think three years in jail would change his mind about that.”

Mr. McKee did not dispute a little-noticed news report that just before Mr. Al-Arian was indicted in 2003, the university offered to pay the long-suspended professor $800,000 to settle his claims about his suspension. “I certainly can’t deny any of it,” the attorney said of the Web posting by a journalist who recently interviewed Mr. Al-Arian, John Sugg. “Obviously, if there was a deal, it wasn’t consummated,” Mr. McKee said.

Mr. Sugg reported that Governor Bush blocked the settlement. His office did not return calls seeking comment for this story.

According to local press reports, prosecutors convinced only a few of the 12 jurors that Mr. Al-Arian was guilty of any of the most serious charges against him. One juror told the St. Petersburg Times that the only charge the ex-professor stood any chance of being convicted on was a claim that he lied on an application for naturalization.

Mr. McKee said he thinks the government will give up on retrying Mr. Al-Arian and move instead to deport him. “That’s the cleanest, easiest way from the government’s perspective to put a bow on this whole thing,” the lawyer said. If the government succeeds in deporting Mr. Al-Arian, that would make his employment dispute moot, Mr. McKee noted.

A New Jersey man whose daughter was killed in a Palestinian Islamic Jihad attack in Gaza in 1995, Stephen Flatow, said he does not favor deportation. He pointed to the case of Mousa Abu Marzook, a Palestinian Arab deported from America in 1997, who went on to become a leader of another terrorist group, Hamas. “That doesn’t send the right signal,” Mr. Flatow said. He said Mr. Al-Arian is unsuitable to be a professor, regardless of what the decisions are reached in the courts. “He’s called Jews ‘pigs’ and ‘monkeys.’ He’s called for death to Israel. I don’t know how you place him on a college campus,” Mr. Flatow said. “How would you like to be a Jewish student sitting in one of his computer classes?”