Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: finanziamenti sauditi alle Università americane

in caso sorgano dubbi su come mai Israele è così spesso criticato,
particolarmente da certi accademici ebrei ansiosi di mantenere il
posto di lavoro
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NThkMDM2NDcyM2U3ZmE0YzlmNTFkNjYyNzY5MDY1Mjg=
Following the Foreign Money
With the data now public, let the targeted research and reporting
begin.
By Stanley Kurtz
Through Freedom of Information Act requests and discussions with
officials at the Department of Education, I have obtained a
comprehensive list of gifts originating in foreign countries to
American colleges and universities (as reported under Title 20,
Section 1011f of the U.S. Code, "Disclosures of foreign gifts"). By
law, all disclosure reports filed under Section 1011f are considered
public records, and today, National Review Online is making them
available to readers, here.
I post this material for two reasons. First, Congress will soon be
facing an important decision regarding foreign-gift-disclosure
requirements for American colleges and universities. Second, some
recent large gifts to American schools originating in Saudi Arabia and
the United Arab Emirates have raised legitimate concerns about foreign
influence on American higher education. Given the size of our higher-
education system and the variety of potential questions raised by the
records I am releasing today, the best way to uncover further problems
is to make this material available to mainstream reporters, bloggers,
student newspapers, alumni, and concerned citizens throughout the
country.
Before discussing the important decision bearing on foreign-gift
disclosures facing Congress, some background information on the
potential significance of these gift-disclosure reports might prove
useful. Any remarks on specific newly released gift reports must be
regarded as provisional and speculative. My purpose here is not to
reach definitive conclusions about any specific gifts, but simply to
point to potentially fertile areas for investigation.
Troubling Gifts
To treat all or even most foreign gifts to American colleges or
universities as somehow nefarious would be a serious mistake.
America's institutions of higher education -- with their superb
programs in science, medicine, and engineering -- rightly benefit from
the largesse of America's foreign friends and allies, many of whom
have benefited directly from the technical expertise developed in
these institutions.
On the other hand, there are reasonable grounds to fear that some
foreign donations may purchase undue influence over the way in which
highly controversial subjects are treated in American lecture halls.
For example, Virginia congressman Frank R. Wolf recently sent a letter
of concern to Georgetown University president John J. DeGioia
regarding a $20 million donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal
to Georgetown's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (the second
largest gift in Georgetown's history). A second $20 million gift from
Prince Alwaleed to Harvard University has raised additional concerns.
Shortly after 9/11, Prince Alwaleed famously pledged to donate $10
million to the Twin Towers Fund. Yet because the gift was attached to
a statement calling on the U.S. to "re-examine its policies in the
Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian
cause," Alwaleed's gift was spurned by then-mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Harvard and Georgetown have evinced no such reluctance. Alwaleed
clearly means his gifts to shape American views on the Middle East,
and there are legitimate grounds for asking, as did Rep. Wolf, whether
such gifts might compromise the content of scholarship at Harvard and
Georgetown. (For more on concerns raised by Alwaleed's gifts, see
"Saudis give big to U.S. colleges.")
In an earlier piece in this space, "Saudi in the Classroom," I showed
that questions about undue Saudi influence on American education go
beyond colleges and universities. Evidence suggests that various Saudi-
funded institutions are able to use congressionally mandated
university programs of "public outreach" as an unmonitored channel to
gain influence over American K-12 education.
Forming Judgments
How do we differentiate between questionable foreign influence and
legitimate support for that which is best in American higher
education? By itself, the information contained in federally mandated
foreign-gift disclosures does not allow us to discern the difference.
These reports can only raise questions for reporters, students, and
other concerned individuals to pursue. To fairly judge individual
gifts will require additional information about its stated purpose and
how it is actually being used, and this can only be obtained through
inquiries at the institutions in question. Personally, I begin with
the assumption that most foreign gifts to U.S. universities are
benignly intended and do substantial good. On the other hand, since
some foreign gifts do indeed raise legitimate concerns, how do we
begin to make sense of the records I'm posting today?
Failure to Report?
The first question we can ask is whether all institutions that ought
to be reporting foreign gifts are in fact doing so. The University of
Michigan reported a number of foreign gifts between 1992 and 1996, yet
appears not to have reported any gifts after that date. Is this
because the university has received no large foreign gifts since 1996,
or because it has failed to report them? Or is there another
explanation for the absence of reports over the past 12 years?
Questions like these are best pursued by local bloggers and reporters
at college newspapers, who can find out whether their school is aware
of foreign-gift-reporting requirements and perhaps obtain an on-the-
record statement confirming that no foreign gifts of $250,000 or
higher have been received within a given period.
Section 1011f permits the Attorney General, at the request of the
Secretary of Education, to bring a civil action to force compliance
with foreign-gift-reporting requirements. But to bring such an action,
the Secretary would first need some indication of non-compliance. Here
is where the public might be able to help. Sunlight on this matter is
likely to result in compliance well before resort to a lawsuit.
Missing Names
Looking over these records, it immediately becomes clear that while
the vast majority of institutions report the identity of foreign
donors, a few withhold that information. Some schools withhold the
donor's name, but at least indicate whether the foreign donor is an
individual, corporation, or foundation. While there are a few
intriguing blanks under the category "Giftor Name" scattered
throughout these records, several institutions repeatedly report large
gifts without including the identities of the donors. Harvard and
Columbia Universities stand out for their numerous foreign gifts
reported without named donors.
It would be interesting to learn more about why donor names are left
off the gift reports from these schools -- and again, local reporters
and bloggers, students and alumni may be best positioned to obtain
further information. Since the majority of schools report donor names,
it is all the more striking that these elite Ivies have not. On first
read, it seems difficult to tell from the wording of Section 1011f
whether the specific identities of donors must be revealed by law.
Given cases like the Alwaleed donation, this would seem to be an area
in which Congress could make the law tighter and/or render its
existing requirements more explicit.
The UAE and U.
As an example of reports that raise intriguing questions worthy of
follow-up, let's look at some gifts from the United Arab Emirates to
Harvard University. Let me emphasize again that my comments here do
not reflect settled conclusions, but are meant only to suggest lines
for further inquiry.
It was widely reported in 2004 that Harvard University had returned a
$2.5 million gift from the president of the United Arab Emirates. (See
here, here, and here.) The gift had originally been earmarked to fund
an endowed professorship in Islamic religious studies at Harvard
Divinity School, but was held up when students at the Divinity School
alleged that the institution making the gift had hosted speakers
claiming that the Holocaust was perpetrated by Zionists, and that
Israel was behind 9/11.
Reports indicated that Harvard agreed to return the gift in 2004. So
it is intriguing that in 2005 we see two $1-million gifts from the UAE
to Harvard (without any donor name) and an additional $1.5 million
contract between Harvard and the UAE. We then see an extremely large
gift of $14,586,957 from an unnamed "non-government" source in the UAE
to Harvard University in 2006.
While there may be nothing untoward here at all, further investigation
seems appropriate. Were the gift reports of 2005 merely a kind of
bookkeeping indication of the gift that passed through and was then
eventually returned to the UAE, as promised? Or are we dealing with
completely separate and subsequent gifts? A skeptic might wonder
whether the gift reportedly returned was somehow quietly re-gifted
later on. But of course there may be no connection at all between the
gift famously returned to the UAE and the later gifts to Harvard from
unnamed donors. In any case, more information would be most welcome.
Missing Information?
One reason that it's so difficult to know what to make of the reported
gifts from the UAE to Harvard -- or of any of the other reported gifts
-- is that the Department of Education data contain no indications of
restrictions on the use of gifts. Section 1011f indicates that any
restrictions regarding the use of gifts -- for example, to establish a
center or to fund new faculty positions -- ought to be disclosed. As
far as I can tell, no such restrictions are indicated. For example, we
know that Prince Alwaleed's gifts to Georgetown are directed toward
the Center of Muslim-Christian Understanding, yet nothing of the sort
is indicated in the records I've received. I am currently trying to
obtain more information from the DOE on gift restrictions.
Congress Decides
Although we are only just beginning to investigate the significance of
foreign-gift disclosures, Congress is now considering seriously
misguided legislation that, at best, would be redundant, and at worst
would radically dilute current gift-disclosure requirements.
Congress is soon likely to re-authorize the Higher Education Act. The
House and Senate have passed very different versions of HEA,
particularly Title VI of that Act, which governs the system of federal
subsidies to university programs of Middle East studies and other area
studies. The Senate bill is a carefully worked out compromise between
both parties, led by Senators Kennedy and Enzi. That bill incorporates
a number of urgently needed reforms that restore oversight to a
program whose unsupervised character has rendered it liable to abuse
by foreign donors (as I argued in "Saudi in the Classroom").
In contrast, the House version of Title VI, a product of the
Democratic majority, almost totally guts the Senate's Title VI reform
proposals. The House offers a single provision purporting to deal with
the problem of undue foreign influence: a requirement that foreign
gifts in the amount of $1 million or above be publicly disclosed, if
specifically directed toward a Title VI center.
Section 1011f already requires disclosure of foreign gifts in the
amount of $250,000 or above, and covers gifts to any part of a college
or university, not merely to area-studies centers. What House
Democrats advertise as new protections against the undue influence of
foreign donors will actually weaken the existing law, both by raising
the disclosure threshold from $250,000 to $1 million, and by radically
narrowing the scope of gift reports.
The House's bogus version of Title VI "reform" must be rejected. The
only good the House bill may have done is to direct our attention to
existing foreign-gift-disclosure records -- which no one, to my
knowledge, has asked for or published until today. My guess is that
the House Democrats did not intentionally move to weaken existing
foreign-gift-disclosure requirements, but simply acted in ignorance of
existing law, which seems largely to have evaded public notice.
Today, the public gets a first look at the Department of Education's
extensive records on foreign gifts to American universities. Given
lingering concerns over large gifts from Middle Eastern countries to
American institutions, the public needs time to investigate these
records. In the meantime, the Democratic version of HEA Title VI
"reform" ought to be rejected in favor of the Senate's bipartisan
bill.

 posto di lavoro
strano, visto che di solito certi accademici ebrei che non si uniscono
al coro di lodi a Israele vengono cacciati dalle università in cui
lavorano su pressioni esterne...comunque ben svegliato, il nazista Ron
Paul sono anni che dice che bisogna darci un taglio con chi non
riconosce Israele come i sauditi.