Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: follow the money

ovvero chi finanzia (e con quale scopo) i sempre piu' affollati
dipartimenti di "Middle Eastern Studies"
http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2011/3/2/main-feature/1/follow-the-money
March 2, 2011
Follow the Money
By Alex Joffe
The prestigious London School of Economics (LSE) is shocked—shocked—to
discover that Muammar Qaddafi is a very bad man. So the once venerable
institution is diverting some of the $2.5 million pledged through
Qaddafi's son Saif al-Islam into a scholarship fund for Libyan
students.  As for the Ph.D. bestowed on the young man in 2008 for a
dissertation on (if you please) the virtues of global democratization,
he will be keeping it, at least for the moment. After all, in the
words of one faculty member, there is "no substantial evidence" to
support long-standing allegations that someone else wrote the work.
A crazy dictator like Qaddafi gets the attention, but his is hardly
the only corrupt and repressive regime in the Arab and Muslim world,
let alone the most lavish, to have invested in Western universities
with the clear expectation of a quid pro quo. When another one of
these governments erupts or falls, will its academic beneficiaries
suddenly discover that the money they took over the years has been
similarly tainted?
The transparency of programs like the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center
for Muslim-Christian Understanding—established in 2005 with the Saudi
royal's $20-million gift to Georgetown University, and staffed with
reliable apologists—is glaring. Alwaleed himself could not have been
clearer, stating that because of the events of 9/11, "the image of
Islam [had] been tarnished in the West"; hence, his donation to
Georgetown, along with one to Harvard in the same amount, was intended
"to teach about the Islamic world to the United States."
Alwaleed's terms had been on even brighter display years earlier.
Offering $10 million to New York City in the immediate aftermath of
9/11, he noted pointedly that the "United States of America should re-
examine its policies in the Middle East" since "our Palestinian
brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of Israelis while the
world turns the other cheek." Then-mayor Rudy Giuliani promptly and
publicly spurned the money, calling Alwaleed's statement not only
wrong but "part of the problem." What Giuliani explicitly rejected,
universities have implicitly embraced.
The effect has been felt most saliently in academic studies of the
Middle East. An early and rather clumsy attempt at influence-buying,
as Martin Kramer notes in his Ivory Towers on Sand, was a 1977 grant
to Georgetown from Libya; the motives behind it were so blatant that
three years later the money was returned with interest. But this, like
earlier sallies by the Shah of Iran (to endow chairs of Iranian
studies) and the Turkish government (for an Institute of Turkish
Studies in Washington), was merely the prelude to a flood of oil
money.
Between 1995 and 2008, according to the researcher Stanley Kurtz, Arab
Gulf states gave $234 million in contracts and about $88 million in
gifts to American universities. Although amounting to only a drop in
the bucket of total university endowments, such targeted gifts, like
the $20 million contributed by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to the
University of Arkansas, and various multi-million-dollar donations to
Berkeley, Cornell, Princeton, Texas A&M, Columbia, Rutgers, and other
schools, have meant a very great deal locally.
The aims of these investments are very specific: the creation of a
particular sort of cultural "understanding." And in this respect they
have paid off, especially in the area of faculty hiring and
concentration. Early on, there was much touting of secularization in
the Middle East, a commodity that failed to materialize. As for
radical Islam, a subject in much greater need of "understanding," it
was downplayed both before and even after 9/11. Instead, the
supposedly "separate political wings" of Hamas and Hizballah, the way
that elections in the Arab world allegedly tend to "moderate" radical
groups, and the so-called "incrementalism" toward democracy of tyrants
like Qaddafi were held up as hopeful signs. To this day, even as the
study of Israel itself has been marginalized, the Palestinian cause
has been presented as the pivotal issue of all time and the real key
to everything one would ever need to know about the Middle East.
Although report after report has documented the strong anti-Israel
bias coming out of these programs, the U.S. government has also
abetted them financially through Title VI of the Higher Education Act
of 1998, which provides funds to centers of Middle East studies
undertaking language instruction and, ominously, outreach to local
primary and secondary schools. But the American government is one
thing, foreign donors something else, and these particular foreign
donors something else again. Here the fundamental issue remains: why
was the money taken in the first place?
Sometimes, to be sure, the deal stinks a little too much. In a
surprising display of backbone, UCLA returned a $1-million gift from
Turkey after it was revealed that scholars would be prevented from
using Ottoman archives that might confirm evidence of genocide against
Armenians in World War I. But this was a rare exception. In 2003, the
Harvard Divinity School would have been happy to take $2.5 million
from Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi, despite his support for Holocaust
denial, were it not for the activism of one persistent student. The
next year, back at the trough, Harvard accepted two $1-million gifts
from unnamed donors in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and another
$14.5 million two years later. In 2008, thanks to a gift of $50
million, New York University set up a campus for international
students in the UAE (sorry, no Israelis allowed), as have other
American universities.
British universities, perennially short of cash, have also benefited
nicely from Middle Eastern largesse. In Great Britain, indeed, the
teaching of Middle Eastern history and Islam has been so transformed
that it is now primarily conducted by Muslim Middle Easterners
themselves. Saif Qaddafi's alma mater has been a particular hotbed of
anti-Israel hatred; calls for the boycott of Israeli scholars are
frequently voiced by LSE faculty, including heads of its Middle East
Center, set up with a grant from the Emirates Foundation and also
funded by Libya.
Today, Libya is noticeably more murderous than it was even a few weeks
ago. But Saudi Arabia has for decades been a reliably oppressive,
misogynistic, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian supporter of terrorism and
radical Islam. Is the idea that these countries are free to oppress
their religious minorities, incite against Jews, flog as many
Indonesian maids, hang as many gay teens, and, in extreme cases, fire
on as many protestors as they please—and that American and European
universities get to keep their money at least until the revolution
forces second thoughts (and then only when the revolution shows signs
of succeeding)?
It would appear so. With events in the Arab and Muslim Middle East
being televised, YouTubed, Tweeted, and e-mailed, the true nature of
Arab and Muslim regimes can no longer be hidden, except perhaps by
paid-for savants in the West.  After the revolution, and assuming a
moderately happy outcome, the citizens of these countries would be
well advised to demand their money back.
Alex Joffe is a research scholar with the Institute for Jewish and
Community Research.

 dipartimenti di "Middle Eastern Studies"
Un motivo in più per chiudere le scuole private, di qualsiasi livello,
e i finanziamenti privati a quelle pubbliche. E per tagliare la testa
ai fascisti che vogliono tagliare le spese per l'istruzione pubblica