Saudis give big to U.S. colleges

Two years ago this month, a Saudi prince caused a media splash — and raised eyebrows — when he donated $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard universities to fund Islamic studies.

Although few details have been released about how the money has been spent, at Georgetown, the money helped pay for a recent symposium on Islamic-Western relations held in the university's Copley Formal Lounge. The event attracted about 120 persons: students, Catholic priests, men in business suits and several women in colorful head scarves who all came to hear religion experts from several American universities, as well as from Bosnia, Ireland and Malaysia.

"I just came here to learn the language scholars are using about these things," Prince Haakon of Norway said.

Some call the Saudi gift Arab generosity and gratitude for the years American universities have educated the elite of the Arab world. Others say the sheer size of the donations amounts to buying influence and creating bastions of noncritical pro-Islamic scholarship within academia.

"There's a possibility these campuses aren't getting gifts, they're getting investments," said Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. "Departments on Middle Eastern studies tend to be dominated by professors tuned to the concerns of Arab and Muslim rulers. It's very difficult for scholars who don't follow this line to get jobs and tenure on college campuses.

Our friends the Saudis...

After Guantanamo, ‘Reintegration’ for Saudis

By Josh White and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 10, 2007; Page A01

For five years, Jumah al-Dossari sat in a tiny cell at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, watched day and night by military captors who considered him one of the most dangerous terrorist suspects on the planet.

In July, he was suddenly released to his native Saudi Arabia, which held a very different view. Dossari was immediately reunited with his family and treated like a VIP. He was given a monthly stipend and a job, housed and fed, even promised help in finding a wife. Today, he is a free man living on the Persian Gulf coast.

The treatment is part of a Saudi “reintegration program” designed to help Dossari, 34, and other former Guantanamo prisoners adjust to modern society and learn the meanings of Islam. About 40 of the more than 100 Guantanamo detainees from Saudi Arabia who have been transferred to Riyadh since last year have been released after participating in the program, and the rest are scheduled to be let go in coming months.

When I read this today, all I could think of is what a bunch of freaking whores we have running our institutions of higher learning. I hope for every dollar they get from the Saudis, they lose five dollars from their alumni donations. I keep trying to imagine Nazi Germany being allowed to buy a seat for “Aryan studies” at Georgetown, a nominally Catholic institution, during the 1930s. But I can’t.

I think the story misses Saudi money being provided to sympathetic think tanks as well...

I began to suspect this sometime ago when Lawrence Korb showed up at a Congressional hearing on the results of a study on bias in Middle Eastern school books - especially Saudi text books - that are still filled with highly prejudicial material concerning Jews, Christians, and Western society and culture generally. The former Undersecretary of Defense appeared at the request of the Saudi Embassy and seemed unbriefed on the specifics of the issue. He was there solely to throw his reputation around and say that things were not as bad as they appeared.

I couldn’t help but wonder how appreciative ($$$) the Saudis were in return for his testimony. Not to him personally, of course. No, I would never suggest that the great man personally soiled himself with a bribe. No, I'm refering to a tax-deductible donation to the public policy research group he was working at.

The article refers to the practice of making large donations in expectation of more favorable treatment at colleges and universities. Funny, how the schools are not to forthcoming concerning how these "donations" is being allocated. I suspect we'd find the same thing behind the scenes at the research groups I mentioned above.

Personally, I suspect it is also being given to leadership in left wing political groups (it would go a long way to explain these groups' unreflective support of all things Muslim and their stunning silence whenever a new outrage is perpetrated by the favored group(s)) and as plain old bribes and payoffs at the local school district level (it would also help explain their tilt in favoring Muslim observances and practices over Christian and Jewish ones).

At least then we could attribute their behavior to good 'ole greed and corruption; then it wouldn't be so perplexing.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.