Most Popular
Job Board
Congressman Questions GU Over Saudi Prince's Gift
A Virginia Congressman raised questions this week regarding potential pro-Saudi bias at a Georgetown University center funded in large part by a Saudi prince.
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va., LAW ’65) sent University President John J. DeGioia a letter on Feb. 14 requesting information on the allocation of funds within the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
In the letter, Wolf asked the university to account for how a $20 million donation, the second-largest in Georgetown history, made in December 2005 by His Royal Highness Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia to the center, affects its teaching and scholarship. The center was renamed after the prince following the donation.
Wolf focused on the possible influence that the Saudi Arabian government has on the center, highlighting his concerns about its government.
“Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks, there also have been reports of individuals and institutions associated with the Government of Saudi Arabia financing activities that allegedly support Islamic militants and extremists throughout the world. The majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals,” he wrote.
In addition, Wolf questioned whether the center has produced any report or analysis critical of Saudi Arabia or examined alleged Saudi links to extremism and terrorism.
“Finally, I request information on whether any of the Saudi-source funds have been used in the training, briefing or education of those going into or currently employed by the U.S. government,” the letter said.
The Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding was founded in 1993. According to the Center’s Web site, its mission is “to improve relations between the Muslim world and the West and enhance understanding of Muslims in the West.”
In 2005, Harvard University received a matching $20 million gift, which it has used to create a similar center.
John Esposito, professor of Islamic studies and director of the center, said that Prince Alwaleed, an American-educated businessman who is currently ranked 13th on Forbes’s list of the world’s billionaires, has a strong record of philanthropy.
“After 9/11, he was concerned about better understanding between the Arab/Muslim world and the [United States],” Esposito said.
He also said that Prince Alwaleed began by establishing Centers of American Studies at the American University of Beirut and the American University of Cairo in 2003.
“He then decided to fund the other side of the equation,” said Esposito, and Prince Alwaleed began exploring founding Centers for Muslim-Christian Understanding at various American universities. Esposito said many top universities were considered, but Georgetown and Harvard emerged as the final two.
“It was so close and the programs were so different that [Prince Alwaleed] decided instead of funding one center, he would fund two,” he said.]
Wolf is not the first congressman to question Prince Alwaleed’s philanthropy. In December 2005, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) first urged Georgetown and Harvard to return the gifts. “August institutions like Harvard University and Georgetown University should not accept funding from a family that bankrolls terrorist organizations,” Weiner wrote in a letter to then-Harvard President Lawrence Summers and DeGioia. “Harvard and Georgetown stand at the forefront of American academia. Their hands should be clean of any relationship with individuals associated with terrorism.”
Esposito said that he was in no way deterred by Weiner’s statements.
“Congressman Weiner is frankly someone who has concerns all the time,” he said. “He expressed his concerns in the New York Post and requested that we return the funds without any kind of rationale.”
Despite the criticisms, he said that Georgetown followed standard procedure in receiving the donation.
“There have always been concerns about universities accepting money from any government, including the American government,” he said.
He said that Georgetown did not take these concerns lightly but that the university followed the same procedure it follows with any gift.
“It’s a fairly standard agreement that is used by most major universities — very clear wording protects against any undue influence by the donor,” he said.
Esposito added that, since receiving the donation, he has had only limited interaction with Prince Alwaleed.
“The only contact I’ve had with [Prince Alwaleed] was one meeting that I initiated,” he said. “He’s primarily a businessman. This is only one small part of his life.”
According to Esposito, Prince Alwaleed is not directly involved in the workings of the Saudi government.
In addition, Esposito said that the center had existed for 12 years before Alwaleed’s 2005 donation, and, since then, its programs have not substantially changed, although they have grown. “[Now] we are able to do more of what we want to do,” he said. In recent years, the Center has increased faculty and student resources, including expanded travel and research opportunities for faculty.
The center currently offers courses in the Arabic, history and theology departments.
Each course offered by the center is subject to the same guidelines as every other course in the university, Esposito said. Courses are approved by the School of Foreign Service Curriculum Committee and many are cross-registered in other departments. Esposito said the center’s faculty do not teach exclusively within the center, but belong to departments. “Most of my professors have joint appointments,” he said.
In response to Wolf’s inquiry into the center’s freedom to be critical of the Saudi government, Esposito said it has and would continue to react to relevant issues in Saudi Arabia, citing a recent opinion piece co-authored by him and the center’s Associate Director John Voll that criticizes the treatment of a 19 year old charged with rape in Saudi Arabia in November.
“I’ve been consistently critical when it is appropriate,” he said.
Dan Scandling, Wolf’s chief of staff, said a recent article in The Washington Times brought this issue to the Congressman’s attention.
“There are some questions about whether Georgetown has been compromised,” Scandling said.
Although Alwaleed gave Harvard University matching funding to create a similar center, Wolf “did not contact Harvard,” Scandling said, “but he is not a graduate of Harvard.”
“I was surprised that he didn’t speak to the president or me privately,” Esposito said when asked about Wolf’s recent letter. “I don’t know where the congressman is coming from.”
Esposito said, however, that he would not personally respond to Wolf’s request.
“The [university] president will be responding to the congressman, and we have been consulted on that, but we’ve only been involved indirectly,” he said.
Georgetown is so desperate for money -- and so lacking in leadership -- that it looks for the quickest easiest money available. Example: Sale of the Wormley School building on Prospect Street. That $20 million is the second-largest gift ever to the Academy (as "Giggles" DeGioia calls it) is testament to the inadequacies of Georgetown fundraising. I believe the largest gift ever is the $30 million (inb fluctuating shares of stock) to rename the business school of Bob McDonough.
With the Academy cutting corners and failing in almost every administrative area (examples: information and campus security and the one of the highest purposes of the school -- fostering an intellectual environment) and totally lacking in a guiding principal or purpose, Congressional inquiries are not inappropriate.
Who knows what goes on behind the closed doors of the nicely decorated hallways at the north end of Healy Hall.
AMDG
You have a good memory. That Wormley decision (?2005?) was one of Georgetown's poorer moments. A school with a 100 acre campus, a completely developed surrounding neighborhood, facing high property costs and a pain-in-the-ass bunch of neighbors, indiscriminately sells off a valuable piece of property in Georgetown near the main campus that could be developed into just about anything into the future.
Wonderful. Georgetown: The Guiding Lights of Fiduciary Duty.
Georgetown’s foreign service?
Founded by John Carroll, America’s first Catholic Bishop, to contribute to the “political, cultural and educational life of this nation”, one would expect Georgetown University to be a voice of democratic ideals defending our way of life against the rising tide of islamofacism.
Using their huge financial resources, one Middle Eastern nation has been particularly troublesome, Saudi Arabia. Promoting a brand of Islam that is virulently anti-Christian and anti Semitic, while oppressing women and avoiding free elections. One estimate is groups within this county spend close to $ 4 billion a year funding hatred of infidels and democracy.
When a prominent member of the ruling Saudi clan offers $ 20 million to “foster understanding, tolerance and peace”. I’d want to first visit those centers of tolerance and understanding this potential donor funded in his own country. If there are none, I’d be cautious about taking his money. And when this donor publicly states “our Palestinian brothers continue to be slaughtered at the hands of Israelis, while the world turns another cheek.” I’d wonder about his definition of “ fostering understanding and tolerance”.
If the Rudolf Hess family offered Georgetown $ 5 million in 1939 to promote better understanding of Nazi Germany, I’m confident Georgetown would have said politely “No thanks, we prefer not to be compromised”.
As I learned at Georgetown the spreading of ideas, allegations and biased information to favor one cause over another is called “propaganda”. Why would Bishop Carroll’s school risk being seen as a propaganda service for any foreign power, especially one hostile to democratic ideals?
Kind Sir,
The sponsor has indeed set up a similar style, objective academic institution in the American University in Beirut: the Center for American Studies and Research. A mere Google search will satisfy your skeptical curiosity.
The sponsor is not a representative of the Saudi government, indeed, rather than waste his time and energy into reinstalling a divide between peoples, he has chosen to invest in supporting academic research and study to promote brave cross-cultural understanding.
It is nauseating that someone learned enough to be exposed to the Georgetown Hoya would dare to correlate Nazi Germany with a minority of extremists from the Middle East: once you have NOT slaughtered 11 million people, kind sir, you are NOT Hitler.
Moreover, Centers like the CMCU are there to educate persons about the danger of looking at issues like 9/11 lopsidedly, and perhaps to remind us that Islamofacism is a dumb idea. Did you not know, kind sir, that Muslims were the largest single religious community to protect Jewish life from Nazi harm, where they housed them and fed them for months until the danger subsided?
Perhaps - and so ironically - the resources at CMCU would proudly offer you the resources that would point you to be more objective and more welcoming of peace with our fellow man.
Kind Farah
You must have slept through your WW 2 history class.
"Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: The Jews are yours."
-- Former Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini in his post-World War II memoirs.
"The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan... He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures."
-- Adolf Eichmann`s deputy Dieter Wisliceny at Nuremberg
And who, except maybe kind Farah, can forget how the Mufti organized three Waffen SS divisions which took credit for slaughtering at least 800,000 , mostly Christian, civilians?
I look forward to this seminar at the CMCU
What "the Mufti said" sounds awfully familiar to what Ben Gurion said the Palestinians were put into Exodus: "We must do everything to ensure that the Palestinians never do return."
* Omar Mukhtar led the resistance against the Italian occupation of Libya.
* Albania saved its Jewish population from the Nazis
* Bulgarian Muslims protected many Bulgarian Jews from being sent to concentration and death camps
* King Mohammed V saved Moroccan Jews from being deported to death camps in WWII
* Muslims and Jews fought together for the British in the “Palestine Regiment”
* Indian Muslim Noor Inayat Khan worked as wireless radio operator for the British, maintaining a critical link between London and the French underground forces
* Paris’ Central Mosque served as a shelter for hundreds of Jewish children fleeing from attempts to deport them to death camps
* Tens of thousands of Soviet Muslims fought against the Nazis, particularly at Stalingrad and Leningrad
* The majority of “Free French” that took part in the Allied offensive against Provence were Muslims from North and West Africa.
The only class I slept through, kind sir, is neo-Imperialism and Bigotry 101.
Kind Farah
I promise to join you in the front row when the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding promotes cross-cultural understanding with a new (“ objective” and welcoming of peace with our fellow man) seminar titled:
“Muslims: the largest single religious community to protect Jewish life from Nazi harm”.
I ‘ll bet Anne Frank wished she were in Damascus.
Post new comment