[ April 17, 2024 ]
If an objective history of the decline and demise of American academic standards is ever written, one of the chief agents of the destruction of Middle East studies in this country, turning genuine academic institutions into centers of dawah and Islamic victimhood propaganda, will be identified as Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. If his fall in Saudi Arabia means the fall of these propaganda centers, the chief beneficiaries will be the American people.
“What will Middle East studies do without Alwaleed bin Talal?,” by A. J. Cashchetta, Jerusalem Post, March 21, 2018:
Last November, when the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), arrested dozens of wealthy royals and businessmen, many were stunned to learn that his cousin Alwaleed bin Talal was among those charged with corruption. Few have as much to lose from bin Talal’s misfortune as the Middle East studies industry, which has profited handsomely from his “activist philanthropy.”
Story continues below advertisementAccording to one 2004 estimate, since the 1970s Saudi Arabia has spent “north of $75 billion” on dawa – that is, on spreading Wahhabi Islam to non-Muslim societies. Many millions went to American colleges and universities willing to assist the kingdom. That they accepted the money is clearly a conflict of interests. Would they have accepted money from the Vatican to promote Catholicism? Or from the Soviet Union to promote communism?
In 2003 Alwaleed bin Talal became the face of the Saudis’ academic dawa when he went on what Martin Kramer called an “academic shopping spree” in search of cooperative scholars who shared his ideals.
At the root of bin Talal’s problem is the ambitious Saudi reform package called Vision 2030. MbS claims it will stamp out corruption and transform the kingdom into “a country of moderate Islam that will be open to all.” If his reform efforts are genuine, it’s unlikely he’ll approve of continued funding to promote the militant, anti-American, anti-Israel version of Islam bin Talal has financed. And if the anti-corruption element of the reforms are just MbS’s way to steal the wealth from his competitors, bin Talal may never regain the influence he enjoyed prior to his arrest.
After three months’ detention, bin Talal paid a $6b. fine and was released, but he has not traveled since and has stopped giving interviews. This has led to a great deal of conjecture everywhere except for academia, where few are talking.
The press speculates that bin Talal is not really free at all and is closely watched. The New York Times reports that he no longer controls his Kingdom Holding Company, while the Daily Mail quotes an insider who advises not to “buy the c**p of Alwaleed being treated right,” and claims that he will never be allowed to travel again.
Financial publications wonder about the fate of bin Talal’s fortune. In 2013, Bloomberg estimated his net worth at $27b. Last week Forbes removed him (and all Saudis) from its 2018 Billionaires List.
But in academia, it’s mostly quiet, especially from the recipients of bin Talal’s largesse. In 2005 he gave $20 million each to Harvard and Georgetown. Harvard created the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Program, and Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service renamed its Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
Unable to find any official statement from either Harvard or Georgetown, I reached out to both, asking if they had experienced or were anticipating negative effects from their patron’s arrest, and if either had taken a stance on the corruption charges levied against him.
At Georgetown’s bin Talal Center, someone identifying herself only as “Anastasia” confirmed that neither the university nor the center had issued a statement, and replied “no comment” to all other questions.
There has been no statement from John Esposito, founding director of Georgetown’s bin Talal Center, though he tweeted two articles criticizing MbS for “torturing” and humiliating the detained royals. One of those articles was written by Mehdi Hasan, an adjunct professor at the Georgetown bin Talal Center. Jonathan A.C. Brown, the current director of the center, attempted a half-hearted defense of his benefactor when he told the student newspaper that MbS’s reform efforts are really “just cover for the Crown Prince to consolidate power and remove competition.”
Calls to Harvard’s bin Talal Center went unanswered. Emailed questions to the university and the Islamic studies program went unanswered. Only William A. Graham, professor of Middle Eastern studies and director of Harvard’s bin Talal Program, responded: “I’m afraid we have no basis for comment.”
Their predicament invites silence. The Vision 2030 reforms may indeed be just a smokescreen enabling MbS to pose as a moderate, telling the West what he knows it wants to hear while consolidating power. Then again when he becomes king, he too might go on a shopping spree, and convert bin Talal Centers into bin Salman Centers. No one wants to offend a potential donor….
The Truth Must be Told
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24 Comments
6 years ago
There has been no statement from John Esposito, founding director of Georgetown’s bin Talal Center, though he tweeted two articles criticizing MbS for “torturing” and humiliating the detained royals.
I wonder if Esposito ever complained about the horrific treatment that foreign workers in Saudi Arabia endure, without legal recourse. I recall a case of a young woman from Sri Lanka who went home with over 20 nail or staple wounds to her head, with some of the metal still implanted in her. Or the numerous East Asian women raped, even murdered, there- I’ve never heard of a Saudi convicted of such a crime. But I doubt Esposito cares about the fate of a dark-skinned Sinhalese woman, or squint-eyed East Asian women who are abused by adherents to the ideology to which he is beholden. He knows where his bread is buttered.
6 years ago
A great deal of speculation that Bin Talal was involved in the Las Vegas shooting. No major PROOF yet but the timing of everything is suspicious.
6 years ago
Reply to
Jackie
Yes, I have read and heard such allegations. I believe them to be factual, considering Talal’s past record of support for ISIS and other Islamic terror/jihad groups.
6 years ago
There were several shootings at different venues in Las Vegas that day. Some of the witness conveniently disappeared or had accidents. Paddock had ties to the Phillipines which has had mudscum/mudslime communities which had been established in that country for a long time. The US Army fought against the Moros in the Spanish American war in 1898. They are one of the reasons that the .45acp was adopted as the sidearm of the US in 1911. The .38 special was too weak to take down the Moros who would be drugged up and on stilts. So the Soldiers reverted to their .45 colt revolvers which did the trick
6 years ago
islam, like socialism only lasts as long as someone else is paying its bills. Now that all these islamic studies are not being subsidized, lets see how long they last.
6 years ago
Reply to
Mahou Shoujo
We should criticize Islam when Islam did a bad thing, but this case is an open and shut case of Western Academia whoring itself to the highest bidder
The shame ought to be on the Western Universities since it is the Western Universities who have become prostitute to the Islamic oil money
D
6 years ago
Reply to
Kalambong Kalambong
The ivy towers are now erections to the whordom of academia to muslim money.
D
6 years ago
The fall of Prince al-Waleed Bin Talal, if it is in fact real, is a day late and a dollar short to save the academic study of the Middle East and Islam. College and university departments of the humanities are fully under the control of the cultural Marxist Islamophiles who lionize Muslims and all things Islamic, while relentlessly attacking Christians, Jews and anyone else they see as adversaries. And even if Talal is out of the picture, he is far from the only wealthy Sunni Arab sheik who holds such views and is inclined to act upon them with his open checkbook.
6 years ago
Did you know Al Waleed made sure Obama went to Harvard and paid for him going there
6 years ago
Reply to
santashandler
Oh but, in the ‘era’ of the last occupier of the white house, truth did matter?
6 years ago
Reply to
Guy Matthew
Rosenstein and Muller right there in guard of honour; last two standing
6 years ago
Those middle east studies courses in the U.S. colleges were nothing more than another way for islam to gain a stronger foothold into this country, both philosophically and politcally. And for students of other faiths to be indoctrinated that their thinking is wrong.
6 years ago
6 years ago
In Australia at the Newcastle University, there is a school of Islamic studies all nicely funded by the Wahhabi Saudis and with a sycophantic leftist brown tongue as professor there who aided and abetted the creation of this abomination. This is a perfect example of a leftist who used his multicultural pull to advance himself and islam in the west: a traitor.
