Harvard has decided to return a $2.5 million gift from the president of the United Arab Emirates,Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan. For a sense of why, please regard the accompanying cartoon. Published in the United Arab Emirates’s semi-official Al Ittihad daily on July 31, depicting a stereotypically hooked-nose, Chasidic Jew directing Congress by remote control. As the Anti-Defamation League pointed out in a recent report, it is a classical anti-Semitic image of the Jews controlling the world.
Harvard has the sense to turn away money that traffics in this kind of hate. But Columbia University here in the City of New York has decided to keep the $200,000 it accepted from the government of the United Arab Emirates. The money is to fund the Edward Said chair in Arab Studies occupied by Rashid Khalidi.
Mr.Khalidi’s first book after joining the Columbia faculty makes it obvious that he is living up to his financial backers’ expectations. Titled “Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East,” the book rails against “a group that often seems to have virtually exclusive access to the top decision-makers in the Bush administration.”
This group does not include such influential policymakers as Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft, Karl Rove, or Andrew Card. Rather, Mr. Khalidi credits “neoconservative policy intellectuals” — Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser — for masterminding much of America’s Middle East policy.
So a few Jews control the most powerful country in the world – sound familiar? When Columbia opens its arms to UAE money and to Mr. Khalidi, it turns its back on tolerance, intellectual excellence, and responsibility.
