“An outrageous Israeli, Martin Kramer, uses his website to attack everybody who says anything he doesn’t like.” That’s Edward Said speaking, in an interview in a new collection entitled (predictably) Culture and Resistance. I would take it as a compliment, if I didn’t already know how easily Professor Said is outraged. But it’s a valuable testimonial nonetheless, and one worth quoting as Sandstorm marks its first anniversary.
Said offers this sample of my outrageous conduct:
For example, [Kramer] has described Columbia as “the Bir Zeit (university) on the Hudson,” because there are two Palestinians teaching here. Two Palestinians teaching in a faculty of 8,000 people! If you have two Palestinians, it makes you a kind of terrorist hideout. This is part of the atmosphere of intimidation that is McCarthyite.
I’m delighted to learn from this passage (and other sources) that my “Bir Zeit-on-Hudson” label has stuck to Columbia. Columbia warrants it not because Palestinians dominate the teaching of the modern Middle East there (they do), but because of the total absence of other perspectives, and Columbia’s apparent lack of interest in promoting a diversity of approaches. I never called Columbia a terrorist hideout, nor have I described any of its faculty as apologists for terrorism. I do accuse them of creating, on their campus and especially in the Middle East department, an atmosphere of intimidation that really is McCarthyite.
Said’s interview also jogged my memory: his reference to me includes a footnote harking back to a Sandstorm entry from last November. It was then that newspapers first reported that Rashid Khalidi, a University of Chicago historian, had been invited to Columbia to occupy the newly-established Edward Said Chair of Arab Studies. It was also reported that Columbia would protect the anonymity of the chair’s donor(s). In my entry, I insisted that the university had an obligation to reveal the identity of the donor(s).
Here we are, ten months later, and there has been no disclosure. A couple of donors, approached by a journalist, have acknowledged making contributions. But the vast majority of donors—and there are apparently almost twenty—have remained anonymous, and Columbia has not published any names.
As it happens, I have seen what purports to be a list of the donors. I’m not at liberty to publish it, and in any case I see no reason to relieve Columbia of its responsibility. But I don’t think it would violate a trust if I were to characterize the list. It includes individuals and foundations, Arab and non-Arab, known as supporters of the Palestinian cause—no surprise there. There is a corporate presence, which is a bit of a surprise. And on the list that I have seen, there is a foreign government, which I find positively alarming.
Why alarming? Rashid Khalidi, the new incumbent of the Said Chair, has also been named the director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute, which will receive about $1 million in federal subsidies over the next three years. Under any circumstances, a university’s concealment of a gift from a foreign source strikes me as unethical. Under these circumstances, Columbia’s failure to disclose is unconscionable. It’s also worth noting that if a foreign gift is large enough ($250,000), it must be disclosed to the U.S. Department of Education in a timely manner, according to Section 1011f. of the Higher Education Act (“Disclosure of Foreign Gifts”). In New York State, there is a similar disclosure law that kicks in at $100,000, although according to a recent account, “there is little, if any, compliance with existing law.” Ah, universities.
All of which leads me back to my original demand. Now that the incumbent of the Said Chair is administering a federally-funded National Resource Center, with control over taxpayers’ funds, his own funding is a matter of the public interest. Columbia must make known the donors, or at the very least identify any foreign government, entity or person that contributed to the endowment of the Edward Said Chair. If Columbia continues to refuse to make such information public, the Department of Education should initiate action to secure it, and then make it available to the rest of us.
I also urge the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), at its annual conference in November, to pass a general resolution calling upon all universities to reveal the sources of endowments in our field. The remaining credibility of Middle Eastern studies is at stake. If Columbia’s practices spread throughout the field, it is only a matter of time before a major scandal erupts, linking scholars to tainted money. MESA should stand unequivocally on the side of public disclosure—even if Khalidi is a former MESA president, and even if the current MESA president is a Columbia dean.
Updates from SandboxThe updates below originally appeared in Sandbox, this website’s quick news log. Sandbox is a supplement to the established weblog Sandstorm. |
| Dirhams at Columbia. On Friday, Columbia University finally disclosed the list of donors to the Edward Said Chair, held by Rashid Khalidi. Six months ago, I’d reported the presence on the donor list of a foreign government, but I didn’t name it. Now it’s confirmed: the United Arab Emirates. At this moment, a gift chair from the UAE to Harvard’s Divinity School is frozen, because of questions about the propriety of accepting it. Columbia apparently doesn’t have the same scruples, and saved itself a controversy by keeping the gift secret. Concealing gifts from foreign governments in this field is never acceptable, period. What I find disgraceful is that the leaders and institutions of Middle Eastern studies didn’t join my demand for transparency. Shame, shame, shame. Wed, Mar 17 2004 7:06 pm |
| Share a chair. Several readers have asked for the full list of donors to the Edward Said Chair, which Columbia released Friday. For some reason, it’s not on Columbia’s website. Here is the list:
Yusef Abu Khadra Thu, Mar 18 2004 7:24 pm
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| Columbia owns up. The Columbia Spectator now tells the full story of Columbia’s ethical and legal dereliction in concealing the donors of the Edward Said Professorship (incumbent: Rashid Khalidi). The names were finally disclosed on March 12. Reporter Chris Beam writes: “Kramer, who led the call for disclosure of the names, wrote in an e-mail that although individual donors might justifiably request anonymity, gifts from foundations and corporations should be revealed. ‘But above all’, he wrote, ‘there are no circumstances—and I repeat that—no circumstances whatsoever, that justify the anonymity of a foreign government that has given to a university’.” The government in question: United Arab Emirates, good for $200,000. Fri, Mar 26 2004 10:17 am |
| Palestinian millionaires. Sixteen of the donors to the Edward Said Professorship are individuals. Eight of these are trustees of the Geneva-registered Welfare Association, which gives to Palestinian welfare and development projects. The association, a wealthy club, has about a hundred active members, most of them prominent Palestinian businessmen. Edward Said was also a trustee. The Columbia Spectator article, cited immediately below, reports that Rita Hauser, a well-connected New York lawyer and philanthropist who happens to be Jewish, originally proposed the chair. Maybe, but these Palestinian millionaires look to me like the core of the initiative. Sun, Mar 28 2004 8:48 am |
| And Columbia too. One of the donors of the Edward Said Professorship at Columbia is Ramzi Atta Dalloul. Once upon a time, he brokered arms deals between France and Iraq. When Saddam found out how much Dalloul was skimming off the top, he summoned him to Baghdad to demand his money back. Ken Timmerman’s Death Lobby (p. 66): “The terrified Palestinian is said to have forked up $8 million in cash and may have made other ‘contributions’ to a secret Baath party fund held in a Swiss bank.” (Here’s more on Dalloul’s Iraq deal from Said K. Aburish, who was in on it.) Dalloul was a generous fellow, according to Timmerman: “Besides making contributions to Arafat’s Fatah Movement, Dalloul sought additional protection by making substantial payments to one of Arafat’s rivals, the radical Palestinian leader George Habash.” Sun, Mar 28 2004 5:57 pm |
| What about Columbia? Harvard University’s Divinity School has decided to return that $2.5 million gift for an Islamic studies chair to the donor: the United Arab Emirates. Bottom line: the UAE is just too toxic to warrant the kind of legitimation Harvard confers. Remember: the UAE also contributed $200,000 toward the Edward Said Chair at Columbia, a fact concealed by Columbia until last spring. Maybe now’s the time for Columbia to consider returning that UAE gift. Or are Columbia’s standards not quite up to Harvard’s? Wed, Jul 28 2004 2:43 pm |
| Why Columbia should. Harvard is returning $2.5 million to the United Arab Emirates, donated earlier to establish an Islamic studies chair. The UAE also gave $200,000 toward the new Edward Said Chair at Columbia. So will Columbia return its gift? “Why would we?” a Columbia spokesperson says. “Our gift differs in both the source and the purpose from the Harvard gift.” Nonsense. If anything, Columbia has a greater obligation to return UAE money. (1) Columbia initially concealed the gift. (2) The chair it helped to create has adequate funding from other sources. (3) It’s disgraceful that a chair named after a University Professor (Columbia’s elect) be funded even partly by the ruler of a country defined as “not free.” Mon, Aug 9 2004 3:10 a |
Martin Kramer on the Middle East 