We started out speculating about why Richard C. Levin, the President of Yale University, should have been involved in the decision by Yale University Press to bowdlerize Jytte Klausen’s book about the Danish cartoons by insisting that it be published without the cartoons or any other representations of Mohammed. Our guess: what a pal of Bertie Wooster’s memorably apostrophized as “Oof, Bertie, moolah, spondulicks.” As to the provenance of the right stuff: Araby, of course. Why else would the president of Yale take the extraordinary step of intervening in a decision by the “independent” publishing entity that just happened to bear the name “Yale”? I thank the correspondent who pointed me to this bijoux from a The Yale Daily News, 28 September 2006: “President Richard Levin said the press has the right to independently decide what to publish,” the YDN reported in a story about a controversial biography of the King of Thailand. They went on to quote President Levin: “The Yale Press is not a platform for anyone to speak their mind. Any book accepted goes under a scrupulous process for review. Access to publication on the University’s press is not like the opportunity to speak on Beinecke Plaza.”
So there! Actually, there is a moderately disreputable backstory to Levin’s role in the publication of that book, The King Never Smiles, but I am not at liberty to divulge the details. What is worth drawing attention to in the context of the present controversy over the censorship of The Cartoons that Shook the World is the contrast between Levin’s words (I say nothing about his behind-the-scenes actions) then and his behavior now.
Since Yale, and the Yale Press, have been so unforthcoming, we are left in the realm of speculation. But various facts have come to light to illuminate and guide the speculation. We know, for example, that the University and the YUP lied when they said that the outside experts they consulted after Ms. Klausen’s book had been professionally vetted were “unanimous” in their recommendation to censor the book. They were not. We know, too, that the reason given for the censorship — that publishing the images might lead to violence — was largely if not wholly a pretext.
A pretext for what? I, Diana West, and others have raised the possibility — indeed, the likelihood — that it was to avoid offending possible Saudi sources of support for Yale.
Now Martin Kramer has uncovered and connected a few more dots in an essay called “Some Day Yale’s Prince Will Come.” [UPDATE: and see Diana West here.] Mr. Kramer introduces us to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a Saudi billionaire (at last count, it was 13 billions) whose hobbies include endowing Islamic centers on American campuses. “I am,” he said in 2003, “in the process of establishing centers of Arab and Islamic studies at select universities in the United States.” Georgetown collected a cool 20 million for its center in 2005; Harvard did likewise.
Dear Mr. Kimball: You write:
“…there is a moderately disreputable backstory to Levin’s role in the publication of that book, The King Never Smiles, but I am not at liberty to divulge the details.”
You should not have written this. The way to keep a secret is to keep a secret, and not go round boasting “What I could tell you, who is out of the loop!” Mr. Levin now has motive for trying to give your source a hard time, and your readers don’t really know what the “moderately disreputable” backstory is. Such a tactic will get you an “A” in law school, but is disgraceful for an honest citizen to take.
That said, Levin’s behavior is disgusting. Last month, he gave an interview on the Charlie Rose program that is instructive, dismaying, and risible when compared to this incident. The Ivy League is transmogrifying into a sort of “vulture capital” fund, willing to rent its prestige to the highest bidder.
Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster
$20 Million from the Bass family, with the expectation of $500 million to come, was insufficient to sway Yale to endow Western Civilization during the flush days but now that the endowment has been flushed the expectation of $20 million is enough to make Yale crawl. Now that the Saudis know what they are dealing with they might as well offer $50 and bottle of cheap liquor. They can say they are just dickering over the price.
Over a dozen years ago I said to John Boyer, Dean of the College at Chicago and he man who hired Michelle Obama before she moved over to the hospitals, that I was saddened by the cuts to the Common Core and the Western Civilization requirements that had been the signature of a Chicago education going back to the Hutchins era. He replied then that if I had $20 million I could endow the program and he’d name it after me. That was before the flood of Saudi money ate into our universities. They had been buying up American foreign service officers at wholesale for years and the British schools and since then moved into the schools in America. This is the same Saudi Prince who had his check was thrown back at him by Rudy Giuliani.
What is to prevent the transfer of funds to be made on the sly, which gives more power to the House of Saud. Remember, that part of the world
is capable of giving lessons in double dealing to the likes of Madoff, Lay, Skilling, et al.
Yet another reason to hate and distrust the northeast ivy league elite. More than happy to claim the moral and intellectual high-ground but absolute cowards at crunch time. It all about the Benjamins with this crowd regardless of their rhetoric.
Yale should change its motto to bux et veritas.
They can use that money to build the gallows they’ll be hanging from when Sharia law is established.
Alaweed. Bubba C.’s good bud. Dude gets around.
The king of Saudi Arabia proposed to Moskow that he would build a mosqe and islamic cultural center in that city. the head of the Ortodox church ,and now they again have their say in Russia answered hi m that he would support the plan as soon as the king agrees to build a christian church in Mecca, Why dont we have leaders like that?
Is there a Yale edtion of Moby Dick? If so, Yale ought to censor its first line before people get hurt!