And there’s more where that came from. According to Muna AbuSulayman, executive director of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation, the foundation has set aside $100 million for such purposes. And where does Yale figure into this picture? “In April,” Kramer reports,
Yale named Muna AbuSulayman a “Yale World Fellow” for 2009. This isn’t some honorific, and she’ll reside from August through December in New Haven. (Her Facebook fan page, August 16: “I need help locating a Town House/condo for short term leasing near Yale University… Anyone familiar with that area?”) Can you imagine a better way to set the stage for a major Alwaleed gift? Hosting for a semester the very person who structured the Harvard and Georgetown gifts, and who now directs Alwaleed’s charitable foundation? A stroke of genius.
What do you make of that, Sherlock? Kramer offers this thought experiment:
Imagine, then — and we’re just imagining — that someone in the Yale administration, perhaps in President Levin’s office, gets wind of the fact that Yale University Press is about to publish a book on the Danish cartoons — The Cartoons That Shook the World. The book is going to include the Danish cartoons, plus earlier depictions of the Prophet Muhammad tormented in Dante’s Inferno, and who-knows-what-else. Whooah! Good luck explaining to people like Prince Alwaleed that Yale University and Yale University Press are two different shops. The university can’t interfere in editorial matters, so what’s to be done? Summon some “experts,” who’ll be smart enough to know just what to say. Yale will be accused of surrendering to an imagined threat by extremists. So be it: self-censorship to spare bloodshed in Nigeria or Indonesia still sounds a lot nobler than self-censorship to keep a Saudi prince on the line for $20 million.
Plausible, what? And let’s keep the context in mind. We’re in the middle of a recession, remember.
Yale has seen its endowment suffer billions in losses, and its administration has the mission of making the bucks back. Yale’s motto is lux et veritas, light and truth, but these days it might as well be pecunia non olet: money has no odor — whatever its source. Still, that isn’t the mission of Yale University Press, which seeks to help authors of exceptional merit shed full light on the truth. More than three years ago, I warned against “the deep corruption that Prince Alwaleed’s buying spree is spreading through academe and Middle Eastern studies.” If this is what caused Yale University to trespass so rudely against the independence of its press, then the rot has spread even further than I imagined. I’ve been a reader for Yale University Press, which I think publishes a more interesting list in Middle Eastern studies than any university press. But if editorial decisions are to be subjected to vetting and possible abortion by Yale’s money collectors, why bother? Ignore all the denials, and watch for a hefty gift from Arabia, perhaps for another Alwaleed program in Islamic apologetics. Fat endowments speak louder than words-or cartoons.
I’d wager Martin Kramer is right. Any takers?
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!