(This really will end, eventually . . .) Several readers of “My absolutely, positively final word about Yale and the Danish cartoons” came away thinking that I was backtracking on the financial angle to the story. I quoted a friend who wrote taking issue with my earlier speculation that part of the reason Yale had demanded that The Cartoons the Shook the World be published in a text-only, bowdlerized form was because Yale (and the Yale University Press) was assiduously seeking money in the Middle East. “A former university president,” I said,
wrote me to say that, while he certainly thought Yale had disgraced itself, he doubted money was the issue: Notwithstanding its big losses in the stock market last year, Yale still had an endowment in the billions: it wouldn’t, he said, prostitute itself for a mere $20 million.
I went on to say:
Maybe not. But as Martin Kramer noted, Yale has appointed Muna Abu Sulayman, executive director of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation (which reportedly has earmarked $100 million for compliant Western institutions), a “Yale World Fellow” for 2009. I’d say that Richard Levin, Yale’s president, takes an aggressive approach to cultivating a prospective donor: he arranges a fellowship and has his quarry living close by in New Haven. Who knows, maybe John Donatich will also be able to interest Sulayman in forking over the several million dollars he needs to embark on his on-line Koran project at the Yale University Press?
Perhaps I was insufficiently clear. I do believe, as I said, that “Like many right-thinking (which means left-leaning) institutions these days, Yale is afflicted with a bad case of Islamophobia-phobia — that is, a pusillanimous fear of being labeled “Islamophobic” by one’s politically correct peers.” But that in no way discounts the possibility — the likelihood, I woudl say — that they also acted with an eye to reaping a bit of Arab lucre.
On the issue of what constitutes a lot of money for an entity like Yale, another friend, a Yale alum, wrote to observe:
I would be wary of dismissing the financial component so swiftly. Yes, $20m vs $20B is small, but it’s a question of current funding requirements. As per our conversations earlier on this, Yale has just embarked on a number of large capital projects, including two new residential colleges (i.e., growing the undergraduate college by almost 20%), the purchase of the former Bayer property in West Haven, and myriad lesser improvements. All of those require cash and cash now. The endowment is still worth a king’s (Saudi prince’s?) ransom, but much of it is tied up in illiquid investments such as timber, real estate, and private equity. If the school can raise the cash now, perhaps by bestowing the benefactor’s name on the new college, then they wouldn’t have to liquidate these very long-term investments, ones that will yield a better cash flow in the future, at the bottom of the market…
Excellent point, with which I wish to associate myself. I wonder if President Levin would like to respond?
TSK TSK or BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
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“Who knows, maybe John Donatich will also be able to interest Sulayman in forking over the several million dollars he needs to embark on his on-line Koran project at the Yale University Press?”
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If Yale’s Mr. Donatich intends to produce an on-line version of the Koran, he’s too late to have much of an impact. The following US universities have beat him to the draw:
University of Michigan:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/k/koran/browse.html
University of Southern California (Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement) {!}
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/quran/
University of Virginia
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/HolKora.html
ila al-akheerihi (Arabic for “and so on”)
One wonders where “funding” for these projects came from and what prompted these august institutions to even contemplate such a “project”.
As somebody wrote on this blog recently, the Yale University “fiasco” is just the tip of the iceberg.
“The evidence, however, seems to point to the conclusion that, when a highly centralized society disintegrates, under the pressure of economic competition, it is because the energy of the race has been exhausted. Consequently, the survivors of such a community lack the power necessary for renewed concentration, and must probably remain inert until supplied with fresh energetic material by the infusion of barbarian blood.”
Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay.
Mark Steyn has a great piece about the Yale fiasco in the recent issue of National Review. He refers to Roger Kimball as the leader in calling attention to Yale’s pusillanimity and moral compromise.
“A brief addendum to my absolutely, positively final word … ”
it’s starting to sound like a title to yet another memoir by Ned Rorem!
“I wonder if President Levin would like to respond?”
Ain’t gonna happen. The odds are greater that Roger Kimball will embarrass Kobe Bryant on a basketball court. President Levin knows that it is best to simply ignore the critics—and eventually most people will forget this current scandal.
Those who attended Yale and the other Ivy League academic whorehouses rarely want to rock the boat. There is just too much money and prestige involved. They deem it more appropriate to pretend nothing happened. The politically correct domination of these schools also did not begin yesterday morning. Nope, this has been the harsh reality since the mid 1960s. It is now ho-hum and taken for granted. This is why we must target the Ivy Leagues. They are, for all practical purposes, the enemies of rational thought and the other nonnegotiable values of Western Civilization.