Don’t you wonder how it is that students from so many colleges and universities seem to have this myopic vision of how things work in the Middle East?
Don’t you wonder what they are learning that would cause them to “conclude” Israel – an amazing oasis of educational, agricultural, scientific, technological advancement which benefits all of humankind, including all Arab and Muslim countries – is the enemy?
Maybe it has something to do with the excerpts you are about to read from Nathan M. Greenfield’s article for universityworldnews.com, titled “US universities’ foreign funders: How much do we know?”:
During the meeting of the United States House of Representatives Education Committee’s grilling of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, Representative Elise Stefanik asked Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, if she was aware that Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) department had received US$1.5 billion from foreign entities and governments over the past three years.
But the Harvard CMES figure is just the tip of the iceberg for American universities, according to Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), an NGO based at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey (that identifies and forecasts threats in the age of information disorder).
Between 2014 and 2019, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates donated at least US$4.4 billion to numerous US colleges. Together with donations from other Middle East nations, over the five years in question, more than US$5 billion was donated to American universities from authoritarian Middle Eastern nations.
The top five universities that benefitted from these donations include Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh), which received US$1.4 billion, Cornell (US$1.2 billion), Harvard (US$894 million) and MIT (US$859 million), and Texas A&M (College Station, Texas) which received just over half a billion dollars.
The next five universities include Yale (New Haven, Connecticut), Northwestern University (near Chicago, Illinois), Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, Maryland), Georgetown (Washington, DC) and the University of Chicago, which received, US$495.8 million, US$402 million, US$401 million, US$379 million and US$364 million, respectively as of the report dated 30 March 2020.
University World News interviewed the accountant quoted earlier in this article, who below is referred to as NCRI analyst No. 2, and another analyst about their findings. UWN agreed not to name either of them due to concerns for their personal safety raised by NCRI.
“Over the past three years, the rate of contributions has increased by nearly 55% since 2020. It’s not just that we have a problem, it’s becoming a force multiplier,” said NCRI analyst No 1.
“Our previous work on funding from [Middle Eastern] authoritarian regimes, much of it undocumented, and how it predicts the erosion of democratic norms and antisemitism on campus, gives us reason to suspect downstream influences from these investments,” the analyst added.
Get the picture? And, if so, what does it tell you/suggest about how these colleges and universities keep that money flowing in?
What do they teach? What don’t they teach?
While you’re considering the answer, here’s another thought; a truly ironic one. It is an excellent bet that every one of the schools enumerated above have students, and student organizations, demanding the end of our reliance on fossil fuels.
Well, where do the above-noted sources of $$$ donations for the schools get their money?
Specifically, how much of Qatar’s, Saudi Arabia’s and the United Arab Emirates’ revenue comes directly from oil? And how much of their non-oil revenue is reliant on/would not exist without oil funding? Do you need me to tell you the answer?
I hope this gives you a little insight into why our colleges and universities are turning out graduates with their current level of , er, understanding when it comes to the Middle East.
Be sure to tell your friends.
