It seems like 2005 again as a $20 million donation from a Saudi royal stirs up media controversy, casting aspersions on Georgetown’s academic ethics and credibility.
Representative Frank R. Wolf’s (R-Va.) recent letter to the University—which critically questions Georgetown’s decision to accept a donation from Prince Alwaleed Bin-Talal and asks Georgetown to prove that the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding’s research and pedagogy are not politically biased—refers to the same donation that made headlines and was deemed innocuous back in December 2005.
There is no reason to believe that the Center’s activities are suspect, regardless of the Saudi Prince’s personal politics. Wolf should stop using an unsubstantiated smear campaign against the University to increase his political prominence.
Wolf’s main allegation is that the Center has not published any reports that are critical of contemporary Saudi Arabia.
As CMCU Associate Director John Voll pointed out, though, none of the Center’s professors are Saudi politics specialists, and thus have not recently published any work that specifically discusses Saudi society, either positively or negatively.
Alwaleed’s donation allows the scholars to pursue their own research interests, rather than a particular agenda.
“We got the endowment to do what we’ve been doing for the last twelve years, which is to study the history of Islam and Islamic beliefs and Muslim-Christian relations through history,” Voll wrote in an e-mail. “[Alwaleed] can’t interfere with the programs that are being financed. It’s not the expertise of the scholars to study particular contemporary Saudi policy.”
Georgetown professors have earned a reputation for academic objectivity, and Wolf should afford them that respect. Other universities like Harvard, which also received $20 million when Georgetown did, accepted major donations from Alwaleed, and Georgetown has other centers like the BMW Center for German and European Studies whose valuable research efforts would be impossible without large private donations.
The fact that Wolf chose to focus on Georgetown’s Islamic studies center implies that he is more concerned with advancing his own misguided goal of trying to appear tough on terrorism by disdaining all things Arab than with ensuring the integrity of the Center’s academic work.
Wolf should not attempt to tarnish Georgetown’s reputation without cause, and the news media should stop giving his baseless allegations credibility.
