Head above water, temporarily; only one last paper to finish this year. Just read---sorry, I'm a couple of weeks behind everything right now---that Harvard and Georgetown have accepted a ton of cash from some Saudi potentate for Islamic studies, or something. Can that possibly be true? These are universities that now are trying to get the Solomon Amendment thrown out, on the grounds that allowing those evil military recruiters on campus, with their "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" bigotries, would eviscerate the universities' free speech rights. Or something; they just can't say "No" to all that federal money. Anyway, at the same time that they make that utterly hypocritical argument, they accept tens of millions from the Saudis, who are happy to behead anyone who comes out of the closet. The modern university: Diversity in all avenues of shamelessness. Monty Python lives.
2 comments:
I dunno. I'm kind of with Dr. Zycher on this one. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they think the good of funding an Islamic Studies department outweighs any perceived endorsement of Saudi policy, but I also think that turning away military recruiters on the grounds of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" and then accepting money from countries that behead people for being homosexual is pretty disengenuous in the extreme.
Aha. I see the flaw in Dr. Zycher's logic. The money came from an individual within the Saudi royal family. Essentially, Dr. Zycher, you're holding one man responsible for his entire country's policy.
That's rather extreme. It's not like they accepted the money from the official Saudi government or even someone with a minsterial post. If they had, I'd be right there with you in your outrage.
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