Controversial Saudi Prince Funds Islamic Centers Abroad

Published 13 May 08 04:34 PM | Student Loan Girl

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud, a member of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family, has endowed $31 million to Britain’s Cambridge and Edinburgh universities to create research centers devoted to Islamic studies.

The two academic centers will focus on projects designed to encourage understanding between Islamic and Western cultures. The prince has also financed the creation of two centers for American studies in the Arab world, at the American University of Beirut and the The American University in Cairo.

Yasir Suleiman, director of the Centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Cambridge, told The Chronicle of Higher Education the prince’s donation has not yet raised any concerns about each centers' scholarly independence, as the prince’s similar donations to Harvard and Georgetown universities did three years ago (“2 British Universities to Benefit From Saudi Prince’s Gifts,” May 9, 2008).

In 2005, the prince donated $20 million to each Harvard and Georgetown to further the schools’ long-standing traditions of scholarship in Muslim and Arab cultural studies.

At the time, some U.S. lawmakers expressed their concerned that the prince, who completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees in the United States, would attempt to use his donations to exert influence over the academic direction of the centers. But John Esposito, director of Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, said the prince has been hands off in his endeavor.

The prince has been attempting to foster intercultural dialogue with the United States since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Chronicle reports. However, his $10-million offer to the Twin Towers Orphan Fund — an educational and welfare assistance program for children orphaned after Sept. 11,2001 — was rebuffed after Rudolph Giuliani, then mayor of New York City, learned the prince said the United States’ policies in the Middle East were among the “issues that led to such a criminal attack.”