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The New York Times, July 28 Harvard University recently reported that it is returning a gift of 2.5 million (USD) to the President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The President, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, supposedly asked for the gift to be returned because Harvard had yet to formalize an endowment for a professor of Islamic religious studies.
The donation was made in 2000 to the Harvard Divinity School, and was since criticized by students and members of the Jewish community in Cambridge – the Massachusetts city in which Harvard and MIT reside.
The main source of criticism was focused on the Sheik’s support of a policy research organization, the Zayed International Center for Coordination and Follow-Up, which is located in the UAE.
The organization has been chastised for welcoming Arab scholars who espouse anti-Jewish sentiments. The center was recently closed last summer by the United Arab Emirates Government, for supposedly engaging in a “discourse ‘that contradicted the principles of interfaith government’ espoused by Sheik Zayed.”
