Thursday, December 13, 2007

Saudis Funding Islamic Curriculum at U.S. Colleges

Two years ago this month, a Saudi prince caused a media splash — and raised eyebrows — when he donated $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard universities to fund Islamic studies. Although few details have been released about how the money has been spent, at Georgetown, the money helped pay for a recent symposium on Islamic-Western relations held in the university's Copley Formal Lounge. The event attracted about 120 persons: students, Catholic priests, men in business suits and several women in colorful head scarves who all came to hear religion experts from several American universities, as well as from Bosnia, Ireland and Malaysia.


A member of the Norwegian royal family said he flew in just for the event. "I just came here to learn the language scholars are using about these things," Prince Haakon of Norway said.

Some call the Saudi gift Arab generosity and gratitude for the years American universities have educated the elite of the Arab world. Others say the sheer size of the donations amounts to buying influence and creating bastions of noncritical pro-Islamic scholarship within academia.

"There's a possibility these campuses aren't getting gifts, they're getting investments," said Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. "Departments on Middle Eastern studies tend to be dominated by professors tuned to the concerns of Arab and Muslim rulers. It's very difficult for scholars who don't follow this line to get jobs and tenure on college campuses. "The relationship between these departments and the money that pours in is hard to establish, but like campaign finance reform, sometimes money is a bribe. Sometimes it's a tip."

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The Scapegoats of Khartoum and CUNY Faculty Union

The Sudanese regime officially pardoned British teacher Gillian Gibbons for the “crime” of insulting the prophet Mohammed by allowing her seven-year-old students to choose the name Mohammed for the class teddy bear. But will the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) regime of CUNY in like manner grant a pardon to Dr. Sharad Karkhanis who is being slammed with a $2 million lawsuit for the “crime” of insulting a prominent PSC faculty union leader, Professor Susan O’Malley? Both Gibbons and Karkhanis were used as scapegoats to distract attention from the menacing issues confronting both these troublespots in the East and here in the West.

Now that the failed strategy of the clerics and scholars of the Sudanese regime has backfired and brought mounting international focus on the Darfur genocide and widespread clamor to free Gibbons, Sudan President Omar al-Bashir has dropped all charges and freed Gibbons from prison. The strategy of the academic elites and scholars of the PSC to persecute and silence a defiant critic with a lawsuit filed by O’Malley has also backfired bringing a resumption of interest in the fraud and abuses of the PSC and further support for Karkhanis’s case from both the left (e.g. John Wilson) and the right.

In Sudan, one of the most barbaric places on Earth and the safe haven for every Islamic terrorist organization on the planet, genocide continues unabated after four years of mass murder, violence and forced exile of millions directed by Khartoum. In a land ruled by Sharia law, Gibbons was sentenced to 15 days in prison and deportation for the offense of blasphemy and threatened with 40 lashes and six months in prison for inciting religious hatred. According to Times of London columnist Ben Macintyre, this was an orchestrated attempt by President Bashir and his regime to scapegoat an infidel Western woman and stir up fiery Muslim rage over her offensive actions toward their religion, in order to deflect world attention from the murder and mayhem in Darfur, and to demonstrate Sudan’s hard-line Islamic credentials to the fundamentalist world. When the plan was bamboozled by the mounting focus on Darfur and the county’s medieval system of Islamic law, and British diplomats were sent to persuade the Sudanese government to release Gibbons, Bashir had no choice but to grant a presidential pardon.

Taking a page out of Khartoum’s playbook, PSC leader O’Malley, notorious for trying to censor The Patriot Returns, has now filed a lawsuit charging her most outspoken critic with libel and defamation to scare him and any other would-be dissenters into silence, in order to distract attention from the fraud, abuse and incompetence of the PSC leadership. The PSC, also notorious for shutting down forums for free speech when they became too critical, now wants to hide damaging disclosures before the upcoming elections for some union stalwarts. It was initially reported in the New York Sun that the PSC failed to deliver a decent contract and they squandered the member’s welfare fund by the sum of 97% on political causes and contributions to the legal funds of terrorists. Now O’Malley, former chair of the University Faculty Senate (UFS), who sits on the PSC executive board, is running for election for the Kingsborough Community College seat on the UFS in the next two weeks. Trying desperately to duck bad press and avoid the glare of the media spotlight, she has maintained a low profile saying nothing about the lawsuit except that it is “very, very silly” in an interview with New York Sun reporter, Annie Karni.

But the plan for scapegoating Karkhanis has backfired and failed to scare him into silence. Rather it has put O’Malley in the spotlight of bad publicity hurting her chances for election. There has been considerable buzz from the blogosphere, including FIRE, Free Speech at CUNY, Mitchell Langbert’s Blog, History News Network, Phi Beta Cons, Inside Higher Ed, and many others, as well as New York media, New York Post, and New York Sun.

The PSC and UFS leadership has utterly misjudged Karkhanis’ character. Instead of groveling to the whims of an elitist PSC regime and pleading for forgiveness, as they must have surmised, he has determined to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. He will fight forever for his First Amendment right to dissent, to criticize and satirize in written expression, and so will I, as well as many other friends and unsolicited defenders of free speech and freedom of the press.

It remains to be seen whether or not the PSC will follow in the footsteps of their Sudanese cohorts and grant a pardon to Karkhanis and retract this “silly” lawsuit or continue routine illegal activities defrauding the dues paying members, in this case funneling the union dues to pay for Susan O’Malley’s lawyers in a protracted highly visible court case. This private legal affair, which will be under the lens of severe scrutiny, is not a PSC or UFS case and any CUNY union funds used for O’Malley’s frivolous libel suit to censor free speech will be brought to light.

The PSC leadership has erred by not taking the time to research the political and literary background of Dr. Karkhanis. Examination of his background would have revealed a long distinguished career championing the inviolable rights of freedom of speech and conscience and especially fighting for freedom of the press in his native land, India. He published a book, Indian Politics and the Role of the Press highly critical of Mrs. Indira Gandhi's emergency regime, which censored the press. In a repressive environment he dared to challenge the ruling establishment, admonishing India’s Prime Minister that “press censorship was resented all over the world” and despite deteriorating social conditions as the justification for invoking emergency rule, defending freedom of the press is vital for safeguarding democratic institutions. But instead of meeting with a hostile reaction or punishment, Karkhanis’s remonstration was amicably received in a candid meeting with Mrs.Gandhi. Why should we expect anything less critical from him as a professor at CUNY with respect to the censorship and fraud of the PSC?

Karkahnis’s wise counsel to all of us is to stick to principles and don’t be afraid to speak out and rock the boat. Most people keep their lips sealed and won’t criticize when they see something wrong, because they feel they may be penalized or their careers may suffer. Karkhanis proved them wrong in the past and will prove them wrong again in the present legal case. In the long run, only benefit will ensue if one is bold enough to expose the flagrant abuses and hold their leaders accountable for their actions. His message to Susan O’Malley, whom he has long held to account on the pages of The Patriot Returns, is that her obsession to censor critics in addition to “her obsession with finding jobs for terrorists” to teach in the City University system is harmful to CUNY as well as her own career. Perhaps to demonstrate how the outrage has spread, the NYPD message board said it best recently in this officer’s quote regarding the lawsuit: “O'Malley forgot that when you're in a snake pit, you're going to be bit by a snake. And she's hanging out in a snake pit of terrorist(s).”

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Child games: Another backflip by British Labor

Millions of pounds will be spent on new play and leisure facilities as part of a government plan to reverse the decline of childhood and make sure that children in England are both seen and heard. Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, said yesterday that he wanted to move away from the “no ball games” culture of the past, which curtailed the freedom of children and young people to learn and develop by playing independently outside the home.

Outlining details of the Government’s ambitious ten-year Children’s Plan, Mr Balls said: “The main message that children and young people have given us is that they wanted more and better things to do, particularly after school and at the weekends,” he said.

Most young people recognised their responsibilities towards society, but felt their own contributions were too often undervalued or ignored. “We want kids to be seen and heard,” Mr Balls told the House of Commons, adding that he wanted to make Britain the best place in the world for children to grow up. The plan aims to strengthen the children’s workforce by requiring all newly qualified teachers to gain a masters degree in education during their first year in the job.

The suggestion received a cautious welcome from teachers, who were pleased at the increased professionalism this will allow, but concerned about the timing, since the first year of teaching is the hardest for most new recruits. The plan also seeks to find better ways of dismissing poor teachers and striking them from the professional register maintained by the General Teaching Council.

There will also be a review of the way sex and relationships education is delivered in school. This is in response to concerns raised by young people in a recent report suggesting that sex education is taught so badly that many teenagers are left in complete ignorance about how to avoid sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy.

The plan also set out options to help children born in the summer months, who often lag behind classmates born the previous autumn. Although the difference is most pronounced in the reception year, there is evidence that it lasts right up until the age of 16 in some children. Ministers will examine whether summer babies would benefit from the option of starting school the following January, or even the next September when they are five. Although the law already allows for some flexibility, many local authorities have withdrawn January starts saying that it makes it even harder for summer babies to catch up. As part of his curriculum review, Sir Jim Rose will examine whether it would be appropriate for even greater flexibility in start dates.

Free nursery education will be available for some two-year-olds in particularly deprived areas. The most recent research found that children from disadvantaged homes are up to a year behind in their learning than those from more privileged backgrounds by the age of three. From next year, every family will be entitled to 15 hours of free nursery education, up from 12½.

As part of the plan, the government also said that 90 per cent of five-year-olds would meet the agreed standard across the 13-part early years foundation stage by 2020. The most up-to-date figures from the Office for National Statistics found that only 45 per cent of children met the correct standards in the key areas of personal, social and emotional development, and communication, language and literacy this year. The department said across all 13 parts, 71 per cent of children had passed. The plan, which has the backing of Gordon Brown, aims to shift policy from the narrow confines of education to a broader focus on children.

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