Posted inDictatorship / Education / Saudi Arabia / ToMl / USA Empire

Saudi Ties to U.S. Universities Under Question

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urges Saudi Arabia to discuss who ordered the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, we end today’s show looking at how U.S. universities are facing new scrutiny over their close ties to Saudi Arabia in the wake of Khashoggi’s murder. Earlier this year, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited both Harvard and MIT on his first official tour to the U.S. Ahead of the meeting, MIT students presented their university’s president, Rafael Reif, with a stack of petitions protesting bin Salman’s visit.

Both Harvard Provost Alan Garber and the MIT President Rafael Reif met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi officials later publicized the meetings on social media in a move critics say was used to give the crown prince legitimacy.

Meanwhile, Yale University Law School’s Abdallah S. Kamel Center for Study of Islamic Law is reportedly funded by a Saudi potentate, and the University of New Haven in Connecticut has formally partnered with King Fahd Security College in Riyadh since 2016. When the partnership was first announced, University of New Haven President Steven Kaplan said, quote, “We are excited to put the University of New Haven’s world-renowned programs in criminal justice, national security, and forensic studies at the service of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s next generation of security professionals.”

Yarden Katz talking:

So I think it’s important to emphasize that the protest started before the Khashoggi horrific murder. So, when bin Salman was being greeted as a reformer when he visited the United States in the spring, he was visiting Harvard and MIT, as well, and already a local antiwar group here, Mass Peace Action, was protesting the visit. They said, “We don’t want this war criminal on our campus.”

The problem is that we didn’t really know when to protest, because the universities kept the visit so secret. So, my colleague Grif Peterson and I, who I wrote the piece with, started investigating it, and we found that bin Salman was going to be hosted by the MIT Media Lab, which is one of the school’s most famous laboratories. And that visit was kept very secret. People in the lab were told that if they want to access the lab that day, they would have to go through metal detectors, but they weren’t told why.

And bin Salman, on that day, received demos of the latest technologies at MIT. He met with leading university officials. He was demoed war technologies, such as autonomous robots. And he signed many new partnerships with these universities, and also his visit signaled the continuation of existing ones. So, already back then, students were protesting it, activists were protesting it.

And even after lobbying, Cambridge City Council passed a resolution condemning the visit and condemning the way that MIT and Harvard handled bin Salman’s visit and greeted him as a kind of reformer as opposed to the war criminal that he is. So the Khashoggi affair, obviously, has reignited interest in that, but it’s been going on since March.

And you can see the contrast in the way that these elite universities talk about their partnerships with the Saudis and the way that Saudi Arabia talks about it. So, whenever you have a partnership like that with an elite institution like Harvard or MIT that has a very progressive and techy image, the Saudi government uses that on social media. They use it to sort of create the illusion that they’re really also a progressive government, that they’re really on the same page with MIT, that they superficially use the same language.

On the other hand, universities haven’t said much about it. They only put out a press release after the fact, and they’re trying to minimize that, because I think they realize that it doesn’t look good. Here you have a representative of an absolute monarchy coming to campus. There’s a devastating war in Yemen. Activists are being silenced and thrown in jail in Saudi Arabia. So it’s not a good situation, and universities know that viscerally, but they want the money, and they want the prestige of affiliating with these groups.

I’d also like to add, though, that this is not just a Saudi issue. It’s really—we’re not saying that universities like Harvard and MIT are so ethically pure that they shouldn’t affiliate with the Saudi government, but rather that universities, as a matter of routine practice, form unaccountable partnerships that are negotiated in secret with many dubious actors. Sometimes it’s a foreign government like the Saudi government, and sometimes it’s a dubious American actor.

So, for instance, MIT has numerous partnerships with Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, who are weapons manufacturers. They are the biggest suppliers of weapons to the Saudi government. Their weapons are being used in Yemen. So the school bus that was demolished earlier this year, where 40 Yemeni children were killed, that attack was enacted using a Lockheed Martin-made bomb made in the U.S. So that’s an American partnership that’s also problematic and tied to this web of unaccountable partnerships that universities form all the time.

So, we had a piece that was published in The Guardian. It’s a pretty visible venue, obviously. After our piece, the MIT student newspaper, The Tech, published a very forceful and very perceptive editorial talking about MIT’s hypocrisy and the gap between its espoused ideals of making the world a better place and its reality of hosting a war criminal. Then there was the Cambridge City Council resolution that I mentioned, that was passed unanimously, also condemning the universities.

And the sad reality is that the universities didn’t have to confront any of this. They didn’t respond to the Cambridge City Council resolution. They didn’t respond to our piece. They’re generally unavailable for comment. The only response was MIT President Rafael Reif writing an op-ed in the student newspaper in response to the editorial, basically not engaging with the issues and just saying, “Look, universities have to make compromises. It’s a balancing act. And we prefer dialogue over no dialogue.”

Stanley Heller talking:

We have been alarmed for about a year and a half that the University of New Haven has a program, kind of secretive—we don’t know exactly what it is—to have its Henry C. Lee College, that specializes in forensic and police work, helping the King Fahd Security College. And this is a college where all the police in Saudi Arabia go for training. We wrote to them. We had a letter signed by nearly 50 prominent Americans telling them, warning them about Saudi Arabia. We got no response at all. So that was about a year ago.

Then, the Khashoggi killing, we started wondering what is—you know, what is going on. The Turkish sources started saying, leaking, that the alleged killer was a man named Salah al-Tubaigy, a top forensic scientist. So we’re starting to think, “Forensic scientist? That’s some of the things that Henry C. Lee College is famous for.” And we did some poking around on some Saudi websites, and we saw the editorial board of a Saudi forensic society had on it Henry Lee and a Dr. Salah Tubaigy. This was extraordinary. And so, we sent out press releases and been trying to get some response to the university.

University, in a year and a half, has never said a word to us, but they do say some things to the media. Their first response was, “Well, we’re told that it’s a different al-Tubaigy. The spelling is different.” And so on. That seemed pretty odd that there would be two Saudi top forensic scientists with the name al-Tubaigy. So we wrote to that society and asked them, “Is there a second al-Tubaigy?” A Hartford Courant reporter also did the same and never got a response. And then, just a couple days ago on that editorial board page, in English, Salah Tubaigy’s name was removed. So, we think that theory of the two al-Tubaigys has been put to rest.

We had objected to the University of New Haven having any ties with that King Fahd Security College or Saudi Arabia as a whole. And then, after the Khashoggi killing, we looked at websites and noticed that the editorial board of a top Saudi forensic society included Salah al-Tubaigy and Henry C. Lee, who is the famous forensic scientist at the University of New Haven. And so, this is what we brought up.

At first, the university said that “We think there are two al-Tubaigys. We’re getting this information from the Saudis.” But that pretty much has been exploded. And the name Salah al-Tubaigy has been taken off that editorial board’s website.

Then, the university said—and says—”Well, we’re proud of what we do. We’re improving the justice system of Saudi Arabia.” And our response was “Well, what are the facts about this? What evidence? Have you been able to convince the Saudi government to give the remains of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr back to his family? They executed this peaceful activist at the beginning of 2016, and his body has not been returned. Have they canceled the sentence of a thousand lashes against Raif Badawi? What about the women, the women who had been for a long time trying to get the right to drive, these feminist activists? They’re in jail. How is the Saudi justice system improved?”

And as a last example, what about what happened when they grabbed the Saudi billionaires last fall? Was there any kind of due process? They stuck them in a hotel, the Ritz-Carlton.

And they were held in this hotel. They coughed up billions of dollars, and then they let them go. Was there any due process? Was there any lawyers involved, any charges, anything given to the public about this?

And of course the answer is no. So, how is UNH helping? This is wrong. And that’s the big scandal. UNH, none of these colleges should be helping.

There’s also the question of Yale University, if we can get into that. You mentioned the $10 million this billionaire Kamel family has given to the Yale Law School. We objected to that when that first happened a while back. But what we said is, “All right, you have this Islamic center. You’re interested in law. Yale University, let’s have an emergency conference talking about the state of law in Saudi Arabia.” So we sent a letter to the Yale University. We’ve mentioned this to the press. We have not yet gotten an answer from Yale.

But students at universities around the country should use this opportunity and have conferences of their own. We used to call them teach-ins. It was a combination of a conference and a protest. So, we shouldn’t lose this opportunity. There should be protests like occurred at MIT. There were protests, effective ones, against cluster bombs in Rhode Island. This goes back a couple years ago. And the Obama administration actually stopped it. And there’s been the marvelous CodePink protests in Washington, D.C., where they make those mock pictures of Prince Salman, and they have the—they had one with the royal bone saw, a grisly reminder of what happened in Turkey. So people should get out and protest.

And then they should coordinate, get a hold of us, SaudiUS.org, contact us to, you know, coordinate their protest and educational activities. And also note RPM.world, which is a new antiwar network, which combines support for Palestinians and the Syrian democracy movement and opposition to the Saudis and our road to climate destruction.

– The Turkish government reportedly has audio recording showing that Khashoggi was dragged screaming from the consul general’s office, forced onto a table in a room, injected with an unknown substance. This is all the sort of reports that have come out over the last few weeks. Khashoggi was then reportedly dismembered by a Saudi forensic doctor, an autopsy expert—this is an amazing story—allegedly—now, we don’t know—Tubaigy, who listened to music on headphones as he used a bone saw to a still-breathing Khashoggi into pieces. Now, again, these are reports gotten from all different places in the media. It reportedly took Jamal Khashoggi seven minutes to die—this from Middle East Eye. The forensic doctor, Salah Muhammed al-Tubaigy, put on the earphones and listened to music, as he advised other members of the squad to do the same, saying, “When I do this job, I listen to music. You should do that, too,” Tubaigy was recorded as saying, according to this source who was talking to the news organization Middle East Eye.

– let’s talk more about the University of New Haven’s response and its connection to the center where he works, the—he’s a board member of the Society of Forensic Medicine at King Fahd Security College. I do want to turn to the University of New Haven and its partnership with this college in Riyadh. The Hartford Courant recently asked the university spokeswoman, Lyn Chamberlin, about the collaboration. Chamberlin said, in a statement, that UNH was approached by the Saudi college for guidance as it transitioned to offering 4-year degrees. She wrote, “The goal, then as now, was to help modernize and professionalize criminal justice activities in Saudi Arabia through this educational partnership. … We have been pleased with the academic professionalism of our partners, and we look forward to continuing the relationship.”

we’ve called on political leaders in Connecticut, both federal and state, to mount an investigation to see what exactly UNH is doing with King Fahd Security College, to see if there’s any connection between UNH staff and this guy al-Tubaigy or any of the others who were alleged to take part in this killing. I’m pleased to say Senator Blumenthal has responded and has asked that Saudi—I’m sorry, that the UNH college re-evaluate its program with King Fahd Security College. I’m hoping that other political leaders, other members of Congress and state officials, will also make statements about this.

they took his name off the editorial board, but, curiously, they didn’t take his name off the governing board of the Forensic Society. It’s still there in Arabic. And if you use the Google translator, it’s the same name in English. So, I don’t know why they didn’t do this—it’s laziness or whatnot—but the name is still there on the governing board.

Yarden Katz talking:

I think the Khashoggi murder is horrific, and your description of it sent chills down my spine. But in terms of our evaluation of bin Salman, it hasn’t added that much new information. We knew that he’s been doing horrible things in Saudi Arabia. We knew that he’s waging this devastating war in Yemen, that he’s suppressing opposition in other places, in Bahrain. And so, our work, and other activists’, started before the Khashoggi murder to point to the problematic ties between elite universities, like Harvard and MIT, and the Saudi government, and to use that to actually point to a much bigger web of unaccountable partnerships between universities and corporations and governments. When these partnerships are formed, all we really get as members of the public is a press release from the university saying, “Here’s a new multimillion-dollar partnership. Isn’t it wonderful?” But we don’t get any of the details or the terms. And that opens up the way for a government like the Saudi government to use its ties with MIT or Harvard to legitimize itself and to paint an image of itself as a progressive entity or a democratic entity, where in reality it’s not that at all.

the MIT Media Lab is one of the most famous laboratories at MIT. It was founded in the ’80s, and they work on a whole range of technologies and various projects. They also work on matters relating to more social issues in recent years. And they have a very unique business model, if you will, which is that they’re funded by what are called member companies. So, member companies are organizations or corporations that pay a minimum of $250,000 a year to the MIT Media Lab, and in return they get access to the lab, to the students. They get to recruit MIT community members. And they get access to intellectual property produced by the lab.

So, one of these member companies is an organization called MiSK—M-I-S-K—which is bin Salman’s organization that’s ostensibly about empowering the youth. So, if you look on their website, they say that they’re about empowering the youth to transform society through entrepreneurship, through participation on global markets, etc. Of course, it’s not really about youth empowerment, because if the youth start talking about democracy or if they start talking about politics, they might end up in jail. However, by affiliating with the MIT Media Lab, MiSK is essentially buying that progressive image that MIT has created. So, they’ll have exchange programs where MIT Media Lab researchers go to Saudi Arabia and vice versa, and then the Saudi government will use that to put out press releases where they quote MIT researchers saying, “We are so impressed with what MiSK”—bin Salman’s group—”we’re so impressed with what they’re doing,” and etc. And so, it just becomes another vehicle for them to promote their PR campaign and to create the false impression that really MIT Media Lab and bin Salman’s MiSK Foundation are on the same page, they’re on the same ideological sort of viewpoint.

– connection between gun control at home and the U.S. selling of weapons abroad.

as I mentioned in the first segment, universities were keeping this visit very secret. And so it’s not clear if it’s a coincidence or if it was planned that way, but bin Salman’s visit did coincide with a Saturday, I believe, which was the day of the March for Our Lives protests. So all the media attention was on that, and so people missed the fact that the street where the Media Lab at MIT is located was shut down and there was militarized police presence there. So, there was this big event happening—it’s as if, you know, Obama came to campus—and people missed that because they were focused on the March for Our Lives. And so it played into the secrecy maneuver of these universities, whether by chance or by planning.

Now, I think that the irony here is that the March for Our Lives is really a protest against violence, and here you have, with bin Salman, a war criminal coming to MIT and getting demos of war-related technologies like autonomous weapons, which are made by a company called—autonomous robots which are used for military purposes, made by a company called Boston Dynamics, which is an MIT affiliate. And so, there’s a real tension here. How can you, as an institution like MIT, talk about ethics and making the world a better place through technology, while you’re demoing war technologies and war machines to a war criminal?

Yarden Katz talking:

Harvard, Yale, MIT, University of New Haven, they’re absolutely not the only ones, and I want to emphasize that. There are ties to UC Berkeley. There are ties between bin Salman’s MiSK Foundation, which I mentioned, and the Gates Foundation. I mean, it’s a whole web of ties, which hasn’t been scrutinized in any detail, unfortunately. The things that I mentioned are just a small fraction of the ties that exist.

So, yes, we’ve been contacted by faculty members who are concerned about this, by students, by activists from around the world who also are protesting these ties. Some of them can’t speak about it, because they’re scared for their personal safety because they live in countries that have repressive governments. And so, I want to emphasize that while we’re criticizing these universities, our criticism is really directed at the administration and at a subset of the faculty members who are involved in making these decisions and in forming these partnerships. These partnerships do not reflect the views of the broader academic community or the local community. And I think that now we’re seeing a kind of small rebellion in these universities—Harvard and MIT, for instance—where students are saying, “We’ve had enough of this. We don’t want ties to war criminals. And we also don’t like these partnerships which are secret and that are only described through kind of vapid press releases and we don’t know what the details are.”

Stanley Heller talking:

our problem is certainly not with any of the colleges, but with the administration, who are looking at the money and the false glory of this. And we’ve had some people reaching out. We’re happy to say that the student newspaper at UNH, The Charger Bulletin, has done some fine reporting about this and has printed out our material, even though their administration has never said a word to us about any of our complaints about King Fahd Security College.

education and protest and coordination, and particularly working on the website of the SaudiUS.org. We understand Kathy Kelly and Voices for Creative Nonviolence is going to do a demonstration in Washington, D.C., on Election Day. Action Corps New York City has done a lot of good protests. I think they did three or four protests when Prince Salman was in New York City earlier this year. So, there’s a lot of groups—not a lot, but there are a good number of groups doing a lot of good work. The Catholic Worker Movement, I should say, they’ve been having a vigil about Yemen in New York for a long time. So, people should try to, you know, come to our site, and we’ll hook people up to various activities all around the country.

– Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal said, “All American businesses and nonprofit organizations should review and re-evaluate their relationships with Saudi Arabia in light of the … murder, which seemingly could not have been done without knowledge at the highest levels of its government.”
_____

Yarden Katz
department fellow in systems biology at Harvard Medical School and an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
Stanley Heller
executive director of the Middle East Crisis Committee. He’s also a member of the Coalition to End the U.S.-Saudi Alliance.

— source democracynow.org | 2018/10/26

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *