TERRORISM'S SURREPTIOUS CAMPAIGN
By Avi Davis

This week marks the third anniversary of the London Underground bombings, an event which shook up Britain and the West as no other incident has since the attacks on the World Trade Center in September, 2001. The impact of those events can be seen everywhere in England today, from the increased number of surveillance cameras on suburban streets to the debate on whether the number of days a terrorist suspect should be incarcerated without trial should be increased from 28 to 42 days.
Both Britain and the United States have experienced great success in penetrating underground terrorist networks and foiling numerous plots for attacks on Western targets.  But the absence of a major incident has also lulled the West into a sense of complacency.  It has allowed the West to ignore surreptitious and sophisticated campaigns which have passed with little publicity or scrutiny.
This is no more so than in our Universities.  Over the past ten years, hundreds of millions of dollars and pounds have been accepted by Western universities from the Saudi Royal family to fund Middle East Studies Centers in the U.S. and Britain.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, reputedly the fifth richest man in the world and a nephew of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, is one of the Western universities' greatest benefactors.   Over the past ten years, he has given $10 million to the American University of Cairo, $5.2 to the American University of Beirut and $20 million to Georgetown. In 2003, King Fahd himself gave$20 million to found a Middle East Studies Center at the University of Arkansas.  Duke, Howard, Cal State Berkeley, Syracause and Johns Hopkins have all been the beneficiaries of Saudi largesse.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the Saudis have been even more active.  Over 43 Universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, have received gifts from the Saudi royal family amounting to close to  £255 in total investment.
Naturally, both the universities themselves and the Saudi government claim that the gifts have no strings attached and are designed to promote harmony and understanding between the Arab world and the West.  However, the true results of  Saudi munificence are quite plain to see:
Almost nowhere, at least in any Middle East programs funded by the Saudis, can one find critical analysis of the Saudi Government's continuing support of terrorist networks and the Wahabi madrassas who spawned many of the 9/11 killers.
In none of these centers can one find a sophisticated and dispassionate examination of the link between Islam, jihad and international terrorism.
In Britain, a recent report by Professor Anthony Glees of Brunel University, found a direct correlation between Saudi funding and the rise Muslim extremist groups on campus.   Professor Glees' report pointed out that Britain has 31 universities with hard line Islamic groups operating on campus.
The same report has pointed out that the British university has become the prime recruiting ground for would be Muslim- British terrorists.
In the United States, a University commissioned curriculum to instruct K-12 teachers on the Middle East is driven by Saudi funding and includes much anti-Western and anti-Israel propaganda.
The sharp spike in anti-Zionist and anti-semitic activity on campuses throughout the West has clearly been abetted by Middle East Studies Departments whose agendas have been twisted by Saudi funding to demonize the Jewish state.
I learned the extent and power of Saudi financial power first hand several months ago. When approaching a major Californian university about hosting our summer conference on academic freedom, I explained that one of the focuses of the conference would be on Saudi funding, I was told that one needed to distinguish between  good Saudis and  bad Saudis in discussing such a topic.  Without such a distinction such a conference would be pointless. Needless to say, we did not hold our conference at that University.
But the exchange taught me a salutary lesson.  In the high competition stakes  for funding,  Universities - whether they be conservative or liberal - will do almost anything to attract the kind of funding the Saudis, flush with the bounty afforded by a $150 a barrel price of oil, can provide without giving a donation of $20 million even a second thought. 
We should all therefore be prepared to live with the knowledge that our universities can be bought; that the Centers for the study of the Middle East will be controlled by outside funders and that values inimical to our culture and civilization may be seeping into our educational systems.  
No one should pretend that this development has no connection to the world wide jihadist campaign to undermine the West in its confrontation with the Islamic world. It is integral to the plan.
The less we do about it and the less we say, the greater will be the Islamists' penetration our own cherished institutions.

The Western Word - An International Weekly Digest   7-11-2008