Monday, November 23, 2009
Influence buying, and it works well at our institutions of higher learning. Looks like Rutgers and Columbia (shock!) both got money from the Alavi Foundation which has recently been getting its assets seized by US government:
New York Post: Schools' Iran $$ pipeline
Anti-Israel, pro-Iran university professors are being funded by a shadowy multimillion-dollar Islamic charity based in Manhattan that the feds charge is an illegal front for the repressive Iranian regime.
The deep-pocketed Alavi Foundation has aggressively given away hundreds of thousands of dollars to Columbia University and Rutgers University for Middle Eastern and Persian studies programs that employ professors sympathetic to the Iranian dictatorship.
"We found evidence that the government of Iran really controlled everything about the foundation," said Adam Kaufmann, investigations chief at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office...
... In one of the biggest handouts, the controversial charity donated $100,000 to Columbia University after the Ivy League school agreed to host Iranian leader and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to the foundation's 2007 tax filings obtained by The Post.
Rutgers professor Hooshang Amirahmadi, former head of the school's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and president of the American-Iranian Council, a nonprofit advocacy group, unabashedly has touted Hezbollah and Hamas as legitimate organizations and not terrorists.
Between 2005 and 2007, the Alavi Foundation donated $351,600 to the Rutgers Persian language program, a spokesman for the school acknowledged. The university would not comment further...
...The Alavi Foundation -- a charity that law-enforcement officials believe is a front for the Iranian government -- has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund professorships at Columbia and Rutgers universities. These professors have been apologists for the Iranian government...
The article goes on to name: Gary Sick, professor, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia, Hooshang Amirahmadi, director, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Rutgers, and Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature, Columbia. It's all kind of funny, since it brings back the old saying, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"
See also: JPost: 'Iran backers funding US universities'
[h/t: Emailers]
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