Saudi donates $20m to Harvard

A Saudi Arabian prince who is one of the world's richest people is giving $20 million to Harvard to establish a university-wide program in Islamic studies, Harvard officials said yesterday.

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, whose net worth was estimated by Forbes magazine this year as $23.7 billion, is also donating $20 million to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., to promote Muslim-Christian dialogue and understanding.

The Harvard gift, which officials said was one of the 25 largest in the university's history, will pay for four new senior professors, one of whom will hold an endowed chair named for Prince Alwaleed. It will also provide start-up funding for a project to preserve and digitize significant Islamic documents that are in Harvard's possession and make them available on the Internet.

''We are very grateful to Prince Alwaleed for his generous gift to Harvard," university president Lawrence H. Summers said in a statement announcing the gift. ''This program will enable us to recruit additional faculty of the highest caliber, adding to our strong team of professors who are focusing on this important area of scholarship."
(Read the whole thing here.)

At the risk of being culturally insensitive, I can’t help wondering how the Saudis would respond if we all got together and kicked in $20 million to establish a program in Christian Studies at, say, King Saud University in Riyadh. Do you think they’d take it?

By the way, given the current worldwide armed conflict with Islamofascism, "faculty of the highest caliber" may not have been the best choice of words on Dr. Summers part. On the other hand, I have it on good authority that many Harvard professors are indeed large bore(s).