I hear that John Waterbury, the president of American University of Beirut, is in big trouble with the US government. Apparently, the US embassy in Lebanon is most displeased that Robert Fisk was awarded an honorary doctorate from AUB. In his speech, Fisk gave a scathing indictment of US foreign policy. That did not sit well with the embassy, which is lobbying Washington, I am told, to punish Waterbury. They found a technical irregularity in one of the advertised posters, and will be using that to discredit Waterbury.
Waterbury is an important American academic who’s written many great books on, among others, Egypt and Morocco. If this turns into something, be ready to support him and defend academic freedom. After all, I don’t like another recipient of the same honor (Nasser Kharafi of the eponymous Kuwaiti mega-corporation), but don’t think Waterbury should be punished for it!
“Punish” him how? This is silly. http://www.aub.edu.lb/about/about.html“ rel=”nofollow”>AUB is “a private, independent, non-sectarian institution of higher learning, functioning under a charter from the State of New York… governed by an autonomous Board of Trustees.” It is not owned or operated by the US government. Washington has no say over who it awards degrees to.
Part of the university’s funding comes from the US government, but it’s only a part, and that doesn’t mean they can fire the president or otherwise discipline him.
Fucking Bushies and their Kramers and Pipes and Lewises and other old Stalinists with too much time on their hands and not enough people to bully…I don’t like Fisk personally but they have some bloody nerve trying to intervene in an autonomous academic institution like that (note that they’d never dare do so in the US proper, but they like to throw their weight around in the periphery – rather like with AIDS/contraception/abstinence funding). Hundreds of academics at leading American universities criticise the Bush administration, including in public speeches, every day. They really think they can stop that?
Well, if AUB is anything like AUC, then a SUBSTANTIAL portion of it’s funding comes from the US government, and that can be a influential thing.
Funding doesn’t give the government a free hand to interfere politically in an academic institution – many lefty critics of the Bush administration teach at state universities like UC Berkeley and so on, which are also substantially funded by taxpayers, and they never face this sort of pressure. This is simply not the way that American academia works.
Afraid Angry is showing his Idiot Arab side. US diplos are not going to being plotting to intervene in this manner.
Someone in Washington, maybe, but diplos on the ground in Leb Land have many, many other things to worry about – their incentives are all bureaucratic and ass-covering.
I beg to differ, Pressure on academics, and the US is no exception comes in a variety of forms. AUB may be mainly private, but those on its board have friends in many places, somes funders may refuse to renew funding, private whispers about how students from AUB might be “overlooked” for prestigious grants and scholarships, that kind of thing.
As for the US, liberals may teach at Berkeley and San Francisco State, but they have files. Reagan had fits about both Angela Davis and Marcuse. Today at UCLA there is an alumni group which is trying to blacklist certain academics (usually in History, Chicano Studies, etc) who are “too left-leaning and anti-American” in their view. There is also a watch list run by at leat one group who is very unhappy with how the Middle East, Israel and the Palestinian conflict is presented in classrooms. A number of Jewish, Israeli academics are on that list- which publishes as much info on the instructor as possible. In high schools, parents have complained when the occupation of Iraq and Bush are portrayed as less than steller- teachers have been suspended- Bill of RIghts not withstanding. For every “liberal lecture”- Hoawrd Zinn, Chalmers Johnson, etc on a college campus, there are ears and eyes taking notes. In many Arabic classes there are ringers, and future FBI/CIA agents. Don’t kid yourself. The US may seem “free,” but the walls have ears and they are also slowly, but surely closing in.
I would question the source on this one. “hear”, “apparently”, “I am told”… sounds all very dodgy to me. Also some of the other commenters have pointed out, it’s not so much the business of embassy staff to censure the universities. Seems like this one could have benefitted from a bit more hard evidence before being posted and subject to discussion.
While Paul makes a good point- this is the American University in Beirut under the auspices of the State of New York. This from AUB’s website:
AUB has been registered with and recognized by the Department of Education of New York State since 1863. With the granting of Middle States’ accreditation, AUB joins The American University in Cairo and American University of Sharjah as one of only three universities in the Middle East that are accredited by regional accreditating bodies in the United States.
It is also registered as a 501c3 in the US. Go here: http://www.aub.edu.lb/about/bot.html to see the official Board of Trustees list. Of course the US embassy has involvement on several levels. Given the membership on the board, the source of its status, the accreditation, why wouldn’t they?
This was actually reported in Al-seyassah newspaper and amounts to nothing more than a ‘comedy of errors’.
AUB has an independent board of trustees that determines the presidency of the university and the recipients of the honorary doctorates. Furthermore, it is beyond the power of the US Congress to summon Waterbury or any other university president.
Also, AUB is not part of NYU and receives a mere $2 million from USAID (funded by the Congress) which comwpared to its $100m++ annual budget is almost trivial.
Congress may therefore question US Aid officials and not waterbury
There are some good points above — this may just be a rumor started by someone overhearing a disgruntled diplomat — but I don’t think that AUB’s legal status would necessarily protect it. In these kinds of cases, informal, indirect pressure can be just as effective as formal power. The other thing is that one would only need to point out to a conservative Congressman that Fisk, who calls America “fascist” etc., was awarded a honorary degree to have him launch a crusade that would serve his political career. There are many ways diplomats, even lower-level ones, can stir up trouble. Fisk, after all, is very controversial (and disliked by many in his profession!) and would be an easy target.
Zazou and others are right to say that all kinds of political pressure can be applied to universities in the US, but by and large (as we saw in the Columbia MEALAC fiasco and Kramer and Pipes’ little efforts at McCarthyism) these pressures come from governing boards, alumni associations and student groups that have links with external interest groups – not from state or federal funding authorities. Chomsky was one of those given an honorary degree in the 1999 Columbia graduation and he’s certainly said as much as Fisk if not more, but that sort of thing doesn’t normally get even the more political interest groups to pick a fight. Still, I imagine the US govt could feel it has more of a right to use academic funding for foreign policy purposes with the AUBs and AUCs…
Whether or not AUB is or is not funded by the US government and whether it is a non-profit registered in the United States is beside the point since technically it seems the First Ammendment would like protect his freedom of speech and the freedom of speech practiced by awarding such a prize. The bigger problem, as zazou points out above, are that there have been attempts in congress (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:h.r.03077:” rel=”nofollow”>H.R. 3077) “to amend title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965 to enhance international education programs.” What this means in practice is that professors who don’t support American foreign policy could lose funding they receive under TItle IV. I was interviewed in 2004 by an American news station about the potential chilling effect of such a law, and became aware of http://www.meforum.org/“ rel=”nofollow”>Campus Watch, run by director Daniel Pipes. This organization and other informal lists encourage students to report on professors who do not support US foreign policy in the Middle East or who they believe are baised. Of course, this primarily means those who don’t like US support for Israel under any and all circumstances. It’s odd, however, when they speak about such bais because it seems to me that this small corner of academia is the only voice representing an unpopular viewpoint that seeks to balance out the roar of support from nearly all other segments of American society and business.
Courtney- very interesting! Some colleagues and I who teach film and present papers on Middle Eastern film ,write about it, etc. were a bit non plussed by Pipes’ list and then we basically turned on it by a) asking to be included and b) suggesting the group send us their own particulars because we were thinking of forming our own list.
Pipes is the inspiration for the UCLA Alumni group that was offering money to students who would bring in notes from “Anti-American, etc” lectures, would sit in on certain classes, etc. As I mentioned before,it was
primarily in certain areas such as Chicano Studies- basically White Boys preferring to be in a snit rather than have a critical thought.
But what bothers me most about these things is the resemblance it has to the abortion clinic lists- the publishing of office hours, phone numbers and when possible, home addresses, etc.
It’s a peculiar form of blacklisting that plays into the dynamics created by the “war on terrorism,” and the immigration “debate.”