Saudi Ties to US Universities Under Question Amid Ongoing Crisis Over
Khashoggi Murder
By Democracy Now!
27 October 18
As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urges Saudi Arabia to disclose who
ordered the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, we end todays show
looking at how U.S. universities are facing new scrutiny over their close
ties to Saudi Arabia in the wake of Khashoggis murder. In Connecticut,
activists are calling on the University of New Haven to cut ties to King
Fahd Security College in Saudi Arabia. According to news reports, the Saudi
forensic doctor who allegedly dismembered Khashoggis body served on the
editorial board of a publication tied to King Fahd Security College. Dr.
Salah Muhammed al-Tubaigys name was removed from the publications website
this week. A forensic scientist from the University of New Haven served on
the editorial board with him. We speak to Stanley Heller, executive director
of the Middle East Crisis Committee, and Harvard Medical School fellow
Yarden Katz.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! Im Amy Goodman. As Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan urges Saudi Arabia to discuss who ordered the murder of
Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, we end todays show looking at how U.S.
universities are facing new scrutiny over their close ties to Saudi Arabia
in the wake of Khashoggis 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 universitys
president, Rafael Reif, with a stack of petitions protesting bin Salmans
visit.
MIT STUDENT: Were here because we want to urge President Reif to reconsider
the meeting with Mohammed bin Salman. We are aware that this meeting is
going to happen, but we feel that, you know, accepting resources from
somebody in sort of like ain sort of a blanket way, without acknowledging
that there is a substantial famine being caused by Mohammed bin Salman in
Yemen, goes against the principles of MIT, which is sort of, you know,
wanting just to maintain human rights.
AMY GOODMAN: 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 Schools 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 Havens world-renowned programs in criminal
justice, national security, and forensic studies at the service of the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabias next generation of security professionals.
Well, Democracy Now! reached out to Harvard, to MIT, to the University of
New Haven and Yale University Law Schools Abdallah S. Kamel Center for
Study of Islamic Law. None of the institutions accepted our offer to join us
on the show today. But for more, we are joined by two people. In Boston,
Massachusetts, Yarden Katz is with us, department fellow in systems biology
at Harvard Medical School. He wrote an article for The Guardian on Saudi
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans visit to Harvard/MIT. His piece, focusing
on the kingdoms close ties to U.S. universities, is headlined Elite
universities are selling themselvesand look whos buying. And in Hartford,
Connecticut, were joined by Stanley Heller, executive director of the
Middle East Crisis Committee, also a member of the Coalition to End the
U.S.-Saudi Alliance.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Yarden Katz, lets begin with you.
Explain your response when you heard about what happened to The Washington
Post columnist Khashoggi, the latest news, you know, Turkey demanding the
crown prince come clean on what he knows and who ordered this murder. Your
response to that, and how this connects to your protests?
YARDEN KATZ: Right. So I think its 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 dont want
this war criminal on our campus.
The problem is that we didnt 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
schools 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 werent 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
Salmans 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 its been going on since March.
AMY GOODMAN: And you suggest that not only didnt they publicize the visit;
youre saying they tried to cover it up, Yarden.
YARDEN KATZ: Yes, absolutely. 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 theyre really also a
progressive government, that theyre really on the same page with MIT, that
they superficially use the same language.
On the other hand, universities havent said much about it. They only put
out a press release after the fact, and theyre trying to minimize that,
because I think they realize that it doesnt look good. Here you have a
representative of an absolute monarchy coming to campus. Theres a
devastating war in Yemen. Activists are being silenced and thrown in jail in
Saudi Arabia. So its not a good situation, and universities know that
viscerally, but they want the money, and they want the prestige of
affiliating with these groups.
Id also like to add, though, that this is not just a Saudi issue. Its
reallywere not saying that universities like Harvard and MIT are so
ethically pure that they shouldnt 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 its a foreign government like the Saudi government, and
sometimes its 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 thats an American partnership thats also
problematic and tied to this web of unaccountable partnerships that
universities form all the time.
AMY GOODMAN: How did MIT President Reif respond to you, Yarden Katz?
YARDEN KATZ: I think thats a great question, and its very telling, their
lack of response. So, we had a piece that was published in The Guardian.
Its a pretty visible venue, obviously. After our piece, the MIT student
newspaper, The Tech, published a very forceful and very perceptive editorial
talking about MITs 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 didnt have to confront any of
this. They didnt respond to the Cambridge City Council resolution. They
didnt respond to our piece. Theyre 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. Its a
balancing act. And we prefer dialogue over no dialogue.
AMY GOODMAN: The assistant vice president of communications at Harvard
University, Melodie Jackson, declined our offer to be on the show, but she
did send Democracy Now! a statement, that read, in part, As a global
research university, Harvard has a broad and robust scholarly engagement in
the Middle East, including in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and has benefited
immensely from the intellectual contributions of Saudi-based individuals
over the years.
We are following recent events with concern and are
assessing potential implications for existing programs, she said.
Now I want to turn to University of New Haven in Connecticut. Stanley
Heller, youre executive director of the Middle East Crisis Committee, also
a member of the Coalition to End the U.S.-Saudi Alliance. Talk about what
happened at UNH and at Yale.
STANLEY HELLER: Good morning, Amy. We have been alarmed for about a year and
a half that the University of New Haven has a program, kind of secretivewe
dont know exactly what it isto 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 isyou 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 were
starting to think, Forensic scientist? Thats 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, were told
that its 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 Tubaigys name was removed. So, we think that
theory of the two al-Tubaigys has been put to rest.
AMY GOODMAN: Stanley Heller, we have to break.
STANLEY HELLER: Then the university
AMY GOODMAN: We have to break, but were going to do Part 2 of this, and
were going to post it online at democracynow.org. Weve got to end the
show. Stanley Heller, executive director of the Middle East Crisis
Committee, and Yarden Katz, department fellow in systems biology at Harvard
Medical School.
Tonight, Juan González will be speaking at Rutgers University, moderating a
discussion in New Brunswick, New Jersey, at 7 p.m. with Oscar López Rivera
and Puerto Rican scholars Ivonne Acosta Lespier and Johanna Fernández.
That does it for the broadcast. We have a job opening, full-time broadcast
engineer, here in New York. Check our website. Im Amy Goodman. Thanks so
much for joining us.
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