August 5, 2004 | Read Time: 1 minute
Harvard University is returning a $2.5-million gift to its divinity school at the request of the donor, the president of the United Arab Emirates, ending a four-year controversy over whether the university should keep the money.
In a statement posted on its Web site last week, the divinity school said it agreed to return the funds after representatives of the president, Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan, requested that the donation be withdrawn. A spokesman for the school declined further comment.
The money was given to endow a chair in Islamic religious studies. Harvard University officials planned to decide whether to keep the gift later this summer.
Last week’s decision was the culmination of a controversy that erupted when student organizations and Jewish groups criticized Harvard for accepting the donation in 2000.
The protests stemmed from the sheik’s support of the Zayed International Center for Coordination and Follow-Up, a policy research organization in Abu Dhabi, part of the United Arab Emirates.
While the center’s speakers have included former Vice President Al Gore and former President Jimmy Carter, it also has presented an Arab scholar who has asserted that the Israeli spy agency played a role in assassinating President Kennedy, a French author whose book says that the U.S. military staged the September 11 attacks, and others who have described Jews as “enemies of all nations” and accused Israel of putting chemicals in drinking water that make Palestinian children sterile.
The United Arab Emirates shut down the Zayed Center a year ago, saying its activities “starkly contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance.”
