Iranian Sympathizing 101 Bought and Paid for at Columbia, Rutgers

B"H

I am really not surprised that Columbia and Rutgers have accepted money from a pro-Iranian group to sponsor radical anti-Israel professorships. I am even less surprised that those colleges are now accused of helping Iran launder money through that "charitable contribution."

These are the schools that would be the winners for "most likely to be a terrorist hotbed."

Wasn't it only two years ago that Columbia University invited Ahmadinejad to speak at the campus? Wow. This sure puts Columbia University's President's comments to the press at that time in a whole new light! Remember his defense of that speech, delivered in such flowery academic prose that we all almost believed him? Remember this appeal by President Bollinger to the higher cause of learning about the world:

• Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas—to understand the world as it is and as it might be. To fulfill this mission we must respect and defend the rights of our schools, our deans and our faculty to create programming for academic purposes.

This new knowledge about The Alavi Foundation's $100K "gift" to Columbia for allowing the dictator to speak was probably an even higher "academic purpose" than "confronting ideas--to understand the world as it is and as it might be." The Alavi foundation is a charity that law-enforcement officials believe is a front for the Iranian government (Surprise! Surprise! I would have NEVER guessed).

At Rutgers University, Jewish students have long felt threatened for any pro-Israel, pro-Jewish sentiments (by the way, "pro-Jewish" includes wearing a kippah or hanging a flag). Study abroad programs in Israel were cancelled by Rutgers in early 2009.

But it is more than just the anti-Jewish, anti-Israel vitrol that comes from these schools, it is also the fact that they are training our scholars of the next generation. For example, Alavi gave A LOT of money to Rutgers to fund their Persian Language programs. Can you imagine what students, bought and paid for by the Iranian Regime, might "translate" for our news media, our spy agencies, and our academic communities? Everything they do would be questioned--even if they were giving a true translation!

And who are our next generation of professors? They are the graduate students, the radicalized nutcases in our colleges today! They are going to be teaching your children the "truth" about Israel.

Oh my G-d.

This is an extremely disturbing story, and, as it unfolds over the weeks to come, I'm sure we will learn a whole lot more about what is going into the classrooms in Columbia and Rutgers.

M
----


Columbia, Rutgers on 'spy' group gift list
By ISABEL VINCENT
2:21 PM, November 22, 2009
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/columbia_rutgers_on_spy_group_gift_JOTKcEIJ5qgzRWPVeBxxNN

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.

Federal law-enforcement authorities are in the midst of seizing up to $650 million in assets from the Alavi Foundation, which they charge funnels money to Iran-supported Islamic schools in the United States and to a syndicate of Iranian spies based in Europe.

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.

Alavi's Web site says its mission is the "promotion of Islamic culture and Persian language."

"This is all about Iran laundering their policies through academe," said Michael Rubin, an Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. "And the ivory tower is prostituting itself for money."

But Amirahmadi disagreed. "Grants from Alavi are made to the universities, not to the professors," he told The Post.

Columbia spokesman Robert Hornsby said Alavi's donations rarely topped more than a few thousand dollars and that the $100,000 donation was its largest single gift. Hornsby added that the school was surprised the foundation had direct ties to the Iranian government.

The Alavi foundation declined comment.

Additional reporting by Brad Hamilton

UNIVERSITIES FOR SALE

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:

Gary Sick, professor, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia: He [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] made it very clear that, whether he is talking about ‘wiping Israel off the map,’ or ‘erased from the pages of time,’ or whatever the quote is, what he means is that there should be a free referendum among the peoples of the Palestine that existed to the partition in 1948 to vote about the kind of a government they should have. He is confident that, in a free vote, Israel and Israelis would lose that vote and it would turn out to be something else: a unitary state, probably run by the Palestinians.

Hooshang Amirahmadi, director, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Rutgers: Unfortunately, a large part of the problems between Iran and the US are not based in reality, but are based on myths. The problem of terrorism is a true myth. Iran has not been involved in any terrorist organization. Neither Hezbollah nor Hamas are terrorist organizations . . . The Iranian president’s problem is with Israel, not with America.

Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature, Columbia: That monstrosity that [director Zack] Snyder pictures [in his film “300”] marching towards Thermopylae is the American empire — and that band of brothers that stood up to that monstrosity are those resisting this empire: They are the Iraqi resistance, the Palestinians, Hezbollah.