BOSTON, 30 July 2004 — Harvard Divinity School will give back a $2.5 million cash gift from the president of the United Arab Emirates, ending more than a year of controversy spurred by the country’s support of an Arab League think tank that promoted anti-Semitic ideas.
The donation from Sheikh Zayed ibn Sultan Al-Nahyan, announced four years ago, was supposed to have funded an endowed professorship in Islamic religious studies to promote ‘’a better understanding of Islam among the non-Muslim people of the world.”
But Zayed recently asked for the return of the gift, which had never been used, school officials said yesterday.
Harvard froze the donation in spring 2003, before a professor had been named, after some students raised concerns over the activities of the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-up. The center was officially the think tank of the Arab League, but was funded and hosted by the United Arab Emirates and named after the president.
Yesterday Rachel Lea Fish, the former divinity student who led the protest and presented school officials with 130 pages of research about the center’s activities, praised the return of the money.
Zayed ordered the shutdown of the center in August 2003, saying that it ‘’had engaged in a discourse that starkly contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance.”
