Many must have been shocked at the resignation of Sir Howard Davies, Director of the LSE and at the damage done to that great institution by its association with Libya. I am only surprised that it has taken so long for this issue to become public. LSE has not been transparent about sources of donation, but according to the 2009 report A Degree of Influence from the Centre for Social Cohesion, many of our leading universities have taken donations from inter alia Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, Yemen, Qatar, Iraq and other regimes whose human rights and democracy records are deplorable. One understands very well that our universities are starved of resources. Over the centuries donations have been made to universities by benefactors who made their money in questionable circumstances but wanted to redeem themselves. The difference is that the money received from the Middle Eastern countries is almost always designated for areas of research that suit the donor, in an apparent effort to boost the standing of the donor country. The Said Business School in Oxford is an honourable exception. Usually the donations are, for example, to support a lecturership in Islamic Studies, a chair of Contemporary Islamic Studies, a Centre for Islamic Studies, the Iraq Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies, an Institute of Iranian Studies etc. Surely the Bin Laden Visiting Fellowship is an embarrassment?
There might be nothing wrong with benefactions in principle, but the risks lie in the influence acquired by the donor. A donation may provide a platform for an undemocratic regime to present its own version of events; the appointment of a professor may be unduly influenced by nominees of the donor; the recruitment of staff and the distribution of scholarships may be restricted by the wishes of the donor; respectability and contacts are acquired.
This has come about because of the way in which universities have been manipulated and overregulated in recent years by successive governments. They had to expand without sufficient resources; they are encouraged to take foreign students in order to increase income; they are expected to maintain standards without the income to do so; they are ranked by research rather than teaching quality. I know from experience that the main task of the head of an academic institution is to raise funds, and after some years of this effort (alongside all the other institutions trying to do the same thing) there is a danger that standards may slip and that the university is ready to take money from almost any source just to get by. A freer, less regulated and better resourced higher education sector would not face those temptations.
Does the noble Baroness think things will get better in light of this :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12636185
Have we not got a similar problem with party donations ?
A less regulated system of anything is open to corruption as has always been the case. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
We had a less regulated Parliament with good resources, the taxpayer, that didn’t appear to go well either.
I don’t know the answer.
The answer is money laundering! Third parties pay the money to HM Treasury; it goes in dirty and comes out spotlessly clean. What’s that! Universities have their own Exchequers. Quite so, but HM Treasury is in a class of its own.
Alert! Alert! The government is encouraging local councils to enforce town and city speed limits and to install new speed cameras. Local Councils are actively reducing 40 mph limits to 30 mph and removing road signs of the old limit, taking their time to install new ones. In residential areas speed limits are being reduced to 20 mph and radar guns are being used to trap wary residents. Fixed fine penalties are being imposed. Yes, all this from local councils who were quite prepared to use anti terror legislation inappropriately.
Well, I did say HM Treasury was in a class of its own. What’s that?! The money is NOT going to HM Treasury. Outrageous! Can we pay fast money to universities?
The tyranny begins!
UN WHO pays the piper calla the tune ?
A few years ago I visited Professor George Giarchi, Social Studies at Plymouth University, over a need to clarify certain models within the Human Development context; and he let me glimpse the UN’s Domains-model for holistic-living; and under Social (as best I can recall the domains they were similar to the five holistic-psychiatric-nursing domains given by professors Beck, Rawlins and Williams: Physiological, Emotional, Mental, Social, and Spiritual)
the United Nations had lumped-in at about third or fourth place down in a sub-list of about eight under ‘Social’, “Work”.
There were other possibly more serious issues there, which in turn led me to ‘create’ a sevenfold holistic-living model more genericly suitable to the world-at-large as well as to the locked-in “mental”-patient; and to label it as follows:
(1) Physiological;
(2) Emotional;
(3) Mind-functional;
(4) Environmental
(i) Bio- environment (e.g. the bottle
of water by one’s bedside and the
tray of sprouting-cress in one’s
kitchen-window, as well as the
rosemary, parsley, or vased-spring
-onions-from-the-supemarket-for
-green-tops growing-on there or in
one’s glass-roofed porch
(ii) Built-environment (including
one’s bed, one clothing, one’s
cellphone); concentricly outwards
through one’s front-gate to one’s
shared-train-seat, one’s shared
workplace, and one’s City and
Nation-State, and nearest seaside
-resort, etcetera etcetera;
(iii) People-environment
(a) Friendly people
(b) Neutral/Impartial people;
(c) Hostile people;
(d) Outrightly life-threatening
enemy people.
(5)Spiritual:
(i) as inculcated by external powers
notably by Religion(s);
(ii) as received internally, or
spiritually, direct-with-and-from
-God/The-Divine-Source.
(6) Individually-Personal “Sanctuary”
e.g. during assessment-interviews and
suchlike, one’s occasional need
for “time-out”, without having to leave
-the-room, go home, or close-down the
process altogether.
(7) One’s job/career skills
should be kept clinically separate, and
listed strictly separately from the
above lifesyle-abilities and needs.
——–
The relevance of this above is that when we can not trust the sujper-top (the United Nations Itself) to get it right, and communicate clearly, charitably, and with self-corrigibility, how are we ever going to be able (honestly-enabled) to trust a much lesser-“piper” such as a House-of-Lords and a mere University ?!!
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1623F040311.JSDM.
Now that poor LSE is starved of donations, no doubt we can expect an announcement that they are going to set fees for all courses at £9000.
I should agree on your concerns, and think that the principle focus of an Academic Institution ought to be on learning. But what do you expect? We live in a Tick Box society in which we focus on the wrong things all the time, and really Bureaucrats pushing paperwork run everything, and want to see a bottom line.
I would that the Universities had some mean of finance that was independent and a the same time had much less Regulation than now. But then I’ve always been a promoter of small Government and little regulation on everything.
I feel the regulations imposed by Bearcats serve only a fantasy that keeps the books straight, shackle the Universities, and bend them then put of all shape, only to let them fall prey to such.
So I sympathise with you.
I really can not see anything objectionable about taking money from a murderer.
There is no need to shout about or be beholden to him for anything.
A man who does wrong deserves to have his money taken from him, as long as you do not profess to be his “friend” in so doing.
If you did, then like that principle of criminal law which regards friends as in some way complicit, and sometimes quite guilty, of the crime itself, as though you had been there and done that yourself, it would be very wrong to take it.
There must be simplistic answers to the fund raising of what Andrew Neale calls the Libyan School of Economics, and i am hopefully offering just one of them.
If Howard Davis presented himself and LSe as Qaddaffi’s friend (just like Tony Blair did) then he does indeed have to resign, but certainly not return the money!
TB exchanged kisses Did Howard Davis?
If not no need to resign!
The idea that regimes’ can donate to our Universities, Museaums, Art Galleries or any other such organiztions is asking for trouble.
Surely the main question here would be why they want to give their money to our society when they denounce such societies as evil? There appears a dichotomy there. And one which men or women of intelligent minds would have questioned openly, long before today.
The difficulty, from my point of view, is this carry on is all under the table. Hidden from view and enacted without proper scrutiny. No one really knows who is pocketing what. Or, what perks are received for agreeing to such a gift.
Now why is that?
Tim, thank you for highlighting a point I make routinely that I am called insane over.
Everyone has a Religion.
The biggest problem with accepting a Murderers Money, knowing he is a Murderer, is that you are basically ignoring that he killed so you can make personal gain. Thee are more important things in life tan financing yourself, or your own self interest, and the biggest problem in Modern Society is that it has accepted a way of looking at the world that instead focuses only on personal self interest.
There is also a corruptive effect. If a Murderer say he will give you money only if you teach the same beliefs that he justifies his murders on, you must either say yes to the Money and the courses, or no to the Money and the courses.
I find that it would be better to turn down Blood Money.
That lets us be both Morally right and allows us the benefit of a Clean conscience, and it maintains our independence from such as would commit atrocities.
I make no distinction from the Money and how it was raised. I see also the connection in pleasing s benefactor. if they are not pleased with how their money was spent, they won’t give you more.
if all we can focus on is the Money, ten we will corrupt ourselves.
And you know what is said, “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”- 1 Timothy Chapter 6 Verse 10.
Why should we tap into the root of all Evil, knowing it will bring sorrows?
In other words, Zarove, when you make friends with despots or recieve ‘blood money’ you are colluding in the crime from which that blood money emanates. And in so doing, become equal to those who deal in such activity.
Maude- Quiet. That, and you allow yourself to teach what they want, for they are your benefactors. If you anger them, hey will stop sending you the all important Money, and so you never do, and you do as they say.
This results in you teaching what they want others to believe, and in the end it means you are advancing their beliefs and goals.
Hence why the Love of Money is the Root of all Evils.
Greed is corruptive.