— Georgetown University yesterday returned to the government of Libya its gift of $600,000 which that Arab country had contributed over the past four years to endow a professorship at the university’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.
In disclosing the return of the money plus interest of $41,721, the Jesuit university said it did not want to have “its name associated” with a country that supports terrorism.
The United States in December, 1979, placed export controls on Libya, Iraq, Syria and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen as states “which had repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.”
These controls were renewed last December for another year under the Export Administration Act. The State Department three weeks ago said the Libyan government was “supporting a wide range of terrorist groups in every area of the globe” and arranged assassinations of dissidents abroad.
UNIVERSITY HAS BEEN CRITICIZED
Jewish organizations and individuals have complained to Georgetown University since Libya made its original contribution and also have been critical of Georgetown’s acceptance of more than $3 1/2 million from seven other Arab countries for the center which is considered anti-Israeli.
Only two weeks ago Rabbi Andrew Baker, executive secretary, and Lawrence Goldmuntz, president of the Washington chapter of the American Jewish Committee, protested to Georgetown about the Arab support.
Georgetown’s president, Rev. Timothy Healy, personally brought the check for $641,721 to the Libyan Embassy and gave it to Ali Houderi, the Embassy’s head. Healy said “I was under absolutely no heat and no pressure” to return the money “but it worried me. I guess I am just kind of slow to move. But I came to a growing realization that what Libya is up to is incompatible with Georgetown.”
The professorship in the Arab program will continue unchanged, the university said. It is held by a Palestinian-born historian Hisham Sharabi. He was quoted as saying that the Libyans were “very decent, very thoughtful, very considerate, very correct” in financing the professorship to the extent of $715,000 over a five-year period.
Michael Hudson, director of the Arab studies center who reportedly had been instrumental in
having Libya make the gift and had strongly defended it, was quoted here as saying “We never felt any pressure from the Libyan government” on use of its money. Hudson was among the Americans who attended a seminar in Libya on ways to advance the Arab points of view against Israel and conducted a seminar at Georgetown which he said was modelled on the lines of the Libyan program.
RETURN OF GIFT UNANIMOUSLY APPROVED
The Rev. Michael Walsh, chairman of the university’s Board of Directors, said the board’s 10-member executive committee had unanimously approved return of the money.
Ira Silverman, director of special programs for the AJCommittee, which had strongly denounced Georgetown’s acceptance of Arab money, for its education programs, said he was “delighted” with Georgetown’s decision. “It confirms our faith in the integrity of Georgetown and its president, Father Healy,” he said. “To keep this money would be to confer honor on an unworthy donor.”
In 1978, Georgetown, which is the oldest Jesuit institution of higher learning in the U.S., had returned to Iraq its check for $50,000. Beside the seven Arab governments contributing, the center has received gifts from a score of American corporations that do business in the Middle East.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
