The American Jewish Committee said today that it backed the board of trustees of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies in their dispute with the East-West Foundation over the latter’s alleged injection of anti-Israel bias into the funding of the Aspen’s Middle East studies program.
The Aspen board has charged specifically that Christopher Beirn, president of the non-profit tax-exempt East-West Foundation, threatened to terminate an annual $600,000 grant to Aspen unless it withdrew its invitation to an Israeli academician to participate in a seminar on “The Arab World in Transition.”
Ira Silverman, director of Special Programs of the AJCommittee, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today that the foundation’s action was “another example of deplorable attempts by the Arabs and their representatives in the business world here to subvert academic institutions for their political purposes.”
He said the AJCommittee has “full confidence in the integrity of the Aspen Institute, with its long tradition of intellectual interchange with Israelis, among other scholars, which will continue. Silverman said the “AJCommittee has been involved in regular contact with Colin Williams, director of Aspen’s Middle East program, and we know him to be committed to fair practice.”
According to reports here, Aspen invited a Hebrew University professor of Arabic literature, Menachem Milson, to participate in the seminar but withdrew the invitation after being informed by the State Department that Milson, a reserve officer in the Israeli army, had served as an aide to the Military Governor of occupied territories in 1977. No other Israeli was subsequently invited Joseph E. Slater, president of Aspen, denied that this was due to pressure from Beirn but other sources said Beirn had protested to Aspen against inviting any Israeli.
ASPEN REJECTS INTERFERENCE
The alleged threat by Beirn to withdraw his foundation’s grant to Aspen was said to have been in response to a resolution drawn up by the Aspen board of trustees objecting to interference by the foundation in its Middle East programs. The resolution affirmed that Aspen would have “absolute control” over the choice of participants.
The East-West Foundation was established by the Fluor Corp., a construction and engineering firm said to do billions of dollars worth of business in Saudi Arabia. According to the AJCommittee, John Fluor, Its chairman, who is also chairman of the board of the University of Southern California, tried to use corporate funds to influence the university’s Middle East Center in similar pro-Arab ways. The Aspen Institute is headed by Robert Anderson, chairman of the Atlantic Richfield Co. Its stated purpose is to bring together business, educational and government leaders at seminars on public affairs.
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