Jewish Community Assured of Safeguard in University Medical School Deal with Saudis

Kansas City Jewish community relations officials have been assured by the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine (UMKC) chancellor that any contract to formalize a planned exchange of medical faculty and students between the university and Saudi Arabia will contain safeguards to protect Jewish faculty members and students from any Saudi discriminatory pressures, according to a report by the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle in its Aug. 21 issue.

Chronicle Associate Editor Anne Schirn reported that the university’s School of Medicine had been in negotiations for several months with the College of Medicine and Allied Sciences of King Abdulaziz University. The proposal is to send UMKC medical school members to teach at the Saudi medical school and to accept Saudi medical students to study at the UMKC medical school, according to information provided William Levi, chairman, and David Goldstein, executive director, of the Jewish Community Relations Bureau (JCRB).

A formal proposal has been made to the Saudi university by Dr. David Moffat, professor and chairman of the department of anatomy at the UMKC School of Medicine, with indications that an agreement would bring the local medical school nearly $1 million. According to the Chronicle, medical school administrators have said the medical school is under-funded and needs money.

REPORT ON VISIT TO SAUDI ARABIA

The JCRB, investigating the exchange plans, reported that, in the course of negotiations, Dr. E. Grey Dimond, former provost for health sciences at UMKC and now consultant to Chancellor George Russell and interim chairman of the department of medicine at Truman Medical Center, a branch of the UMKC medical school, visited Saudi Arabia and reported on the visit in a recent lecture to the medical school faculty.

Dimond then said, according to the Chronicle, that the Saudis prefer to send their medical students overseas only to medical schools which have a low percentage of Jewish faculty members. The Chronicle reported that Dimond was out of town and could not be reached for comment.

The JCRB, realizing the implications of the proposal for potential discrimination not only against Jews at the UMKC medical school, but also against women and Blacks, arranged for a meeting with university officials on Aug. 17. Those in attendance included Albert Goller, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City, Levi and Goldstein.

Representing the university and its medical school were Russell; Dr. Harry Jonas, dean of the UMKC medical school; and Dr. Eugene Trani, vice chancellor for academic affairs. Moffat was invited to attend but did not and no explanation was given for his absence, Mrs. Schirn reported in the Chronicle.

In preparation for the Aug. 17 meeting, Goldstein prepared a set of questions, stressing the importance of an anti-discrimination clause in any contract between the UMKC and Saudi Arabia, as well as a provision for a monitoring committee which would include human relations experts from outside the university to report to Russell regularly on Saudi compliance.

Levi and Goldstein said the responses from the UMKC officials was “positive and reassuring.” Russell said the university would not sign any contract without a detailed anti-discrimination clause and that the contract would have a termination clause for use if the Saudis reneged on it. In a letter sent to the Jewish Federation and the JCRB, Russell said the university supported a monitoring clause and would “Implement monitoring procedures which will assure me that discrimination is not practiced under terms of the agreement.”

The Chronicle reported that the Chancellor’s letter mentioned “ethnic origin or sex” in outlining discrimination it would oppose, but not religion. But Jewish community leaders reportedly felt assured this was an inadvertent omission and that discrimination against Jews, “so widely practiced” by the Saudis, was “equally covered” in the Chancellor’s pledge.

Levi said that, despite the reassurances from the UMKC officials, “we are nonetheless greatly concerned for the potential for subtle discrimination which could effect the hiring and promotion and assignment practices for Jewish and other minority faculty members of the UMKC medical school because of the negotiations and proposed relationship with a government that is itself discriminatory and anti-Semitic.”

There are currently five Saudi medical students at the UMKC medical school but the Chronicle reported it could not learn the auspices of those students because of the current negotiations with the Saudi government which has acknowledged receipt of the proposal from Moffat. Six of the 26 full-time faculty members at the UMKC medical school are believed to be Jews and about 12 percent of the medical students are Jewish.