REMEMBER COLUMBIA UNIV'S INVESTIGATION?

A DEAN AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY WHO WAS ASSIGNED TO INVESTIGATE CLAIMS OF ANTI-SEMITISM AND HOSTILITY TO ISRAEL AT THE SCHOOL IN 2005 MAY HAVE TAKEN A LITTLE BAKSHEESH FROM THE SAUDI ROYALS IN 2004. HMMMMMMMM.

Columbia Dean Admits Taking Saudi Junket.
Months before a Columbia University dean was named to a special committee convened to investigate student complaints about professors’ hostility to Israel, the dean took a trip to Saudi Arabia that she acknowledges was “largely” paid for by Saudi Aramco, the kingdom-owned oil company.

The dean, Lisa Anderson of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, was one of five members of the committee named in December 2004. The committee for the most part cleared the accused scholars of blame, prompting critics to describe their report as a whitewash.

The March 2004 junket to Saudi Arabia is described in glowing terms on a Web site for former Saudi Aramco employees that details the “delightful lunch” enjoyed by the Columbia delegation, as well as a “wonderful dinner” during which “guests watched the sunset over the sand dunes from the tent.”

"Saudi money is borderline corruption," said Martin Kramer, a research associate at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, who recently gave $20 million gifts to Georgetown and Harvard Universities, told the New York Times earlier this month that several other Ivy League universities had applied for similar gifts, but that he had turned them down.

Columbia failed for years to comply with federal law requiring the disclosure of gifts from overseas, including a $250,000 gift in 2003 from an unnamed Saudi individual for "social science research."