Soccer Dad

A discriminating education

The New York Times has a fawning article about the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). If you read the article you'd learn that the biggest challenge the university is the possibility of students mingling.

Not long after the lavish opening ceremony with thousands of guests and dozens of heads of state, a member of the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars, an official body appointed by the king, criticized the university. Most of the uproar focused on his condemnation of "mingling," which he called "a great depravity." But the critic, Sheik Saad al-Shathry, also called for the creation of a religious committee to ensure that the curriculum was consistent with Islam.

King Abdullah promptly, and with great effect, fired Sheik Shathry from the council. But at the university, some staff members and students said they were wondering how long they had before the king decided, for political expediency, that he must bow to the nation's powerful religious forces.

But there's another challenge that the kingdom will never address and the Times will never mention: KAUST, won't allow any Israeli faculty or students, even though Israel has some of the best academic programs in the fields that KAUST will be specializing in. Keeping Jews out doesn't much bother anyone.

One of KAUST's trustees is former Irish President and human rights advocate, Mary Robinson. She is the one who presided over the Durban Israel bashfest in 2001.

But her signature moment in history came when, as chairwoman of the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, she allowed the conference to be hijacked by extremist groups. The meeting devolved into an ugly anti-American and anti-Semitic debacle and gravely wounded the cause of human rights.

Durban was no big tent of tolerance. Rather, it was a launching pad for demonizing the United States, Israel and any Jews with the audacity to openly identify themselves as Zionists.

Serving as a trustee at a university that excludes Jews doesn't trouble this honored member of the human rights community.

But to look at the University's values, you don't see "equality." There is "diversity," but I suspect that it excludes members of one religion and one country. It doesn't bother Mrs. Robinson and, I suspect, not the New York Times either.