Christopher Davidson - After the Sheikhs - The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies

All six Gulf monarchies have for years sponsored a number of leading Western universities and some of their professors, research centres, and research programmes. Of special interest have been those universities and departments which have historically focused on Middle Eastern Studies, Islamic Studies, and especially Persian Gulf studies. In the past, most of these donations — many of which amount to millions of dollars — tended to come directly from members of Gulf ruling families. While this still sometimes happens, it is now more frequent for the funding to be channelled through state-backed charities or ‘foundations’, as this seems to smooth the way for recipient institutions to perform due diligence on their foreign backers, helping them to create some distance from regimes or unpalatable individuals whom their staff and student bodies may object to. Nevertheless the various buildings, jobs, and programmes that have been sponsored in this manner invariably still are adorned with the names of Gulf rulers or their powerful relatives.

Most of these gifts have no strings attached per se, and there is generally no follow-up control after the gift is made. However, donors have usually been able to rely on a culture of self-censorship taking root in the recipient institutions. After all, if a university or institute receives a major grant from such a forthcoming source — as opposed to bidding for competitive research grants — it is likely that it will hope to get more from the same pot in the future. In these circumstances junior members of staff or postgraduate students tend to feel uncomfortable discussing either the source of the funding or pursuing sensitive topics relating to the donor country. It is almost inconceivable, for example, to imagine an academic with no alternative source of income researching and writing a serious critique of a regime that has either paid for his or her salary, scholarship, or the building that houses his or her office. In many leading universities this is now no longer a possible scenario, but instead a likely one.

In addition to promoting self-censorship, the donations also tend to encourage the steering of academic debate away from the Gulf monarchies themselves — and especially studies on their domestic politics or societies — by instead promoting research on ‘safer topics’ in the broader region or on Arabic language or Islamic Studies. Indeed, the latter two fields are particularly palatable as they provide further support for the monarchies’ attempts to build up cultural and religious legitimacy resources. In Saudi Arabia’s case the funding of leading Islamic Studies centres also seems to be part of an effort to make the Saudi state’s highly controversial interpretation of Islam more ‘mainstream’ and acceptable, at least in scholarly and government circles. What all of this will soon lead to (and in some cases already has led to) is an academic discipline that carefully skirts around the key ‘red line’ subjects such as political reform, corruption, human rights, and the prospects of revolution — as these are usually perceived by university fundraisers and executives as likely to anger or antagonise their Gulf patrons. As such, this particular stream of funding is in some ways an even more powerful and sensitive soft power strategy for the Gulf monarchies, as it is not primarily aimed at influencing public or even government-level opinion in the West. Rather its more subtle objective is to sway academic opinion in the West, or at the very least foster a ‘chilling atmosphere’ of apologetic behaviour or avoidance when it comes to intellectual discussion of the Gulf monarchies.

The historic links between Britain and the region have meant that the Gulf monarchies have been particularly attracted to funding British universities, and these currently represent the best examples of the strategy. Indeed, it is now difficult to find any leading British institution focusing on the Middle East that has not received all of the varieties of gifts. Exeter University, home to Britain’s only centre for Gulf Studies, presently lauds the ruler of Sharjah — Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi — as its most generous donor, having installed him as the founding member of its College of Benefactors in 2006. This is unsurprising as Sultan paid for the university’s Al-Qasimi Building (which houses its Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies), [399] 91. The Al-Qasimi Building was built in 2000. and funds two endowed professorships — the Al-Qasimi Professor of Arabic Studies and Islamic Material Culture and the Sharjah Chair of Islamic Studies. In the past, there was also an Al-Qasimi Chair of Gulf Politics, but no longer. Similarly at Durham University, home to one of the Britain’s largest clusters of academics working on Middle East studies, the ruler of Sharjah has paid for another Al-Qasimi Building (which originally housed Durham’s Institute for Middle East and Islamic Studies and now houses its School of Government and International Affairs), and funds an endowed professorship — the Sharjah Chair in Islamic Law and Finance. Elsewhere in the UAE, the Abu Dhabi-funded Emirates Foundation for Philanthropy gave some $15 million to launch the London School of Economics’ new Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, and a further $3 million to name the main lecture theatre in LSE’s New Academic Building after Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan. [400] 92. London School of Economics press release 19 December 2006. It has also funded an endowed professorship — the Emirates Chair of the Contemporary Middle East — the holder of which does not focus on the Gulf states. On a smaller scale, before becoming Abu Dhabi’s current ruler, Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan had already paid for the Khalifa Building at the University of Wales in Lampeter, [401] 93. The Khalifa Building was built in 1997. which now houses the university’s Department of Theology, Religious Studies and Islamic Studies, along with a small mosque. Dubai has also been active, with members of its ruling family having funded the Al-Makoum College in Dundee, which is currently accredited by Aberdeen University and focuses on several niche fields including Muslim communities in Britain and ‘Islamic Jerusalem’ studies.

Kuwait has been a similarly generous donor to British academia, with the British Society for Middle East Studies’ main annual book prize being named after and funded for many years by a member of the ruling family. [402] 94. Mubarak Al-Abdullah Al Sabah. Since 2010 the prize has been administered by Cambridge University, with the ruling family member remaining as one of the five judges. More substantially, since 2007 the government-backed Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences has been funding a substantial $15 million, ten year research programme at the LSE on ‘development, governance, and globalisation in the Gulf states’ and has funded an endowed professorship — the Kuwait Professorship of Economics and Political Sciences. Despite KFAS stating that the incumbent professor should ‘… take a first hand interest in key issues affecting the economic development of resource rich economies, particularly the Gulf States as well bringing recognition of Kuwait to prestigious academic and policy-making circles around the world’, it appears that neither of the two postholders since 2007 have actually focused on the Gulf states. [403] 95. According to the official KFAS website. In May 2011 the prime minister of Kuwait — a key member of the ruling family — began sponsoring Durham University, funding an eponymously named $3.5 million research programme along with a similarly eponymous endowed professorship — the His Highness Sheikh Nasser bin Muhammad Al-Sabah Chair in International Relations, Regional Politics, and Security. [404] 96. The Spectator , 1 April 2011. Only months later, as discussed later in this book, Nasser was ousted as prime minister following popular protests and allegations of corruption, but the university has opted to retain the gift.