And Then Came 9/11
QUOTE/UNQUOTE "The Windows operating system will become the standard for Dartmouth's administrators and staff." FROM AN ANNOUNCEMENT BY COMPUTING SERVICES PROCLAIMING THE PHASING OUT OF APPLE ON CAMPUS OVER THE NEXT THREE YEARS
When anthropology professor Dale Eickelman '64 accepted a grant to study at Oxford last year, little did he know the source of that funding would also become a focus of his research. That source happens to be the bin Laden family.
Last fall Eickelman became a bin Laden Visiting Fellow in Islamic Studies, and used the $5,900 grant to work on a book he has been writing for the past two years on the relationship between religion and politics in the Middle East.
Funding for the fellowship came from a $150,000 gift to Oxford in 1990 from a half-brother of terrorist Osama bin Laden in support of Islamic studies. (The extended bin Laden family has also donated a total of about $2.5 million to Harvard and Tufts in the past decade.)
The tragic events of September 11 and the ensuing war in Afghanistan prompted Eickelman to add a new book chapter on religion and violence and sparked numerous discussions with colleagues in England. "There is a critical density of like-minded colleagues as well as a strong Arab/Muslim community in Oxford," says Eickelman, who is hoping to finish his manuscript by the end of the year. "The result is a good context in which both to write and to try out ideas contributing to the book."
The professor also developed new ideas for the course "Thought and Change in the Middle East and Central Asia" he is teaching in Hanover this winter. He has added material on the Taliban and the effects of education and the media on religious and political authorities in those regions.
Exhibit A Curators are making sureno artwork is of questionable origin.
