The Americanization Of The Zayed International Center

In the year 2000, the United Arab Emirates president Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Nahayan announced a $2.5 million gift to the Harvard Divinity School to endow a professorship of Islamic studies “to promote a better understanding of Islam among the non-Muslim people of the world.” In 2003, after students at Harvard flagged the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed International Center for Coordination and Follow-Up (ZICCF) long list of anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish speakers and articles, Harvard felt compelled to return the gift. The Sheik announced closing the center with a press release that acknowledged that ZICCF “had engaged in a discourse that starkly contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance.”

MEMRI noted that its work and translation of Arabic into English helped shed light on the centres conspiracy theories including that America and Israel committed the attacks of 9/11, that the Protocol of the Elders of Zion is true, as well as Holocaust deniers.

The Arab world was apoplectic at the closing of the centre and Harvard’s return of the gift. Al-Sharq Al-Awsat in London wrote that ZICCF had “an educational mission that allows the exploration of various points of view on issues of international significance. But it was accused of radicalism when the Americans and Zionists did not like the opinions expressed in it… The Centre was obliterated in order to silence it and to make an example to others. And the astonishing thing about all this is that it happened amidst calls to democratize the Arab world… to allow freedom of expression and to fight despotic regimes… [It] shows that the fierce influence that Zionism has on the American decision-making has extended outside the U.S.”

Twenty years later, the fountain of anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism under the cloak of free speech is home-grown and widespread.

*Columbia University student holding sign with arrow at fellow students holding Israeli and American flags to be targets of Hamas rockets*

The faculty is anti-Western values. The teachers’ unions and lesson plans are antisemitic and anti-Israel. The student body and groups are infused with Jew hatred and anti-American venom.

This is not a problem that can be cancelled with a returned check. It is now an ingrained feature of the American educational system.

President Donald Trump announced his intention to root out the problem. He announced plans to close the Department of Education, to revoke visas and expel foreign students who promote terrorist groups and ideologies, and to withhold U.S. government grants to institutions that have essentially Americanized the Zayed International Centre.

*US President Donald Trump holds an executive order to start dismantling the Department of Education (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)*

It will not be enough.

Advancing Holocaust education in the schools will not be enough.

Providing transparency of foreign donations to schools through the DETERRENT Act will not be enough.

Increasing the tax rate on university endowments will not be enough.

Passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act will not be enough.

They are needed and helpful but systemic changes should be implemented throughout America’s schools.

Teacher unions – and all municipal unions – must be barred from contributing to any politician and making statements on any political races.
Tenure should be abolished in all schools.
Charter schools and private schools should receive funding proportionate with the number of students in the district attending those schools.
Schools that fail to teach minimum skills in critical subjects like math should be defunded and/or closed.
Teachers and administrators that vilify a segment of the population should be terminated and lose their pensions.

Other steps are also needed as people get their information from toxic sources outside of school. TikTok and any other foreign-owned media companies should be banned, based on a scale of level of concern of the country and content. Phones should be banned from classrooms so students can focus on learning skills and not lured by fake news and vortex of peer dynamics.

People may believe that the Trump administration’s actions to reverse both the decline of skills and increase in antisemitism in schools are draconian. In truth, a systemwide overhaul is needed.