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Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?

#11

Post by astazangasta »

ed312 wrote: post #5

I don't understand the protests. I would expect educating Saudi youth in exceptionally liberal institutions like universities in the Northeast to have a net liberalizing effect on the Saudi government and culture long term. Is this not a better use of Saudi funds then e.g. buying more weapons?

Saudis buy weapons BECAUSE they are educated in liberal institutions. Elites around the world have been sending their children to be educated in the West for centuries; what they learn here is an affinity for Western elites, because they are being educated along with the scions of Western families. Then they go home and govern their countries according to the dictates of the liberal order, viz., support the Washington consensus, partner with western companies, buy weapons, etc.

Re: Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?

#12

Post by mattmanser »

ed312 wrote: post #5

I don't understand the protests. I would expect educating Saudi youth in exceptionally liberal institutions like universities in the Northeast to have a net liberalizing effect on the Saudi government and culture long term. Is this not a better use of Saudi funds then e.g. buying more weapons?

It's a double edged sword. For a few reasons.

Firstly it maintains an elite who are much better educated, and skilled, than those at home.

Secondly, when there's lots of foreign students from the same place, they just clique up. In my university there were a lot of Chinese students that hung around almost exclusively with other Chinese students.

One year I represented the student common room, a sort of social club/support network for everyone living in one of the 20 odd accommodation halls.

Despite trying, the 50-100 Chinese in our hall never mixed, keeping themselves extremely secluded from the rest of us. I remember chatting regularly with one person.

To put that in context, I knew the name and would at least exchange greetings with virtually every one of the other 200 odd people in the hall.

There were a lot of other foreign students because it was a self catering hall. They were better, though still ultimately formed their own, mixed nationality, foreign students clique within a few weeks. It was more accessible though as the shared language was English.

Re: Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?

#13

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

masonkay wrote: post #2

Is there an alternate article link without paywall?

This should help:

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20375023

Re: Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?

#14

Post by [deleted] »

seieste wrote: post #8
ed312 wrote: post #5

I don't understand the protests. I would expect educating Saudi youth in exceptionally liberal institutions like universities in the Northeast to have a net liberalizing effect on the Saudi government and culture long term. Is this not a better use of Saudi funds then e.g. buying more weapons?

Kim Jong Un was educated in Switzerland, which has a very strong democratic environment, yet it didn’t change about how he ran North Korea.

[deleted]

Re: Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?

#16

Post by spunker540 »

mattmanser wrote: post #12
ed312 wrote: post #5

I don't understand the protests. I would expect educating Saudi youth in exceptionally liberal institutions like universities in the Northeast to have a net liberalizing effect on the Saudi government and culture long term. Is this not a better use of Saudi funds then e.g. buying more weapons?

It's a double edged sword. For a few reasons. Firstly it maintains an elite who are much better educated, and skilled, than those at home. Secondly, when there's lots of foreign students from the same place, they just clique up. In my university there were a lot of Chinese students that hung around almost exclusively with other Chinese students. One year I represented the student common room, a sort of social club/su…

I think a lot of foreign students come to the US wanting to make friends with Americans and more-or-less “assimilate” but then quickly realize their English language skills aren’t as strong as they thought and that the cultural differences are larger than they thought and truthfully, that Americans aren’t as welcoming and tolerant of those differences as they thought. So they fallback to a much more comfortable situation by hanging out with other fellow transplants in what is still a very foreign and challenging situation.

A much smaller scale example of this is when I studied for a semester in France. I thought my French was decent but it turned out to be barely comprehensible by native French-speakers which doesn’t make for easy or fun friendships.

Re: Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?

#17

Post by turk73 »

mattmanser wrote: post #12
ed312 wrote: post #5

I don't understand the protests. I would expect educating Saudi youth in exceptionally liberal institutions like universities in the Northeast to have a net liberalizing effect on the Saudi government and culture long term. Is this not a better use of Saudi funds then e.g. buying more weapons?

It's a double edged sword. For a few reasons. Firstly it maintains an elite who are much better educated, and skilled, than those at home. Secondly, when there's lots of foreign students from the same place, they just clique up. In my university there were a lot of Chinese students that hung around almost exclusively with other Chinese students. One year I represented the student common room, a sort of social club/su…

I remember touring Harvard around '91 when I was looking at colleges. I recall very clearly thinking: "Wow, I will never fit in here with these elites." I never even applied and probably couldn't have afforded it, anyways. Even back then it was very obvious what those schools represent. I don't really care if it is US elite or Saudi elite, the idea that we have an elite class such as it is is incredibly counterproductive to keeping and maintaining a free and open society. We're seeing the the fruits of that elitism right before our very eyes, those chosen to run companies and sit on boards of directors are not the regular people. They are the insiders, invited because of their status. They rotate in and out of government and academia.

So not only is elitism bad for other countries, it is seriously bad for the US as well!

Re: Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?

#18

Post by BeetleB »

seieste wrote: post #8
ed312 wrote: post #5

I don't understand the protests. I would expect educating Saudi youth in exceptionally liberal institutions like universities in the Northeast to have a net liberalizing effect on the Saudi government and culture long term. Is this not a better use of Saudi funds then e.g. buying more weapons?

Kim Jong Un was educated in Switzerland, which has a very strong democratic environment, yet it didn’t change about how he ran North Korea.

Would you argue that his education in Switzerland made North Korea any worse?

Re: Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?

#19

Post by anovikov »

ed312 wrote: post #5

I don't understand the protests. I would expect educating Saudi youth in exceptionally liberal institutions like universities in the Northeast to have a net liberalizing effect on the Saudi government and culture long term. Is this not a better use of Saudi funds then e.g. buying more weapons?

It's not, if anything, their Western education and living in Western surroundings prove to them (and they are sons of the elite and take control of their countries when they grow up), how incompatible their countries are, with the free world. They can't not see that trying to bring anything of that pleasant liberal world they see as students, into their land of savagery, will result in nothing but endless bloodshed and collapse of society.

It's easy to free up and re-civilize some corners of the Earth which were oppressed for a short while by foreign force, say Eastern Europe which suffered for a while in the hands of Commies: they are happy to get back to their normalcy which is, being somewhat second-rate but more or less coherent, Western offshoot. Totally different thing is if you are speaking of nation that was formed in and by dictatorship and oppression of all kinds - from civil to religious - since time immemorial.

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