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Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?

nytimes.com

21–30 of 112 posts

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

#21
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…

Admittedly social event/club is one of the most awkward activities one could host for native Chineses. Similar event only happens when people are pushed (by their parents) to arranged group dating event. Interactive games of small group works the best.

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

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 situa…

Totally, I think the knowledge about the culture is also very important in such blind social setting. Otherwise the conversation ends fairly quickly. I do think most Americans are quite welcoming but it’s quite awkward when it comes to mutual knowledge of the other’s culture

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

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 situa…

My school has a decent population of both Chinese nationals and Chinese-Americans who speak the language at home. The Chinese nationals are either friendly with everyone (with varying degrees of skill in English) or completely cliquey - excluding even the Chinese Americans who speak their language.

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

#24
post #2

Is there an alternate article link without paywall?

This should help: "If you're using Chrome 74+, you can set a flag that prevents sites from detecting that you're using Incognito mode. Go to chrome://flags and enable "Filesystem API in Incognito". That's it! Sites won't know you're in Incognito anymore (until they find a new sneaky way)." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20375023

Thanks for the trick HeWhoLurksLate, it worked!

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

#25
post #18
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not GP, but his education in Switzerland clarifies the fact that the leadership does not believe the propaganda they give to their populace. Kim is very aware that the promise of better living conditions is not a "lie manufactured by the West." He knows how bad his people have it compared to the rest of the world and still chooses to run his country the way he does. Food shortages are not a thing in Switzerland and also not a problem in his palace, but they are in other parts of DPRK.

So maybe his Swiss education doesn't make his citizens worse off, but we do know it's not some misled idealist at the helm, but rather a dictator that knows full well what he's doing.

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

#26
post #8
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.

Going for a proof by contradiction?

What you should be doing is looking at the averages. Are educated people in general more liberal?

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

#27
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 Washingto…

Yes, a big networking event amongst elites for future connections, deal flow and capital

What the professors and course material say has very little to do with that.

Also, people play within the rules of their country. Even the frontmen (heads of state) have to maintain consensus with their warhawking generals.

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

#28
post #10
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bittercynic meantioned in another comment on a different post the following method. “Fwiw adding 0.0.0.0 samizdat-graph to your /etc/hosts fixes this for me”

> samizdat-graph what? that's not even a valid domain.

should be

  0.0.0.0   samizdat-graphql.nytimes.com
in /etc/hosts

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

#30
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've seen this with happen with students from the same us high school as well.
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