Anti-Semite Ali Mazrui Honored by Alwaleed Bin Talal Center at Georgetown University

Ali Mazrui

On May 6, 2010, Ali Mazrui, director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at SUNY-Binghamton, made the following statement to an audience at Columbia University:

The population of Jews in the US is three percent ... but [their ‘genius’] leads to their controlling so much power that even presidents are scared [of them]. Whether [President Barack] Obama will be able to escape the notion that three percent of the country is so powerful that the top gentile in the land cannot criticize Israel is not clear.

In spite of--or perhaps because of--this and other blatantly anti-Semitic statements recorded below, Mazrui has been awarded the “2012-13 Building Bridges Award” by the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. The Center’s founding director, John Esposito, has long been among America’s most vocal apologists for the radical Wahhabi branch of Islam. By honoring Ali Mazrui, the Center Esposito directs--founded with a $20 million gift from Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal--remains true to its origins.

ACMCU’s website says the award, “recognizes individuals who have dedicated their life’s work to fostering greater understanding between faith groups.” Mazrui and the two other recipients are recognized, it states, because their “efforts to promote interfaith relations, peace-building and social justice have been extraordinary.”

As illustrated by the quote above and those below (all taken from the same Columbia lecture), Mazrui is no bridge builder. He also claimed that:

Jews have been at their best when they were Europeanized...almost as if you needed a mixture of Jewishness and Europeanness [for Jewish genius].

Brendan Goldman, then an NYU senior who reported on Mazrui’s lecture for Campus Watch, commented on how Mazrui

made the nuanced argument that since Karl Marx was ethnically Jewish, he clearly made ‘the Chosen People [into] the proletariat.’

And:

He also claimed that Jews as a people are insular and racist. ‘Arabs are far less race-conscious and ethnic-conscious than Jews are,’ he said. ‘Acceptance of race mixture was more developed in Arab culture than in Jewish culture.’

Goldman concluded his essay with this observation--now even more apt in light of Georgetown’s decision to honor a man MEF president Daniel Pipes called, in light of his Columbia lecture, a “rank anti-Semite":

It was a surreal experience to bear witness to a professor of Mazrui’s professional stature dispensing with the usual fig leaf of ‘anti-Zionism’ to espouse classic anti-Semitism. Academia ostensibly supports a world without prejudice, but professors like Mazrui now provide a legitimate façade for Jewish racial stereotypes. This is rank hypocrisy, and it’s time we call it what it is.

By handing Mazrui an award for building bridges between faiths, Georgetown has strengthened that “legitimate façade for Jewish racial stereotypes.”

Campus Watch calls upon John Esposito and Georgetown president John J. DeGioia to revoke the 2012-13 Building Bridges Award from Ali Mazrui, whose anti-Semitism and efforts to revive Jewish race science make him unworthy of the esteem of Georgetown University. As the quotes and observations above illustrate, Mazrui is anything but a bridge builder as the phrase is commonly understood.

The award is apt only if Esposito, DeGioia, and the Georgetown community intend to build bridges to anti-Semites worldwide.

Readers may contact Georgetown President John J. DeGioia and ACMCU Founding Director John Esposito to express their objection to honoring a man with Mazrui’s record of anti-Semitism:

President John J. DeGioia
Office of the President
204 Healy Hall
37th & “O” Streets, NW
Washington, DC 20057-1789
Tel: (202) 687-4134
Fax: (202) 687-6660

ACMCU Founding Director John Esposito:

Phone: (202) 687-8375
Alt. Phone: (202) 687-6418
Fax: (202) 687-8376
Email: jle2@georgetown.eduAlt. Email: jfc83@georgetown.edu

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Winfield Myers

Winfield Myers is managing editor of the Middle East Forum and director of its Campus Watch project, which reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North American universities. He has taught world history and other topics at the University of Michigan, the University of Georgia, Tulane, and Xavier University of Louisiana. He was previously managing editor of The American Enterprise magazine and CEO of Democracy Project, Inc., which he co-founded. Mr. Myers has served as senior editor and communications director at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and is principal author and editor of a college guide, Choosing the Right College (1998, 2001). He was educated at the University of Georgia, Tulane, and the University of Michigan.