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The current affairs series combining original insights into major news stories with topical investigations

The Report: Overseas Donations to British Universities

Overseas Donations to British Universities

31/03/2011

BBC Radio 4 - The Report, Overseas Donations to British Universities

Should British universities rethink donations from the Middle East?

Simon Cox investigates the problems that donations from Arab and Middle Eastern countries are creating for British universities.

As conflict grows in the Middle East Simon Cox asks whether universities may rethink the donations that many UK universities have received from this region of the world. Following the resignation of Howard Davies from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), which accepted money from Libya, The Report asks whether other universities may find themselves embarrassed. UK universities - especially Oxford and Cambridge -have received more donations from Arab and Middle Eastern countries in the past 10 years than ever before - in part to fund centres for Islamic studies. What impact has this had on scholarship? 

Criticism has grown as some students, academics and campaigners believe that universities should not accept money from countries with bad human rights records. But is it possible to draw up a list of countries from which no money should be taken? And could understanding of the Islamic world be compromised if the money doesn't come in?

Producer Rosamund Jones.

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