Immoral Harvard intellectuals. Bet they're Democrats?

It reads like Libyan government propaganda, extolling the importance of Moammar Gadhafi, his theories on democracy, and his “core ideas on individual freedom.’’ But the 22-page proposal for a book on Khadafy was written by Monitor Group, a Cambridge-based consultant firm founded by Harvard professors. The management consulting firm received $250,000 a month from the Libyan government from 2006 to 2008 for a wide range of services, including writing the book proposal, bringing prominent academics to Libya to meet Khadafy “to enhance international appreciation of Libya’’ and trying to generate positive news coverage of the country.“The really nefarious aspect of this is that it reinforced in Khadafy’s mind that he truly was an international intellectual world figure, and that his ideas of democracy were to be taken seriously,’’ said Dirk Vandewalle, associate professor at Dartmouth College and author of “A History of Modern Libya.’’Beyond writing agitprop for Gadhafi, the firm sent a coterie of distinguished academics to visit Ghadafi, including Joseph Nye of the Kennedy School, Lord Anthony Giddens of the London School of Economics, and Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University. The firm also helped Gadhafi’s son with his dissertation for the London School of Economics. Is that what passes for academic honor these days?


0 comments:
Post a Comment