THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS has lost its director, Howard Davis, who felt he had to fall on his sword after the institution he represented took money from Gadaffi in part payment for the education of his son Saif.
The cost of a PhD at the LSE does not come cheap; but then not many degrees come guaranteed. So Saif Gadaffi probably thought that £1.5 million would have been cheap at double the price.
The LSE cannot (and indeed did not try to) plead ignorance. It was the school’s former professor of international relations, the late Fred Halliday who warned his colleagues not to sup at the same table with the delusional dictator. Unfortunately his words went unheeded by over eager LSE academics who only managed to see the cheque book that shrouded their collective judgement. Besides it was rumoured (how academics like rumours about colleagues) that professor Halliday had a relationship with the bottle, which, as it turned out, proved less damaging to him than Gadaffi’s wealth did to the LSE.
To be warned, it is said, is to be forearmed. No doubt professor Halliday, more in sorrow than anger, is looking down on his colleagues from the great academia in the sky and quietly shaking his head from side to side in disappointment.
Professor Halliday always talked a great deal of sense when he appeared on television. He seemed to be the first port of call for the media when, as has happened in North Africa over the past three weeks, his expertise was required to educate and inform us, the public.
The academic that chose to disregard the sound advice offered by professor Halliday has been named as, David Held, professor of political science at the LSE, who will not however be joining Howard Davis on the sacrificial alter. But then professor Held is just one of many at that noble institution that believed in a fraternal relationship with Libya and whose departures would be best described as a massacre. These included Sir Mark Allen, former member of MI6, Dr Alia Brahimi, an academic at the LSE who described Col. Gadaffi as ‘Brother Leader’, Lord Giddens the originator of Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’, Sir David Manning, ex ambassador to Washington, Sir Richard Dearlove former spymaster, and Lord Desai who gave a nod and a wink to Saif Gadaffi’s PhD paper despite its plagiaristic content.
TO THESE NAMES HOWEVER must be added others from outside of the LSE like ex prime minister Tony Blair and Lord Mandelson. Also sitting in the Bedouin’s tent was Sharmi Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty no less. So here we have it, hypocrisy on a monumental scale by public bodies and politicians who, in the course of their professional lives, advocate and champion a free society.
All of the participants in the Gadaffi seduction will claim the noblest of motives for their behaviour. In Tony Blair’s case, he no doubt thought he might pull off another Good Friday Agreement that, if successful, would have further enhanced his international reputation on the lecture circuit.
All of those, with the possible exception of Ms Chakrabarti, gathered around the Gaddafi dynasty for what they or the institution they represented could walk away with. In Ms Chakrabarti’s case, Stalin would have used the phrase ‘useful idiot’, to best describe her.
As for the LSE itself, it will recover its reputation and will no doubt continue to flourish. After all it has educated the sons of many African rulers in the past, many of whom have surpassed the Libyan Colonel in the doctrine of brutality as a means of holding on to power.
THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, whether justified or not, holds a certain reputation for people of my generation. In the late 1960s and early1970s, the LSE established itself as a (to put it as mildly as I can) a left of centre academic institution. After all its founder’s Beatrice and Sidney Webb (with an input from G. B. Shaw) were all socialists, and it seems that to varying degrees the LSE has trodden a Left-leaning path ever since.
So the LSE, to me, now represents a left of centre institution. This is a broad term that now covers all political parties whose Left-wing would readily find the institution agreeable.
Those at the LSE who feasted in the tent and were ready to reward the son of a tyrant in exchange for £1.5 million deserve their current exposure to the very worst of the media. They hung academia out to dry for, in terms of the damage done… such a paltry amount.
But before members of the Coalition seek to make any kind of political gain from the LSE’s stupidity, let them remember that there are other university’s equally hog-tied to finance, this time from the Arab Middle East, which has lead to a boycott of Israeli academics attending meetings or giving lectures within certain UK universities.
Money, it seems, talks as much for our universities as it does for those financial marketers who earn their six nought bonuses. Only, in the case of the financial markets, it is openly admitted and the tax payer is rewarded with some £20 billion by the City in the form of taxation.
Yet the human instincts operating are both the same. The LSE however, like all of our academic institutions, prefer the cloak of stupidity to cupidity.
