University funding by the MBI Al Jaber Foundation cited as a model of good practice

The MBI Al Jaber Foundation is pleased to announce that our Chairman, Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber, has recently been featured as a model of good practice for his donation to SOAS in an independent report by the Centre for Social Cohesion on university funding.   

An excerpt from the section on SOAS donations highlighting our Chairman and the MBI Al Jaber Foundation in the report, A Degree of Influence: The funding of strategically important subjects in UK universities, is below.  

For more information and to download the full report, please visit The Centre for Social Cohesion website.

• SOAS donations as an example of good practice

Donations from the MBI Al Jaber Foundation and Mehraban Zartoshty serve as an example of how beneficial foreign funding can be for universities provided that clear safeguards are put in place and the donor receives no oversight over academic output. 

"The arrangements governing the donations by the MBI Al Jaber Foundation to SOAS in 2001 are an example of how foreign funding can be used to positively enhance education without threatening an institute’s academic integrity. Al Jaber donated money yet received no oversight as to how his money was to be used, nor any influence over any academic output. His donation appears to be purely a good will gesture to promote education. The relationship between the LMEI and SOAS is made fully clear in documents submitted by the LMEI to the Charity Commission. The LMEI’s Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 31 July 2007 say that:

The London Middle East Institute (LMEI) is governed by a Board of Trustees and chaired by Professor Paul Webley, the Director and Principal of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and including three representatives from the academic staff of SOAS, one each from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the University of London and the British Academy, and two members who have relevant business/professional interests. The Articles of Association for the LMEI require that the SOAS members of the Board be elected by SOAS academic members of the LMEI… The LMEI was developed from the specialist regional expertise of SOAS and continues to draw on a number of its resources. The charity is however administratively and organisationally independent. Membership oversight and representation is secured through an annual general meeting of the SOAS academic members of the LMEI and its Research Associates of whom there are 10… The LMEI’s core professional employees worked closely with a large number of volunteers who staff its Advisory Council and the Editorial Board of the Middle East in London magazine. The Advisory Council meets 3 times per year, in the same week as the Board of Trustees meeting. It helps to implement recommendations made by that Board as well as advising on programmes and fund-raising initiatives. The Editorial Board continues to oversee all aspects of the production of the magazine. Over 80 individuals drawn from academia, government, the professions, business, the media and communities with Middle Eastern links were directly involved in the operations of the LMEI.

This arrangement makes clear that the donor has no ability to influence the composition of the LMEI’s board of trustees, and it also proves multiple levels of oversight through its independent advisory council and through SOAS itself.  In addition, there is evidence that SOAS’s governing body has also discussed the implications of the creation of the LMEI and ways to ensure that its creation would have no negative consequences for SOAS. During the meeting of the SOAS governing body on 12 December 2003, the possible effects that the LMEI could have on SOAS’s reputation were discussed. The minutes report that the governing body were told that any such risk was

minimised by having the Director and Principal [of SOAS] as Chair of the Board and four SOAS staff in total as members of the Board. Members noted… that the LMEI could appoint academic staff on a part-time fixed term basis but that all appointment procedures for academic staff were in line with SOAS appointment procedures.

Membership oversight and representation is secured through an annual general meeting. After founding the LMEI, Al Jaber became Vice Chairman of the International Advisory Board of SOAS. When the creation of the board was announced in the SOAS Annual Review 2003-2004, the then Director and Principal of SOAS Colin Bundy stated ‘the School looks forward to the collective counsel of its distinguished members in the years to come’.

Yet despite Al Jaber’s close personal involvement with both SOAS and the LMEI, there is no evidence that he has sought to influence the academic output or activities of either institution or to promote his political opinions or to influence government policies – and indeed the international advisory board gives him no direct role in the running of SOAS."

Simcox, Robin. A Degree of Influence: The funding of strategically important subjects in UK universities. The Centre for Social Cohesion, 2009. Pgs. 86-88.