When Fletcher diplomacy professor Andrew Hess began working for the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) in 1978, he didn't know that, 15 years later, he would solicit donations for a diplomatic studies program from the powerful Saudis he met there.
Through a close, personal connection with members of the bin Laden family, Hess secured a $300,000 three-year donation for lectures, language study, and internships as part of Fletcher's Program for Southwest Asia and Islamic Civilization.
Abdullah bin Laden, the half-brother of Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the US government's investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks, granted Tufts a one-time check to be used over three years as Hess saw fit - no strings attached. The grant facilitated student opportunities for internships in the Middle East and was used to support programming assistants' salaries, bring speakers to campus, create outreach programs, support Arabic language instruction, and financed a conference about Caspian Sea oil discoveries.
Since the three years for the grant's usage have passed, Hess said he would have no qualms about again approaching the bin Laden family for money. In recent weeks, however, some universities have been under scrutiny because they received funds from the bin Laden family. Oxford and Harvard universities received large endowments from the bin Laden family to fund various programs.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Cambridge City Councilman Kenneth E. Reeves, suggested that Harvard's receipt of $2 million in the early 1990's from a half-brother of Osama bin Laden - the suspected architect of the attacks - obligated the University to donate a suggested $5 million to relief or scholarship funds. Harvard has already donated $1 million to the relief effort.
Tufts is not in a financial position to make large donations like Harvard, but University officials feel that justifying grants from the larger bin Laden family - which has disowned Osama - is not necessary. The university is incidentally raising money to support relief efforts by the Red Cross, the United Way and other relief organizations.
"The money we got was from perfectly upright business people who turned into philanthropists, not from [Osama]," said Provost Sol Gittleman.
Hess said that Tufts should not be concerned that the money is connected to Osama because the bin Laden family has taken several steps to divorce themselves from him.
"One of the issues that's behind all this is that this is a world in which you have all these extended families," Hess said. "In the US, the family factor doesn't usually enter into the business side of things, as much as it does in the Middle East."
"It's not unusual for these large, extended families to have a black sheep," Hess continued. "The family is in a state of continuous shock of what Osama is doing. They have thrown him out effectively. He's doing things that are systematically destroying the ability of the family to conduct its business."
Gittleman agreed that amoral behavior by some family members should not prevent philanthropy by another part of a family. "If you take away the money given to schools from the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, and the Hughes, I'm not sure where higher education would be left, and I'm not sure that everything they did was moral," Gittleman said.
Hess added that since the contribution was given without any contingencies, Tufts is particularly justified in using the money. "If they give us money and allow us to use it for our academic purposes, whether or not it's going to make a positive of negative impact on the academic process is up to people like me," Hess said.
Hess said he has maintained relations with Abdullah bin Laden, who not only donated money to Tufts, but helped establish the reputation of the Fletcher school in Saudi Arabia. After the attacks, many members of the bin Laden family who lived in Boston went back to Saudi Arabia. Several members of the bin Laden family studied at Tufts.
Hess first met the bin Ladens during his time with ARAMCO, but when the Saudi government took over the oil company in 1984, Hess left his job to direct the Program for Southwest Asia and Islamic Civilization at Fletcher. Hess' ability to raise money among wealthy Middle Eastern people, companies, and American corporations led the fledgling program to grow. It now houses the Contemporary Turkish Studies Program, and the Kuwaiti, Qatari, and Armenian Foreign Service Training Programs.
"It was a very poorly funded and untenured position, but I took it anyway because it looked like a challenge," Hess said of his position at Fletcher.
Hess, who has a degree in mechanical engineering and a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern history, had a unique combination of skills that secured him an executive position at ARAMCO in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
"When they hired me and found out I had this strange combination of fields, they made me into a technical liaison officer between the company and ministry of the government," Hess said. "That's how I got to meet [the bin Laden family]."
Hess' position with ARAMCO allowed him to interact with Saudis in the government and other corporations, like a construction company owned by the bin Laden family. When Hess eventually returned to academics, he had to fundraise to continue the Fletcher program - and contacted people he knew from his Saudi experience.
"The problem was, that after the first year, there wasn't any money and I had a short term contract with the school," Hess said. "So I had to raise money. I went to the wealthy people that I knew in the Gulf area and to American foundations. I just asked them. The only bureaucracy I had was a secretary and myself."
Hess solicited donations from various Middle Eastern individuals, the Mellon Foundation, and other corporations. "I raised actually quite a bit of money for the program, but it all began to dry up about the time I met [Abdullah bin Laden]," Hess said.
Hess met Abdullah bin Laden at Islamic law functions at Harvard, where bin Laden was a graduate student in the mid-1990's. Hess had several conversations with him about a possible donation for language training and summer internships in the Saudi region.
"It was casual," Hess said. "I knew he was a senior person in the bin Laden family, so I asked him for money. I told him what we were doing at the Fletcher school - that we taught courses pertaining to his area of the world."
Fletcher students who trained at the Program for Southwest Asia and Islamic Civilization now work in various government and intelligence agencies, the defense department, foreign service, oil industry, the United Nations, and other non-governmental organizations.
