UPDATED DECEMBER 3

According to an article by the New York Times, the Alavi Foundation—which donated $100,000 to Columbia in 2007—was accused of “illegally providing money and services to Iran” this month.

The Alavi Foundation, located at 500 Fifth Avenue in New York City, is an independent charitable organization founded in 1973. According to their website, Alavi is “devoted to the promotion and support of Islamic culture and Persian language, literature and civilization … by financially supporting charitable and philanthropic causes through educational, religious, and cultural programs.”

Speaking for Columbia, David Stone told the Times that this $100,000 grant was for a classical Persian language class, which soon received another $50,000 grant the next year. Stone said to the Times that Columbia has received about $332,000 in total over the past 25 years from the foundation for Persian language and culture classes.

According to Robert Hornsby, a University spokesperson, Alavi has donated a total of $332,000 to the University for “classes in Persian language and culture.” Their largest donation of $100,000 came in July 2007, which was before the invitation to Iranian President Ahmadinejad in September 2007 instead of after as many publications have stated. Additionally, the donation was not given to the School of International and Public Affairs, the area of the University that invited Ahmadinejad to campus.

This $100,000 donation was requested because “because it was the sum needed for salary, fringe benefits and administrative support of a teaching position at this level, as well as support for academic meetings on the so-called “Persian Ecumene,” or the cosmopolitan Persian culture of the early-modern world,” Hornsby said. Although, he added that “the intellectual content about early-modern literary field is entirely under the control of faculty, not dictated by funders.”

According to Alavi’s public 990 forms, Alavi also donated to many other American universities in 2007. In their 2008 report showing donations from 2007 and the beginning of 2008, it shows donations to Harvard University ($41,000), Harvard Law School ($17,000), the City College of New York ($1,000), University of California, Berkeley ($30,000), and Rutgers University ($72,500). In this report, it shows a total amount of $2,565,500.00 donated to universities and organizations in the United States.

The organization’s other 990 forms also show that Alavi has donated to many different universities and organizations in the past.

“We were as surprised as every other university and nonprofit group that received donations from the New York-based Alavi Foundation over the years about the federal action against it,” Hornsby said.

“Nobody ever had any doubts about the relationship between Alavi and the Iranian government,” said Gary Sick, a senior research scholar from the Middle East Institute.

“The work they were doing in regard to teaching Persian language and culture was a legitimate thing … a good thing,” he said, adding, “It would have been foolish for the University to turn down the money for this teaching of Persian language and culture from an approved foundation.”

According to their website, Alavi also “gives interest-free loans to second-generation Iranians studying in accredited colleges in the United States.” The reports show that they gave a student loan to Safora Badakhshan, BC ’03, in the past. They have also loaned money for students to attend Emory University, Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University, George Washington University, along with many others. From the 2007-2008 fiscal year, they were owed a total amount of $475,063.26 from college students for these loans.

According to the New York Times, Alavi has denied the government charges and “is fighting government efforts to seize its properties, including a majority interest in a Fifth Avenue office building and properties in Queens and around the country that are home to mosques.”

Some students are unconcerned about these allegations.

“I personally am far more concerned with the funds the school receives from the C.I.A., for instance, whose track record of egregious human rights abuses is far more evident than that of an ‘Iran-affiliated’ charity that promotes Persian culture,” said Yasmina Raiani, CC ’12.

“U.S. allegations, yet to be convincingly elaborated, that it has served as a financial front for its unconfirmed nuclear weapons program have led to the recent seizure of 4 mosques funded by the Alavi foundation, an action that signals a clear threat to religious freedom in the United States,” said Adam Bazari, CC ‘10.