Anwar Ibrahim, a faculty member at the Prince Alwaleed Bin-Tal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding and former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, has declared that he will take power in Malaysia on September 16.  Ibrahim believes he has convinced 30 government MP’s to defect to the opposition, switching the balance in Parliament and allowing the opposition he leads to control the government.  The Malaysian government response isn’t exactly Robert’s Rules–the government sent at least 50 MP’s to Taiwan on a trip expected to last for more than a week.

Ibrahim is known as a crusader against corruption and served as the Malaysian Finance Minister during the Asian financial crisis of 1997.  Ironically, Ibrahim has previously been sentenced to 6 years imprisonment on corruption charges.  He has also been accused of homosexuality on multiple occasions, an offense carrying up to a 20 year prison sentence in Malaysia.

While at Georgetown, Ibrahim taught Contemporary Islam in Southeast Asia.

Photo from Flickr user BugBitesandCo. used under a Creative Commons license

Listening to conservative talk radio came in handy today when I found newly-former Georgetown professor Doug Feith on the Dennis Prager Show. Apparently, Feith isn’t too happy that his contract wasn’t renewed, and he doesn’t care who knows it.

The real fun came, though, when Feith talked about a talk he had with Provost James O’Donnell around the end of his time at Georgetown. Feith told O’Donnell that he thought discussion about his renewal should consider that he was the only faculty member with his viewpoints (i.e., armed intervention in the Middle East).

Rather than mentioning this guy, or that applying Feith’s recruiting theories would mean hiring a Pastafarian to teach theology, O’Donnell instead said, “I always consider it peculiar when conservatives talk about diversity of thought.” That provost is outspoken!

Much radio harumphing ensued, including host Dennis Prager wishing he had bought an ad in The Hoya for a petition supporting Feith.

Speaking of petitions, Feith complained that New York Times never reported on a counter-petition students circulated arguing for his renewal. Considering that the petition’s signatories included such doubtlessly genuine people as Feith & Crimes Against Humanity, Fire Feith Fast (3 times), and Moqtada Al-Sadr (Hawsa wa Qum ’11), it was probably too hot a potato for the Gray Lady to handle.

Update: Provost O’Donnell says “no comment” via email. Fee Feith fo fum.

As Doug Feith’s 2-year term at Georgetown expires, several questions remain. Was his ouster organized by liberal faculty members? What does Foreign Service Dean Galluci think of it all? Has anyone at Georgetown ever been so much a war criminal (besides Henry Kissinger, obvs.)?

For a few Georgetown students, however, one question looms above all: how can we use an online petition to save him? Save Professor Feith and the Diversity of Thought worries that Feith is the SFS’s killer app: “We do not want to lose a preeminent foreign policy scholar to another university and jeopardize our status as the nation’s preeminent government and foreign policy institution.”

The petition’s been signed 59 people. But how many who signed are really concerned with diversity of thought and not motivated by other, more sinister agendas? According to the site, notable signatories include

• Henry Kissinger (Hard Knocks 2009)
• Dorit Feith (Michigan ’07). Daughter?
• Feith Tortures. This signature was deleted, but it speaks to the petition’s persuasiveness if it could even win over that guy.

Can the internet, the medium which heaped so much ridicule on Feith, save his academic career? Probably not!

-Will Sommer, Blog Editor

That’s what New Yorker reporter George Packer would have you think. He uses the experience of our own Barbara Feinman Todd, Associate Dean of Georgetown’s brand-new graduate journalism program and the reason Georgetown even has what anemic undergraduate offerings do exist, to explain how Senator Hillary Clinton has a “habit of undermining herself, when the worst might have been averted by a little candor and grace—a tendency that has reappeared in the past few weeks.”

Feinman Todd, before and while at Georgetown, worked as a freelance journalist and particularly as a ghostwriter, and her most famous job was working with the then-first lady to write “It Takes A Village.” Clinton didn’t thank her in the book’s acknowledgments, causing a minor scandal at the time, but Packer’s sources, apparently editors at Simon & Schuster, claim that Feinman Todd really did a bad job and didn’t deserve the credit. I e-mailed Feinman Todd, who declined to comment specifically due to a confidentiality agreement, except to say that she believed the piece to be inacccurate. I’m waiting to hear back from Packer about the story, but in the meantime you can read the relevant excerpt after the jump and judge for yourself.

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Whoa! Look out! It’s another book about the lead-up to the Iraq War from an insider!

Well, maybe it’s not really that surprising. But this time, it’s George Tenet (SFS ’76), who you might’ve seen walking around the ICC with that big ol’ cigar, and he’s probably going to try and straighten out this whole mess of a blame game.

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