The Periscope Post

But embarrassment was only compounded for the institution later in the week when details of a £ 1million deal to train Libya‘s “future leaders” emerged. According to the Evening Standard, current LSE students say they will mount a campaign to make the school pay back money it accepted as part of the deal.

• Why aren’t the LSE taking this seriously? The Times complained, however, that “No one in the institution appears quite to have grasped just how serious the revelations are.” And further grumbled that “an apologetic shrug in response to our reporting and last week’s leading article are not good enough.” The Times reminded us that Professor Sir Karl Popper was a great philosopher who taught at the LSE. He argued that knowledge, science and freedom all depend upon the ability to distinguish between an open society and its enemies. The LSE, which “is one of the most prestigious British institutions in the world” — “has shown itself incapable of making this distinction. Or of understanding its importance.”

• A true reflection of the LSE culture? Meanwhile MP Margaret Hodge, a graduate and former governor of the LSE, wondered whether this was “the inevitable chickens coming home to roost for an institution that had allowed institutional greed to triumph over ethical traditions?” Hodge complained that “Priorities have shifted from nurturing the next generation to getting the money in.” And the university’s pursuit of foreign students who pay higher fees has become “relentless,” while opportunities for British students from disadvantaged backgrounds have all but vanished. “I know times are tough for our universities,” said Hodge. “I know there are some brilliant academics at the LSE who hold to the values that made it unique. But the scandal surrounding Saif Gaddafi is not a one-off. It reflects a worrying shift in culture and purpose.” The LSE must stop, think and change. It must stop pursuing money at any cost and return to its core values and mission.

• The LSE and Blair’s oil. The Daily Mail quoted Anthony Giddens, who was director of the LSE when Saif was a student there. On Colonel Gadaffi, Giddens said he, “cuts an impressive figure”; he has a “calm, articulate manner”; makes “many intelligent and perceptive points” and he seems “genuinely popular”. The Mail then described Giddens as Tony Blair’s “intellectual guru”. And pointed out that while Blair “cosied-up” to Gaddafi in return for oil contracts, he did “great harm to this country’s good name abroad.” Now Blair’s former associates at the LSE “risk inflicting similar damage on a great British institution’s hard-earned reputation for academic independence.”

• It was Saif’s fault. But according to a report by Judith Miller in the Daily Beast, Saif duped everyone into believing that he was unlike his father. He spoke of civil society and democracy, hosted Human Rights Watch conferences in Triploi, he promoted openness at home, headed a major charity and sent tons of relief aid to Haiti. According to Miller, it was not until last week that the world first caught a glimpse of the different man, “a crude version of the cosmetic, well-polished act of a politician. Mimicking his fox-like crazy dad, Muammar Gaddafi’s son warned that the family would fight until the last ‘man, the last woman, the last bullet’.“ Miller could only find solace in the fact that the “sham” of Saif had at last been exposed: “That, one hopes, may help remind the people fighting to liberate their country from the Gaddafi family’s kleptocracy of what is at stake in their effort to create a new Libya.”