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Show The Salt Lake Tnbune U.scholar: Al-Jazeera1s Children's Museum donationstrickle in @ Funds needed: $7.5 million @ Funds raised: Museum funding and private donors: $297,000 Sait Lake City Redevelopment Agency: $550,000 Private bequest: $600,000 NBC* andthe Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce: $700,000 not an enemy e Continued from Al Total raised: $2.147 million** “Broadcaster NBCpaid to build out some of the facility, which it used during the 2002 Winter Olympics. ** Does not count $2 million The Boyer Co. slashedoff the building's purchase price. Museum matching funds are slow toarrive as loan deadlines near away, so he became a regu e Continued from Al for the ambitious project's first phase, set to open in 2005. So they attached the $7.5 million match requirement. Technically, museumofficials have 10 years to raise the matching funds, but they need the bondissued soon to paybackloansusedto buy the building from Boyer. If the museumcomesupshort Jan. 28, Boyer will be stuck with the debt. If needed, Boyersaysit will be ready to cover. “It’s important to us that this succeeds,” Boyer President Steve Ostler said. “We intendtostick with the Children’s Museum,and wewill do everything we can to make surea call date on a loan doesn’t blow uptheir plans. “We owned[the building] once and we might own it again,” he added. Darin Gilson, chairman of the museum's governing board, said the museum has several donors waiting to give once the county decides howdonations arecounted. A committee has been grappling over how totreat some types of contributions, such as an extended donation over several years. Gilson downplayedconcerns overthe slow pace. “If we have to chop downthis fund-raising tree, we've spent a lot of time sharpening the ax,” hesaid. “We're starting to chop now.” D.D. Hilke, the museum’s executive director, said she and the board are “at the moment feeling very optimistic.” Council membersarenot. “People are scrambling,” said Councilman Steve Harmsen. “It’s clear we still have a wayto go.... We're not even close.” “Where are those millions going to come from Al-Jazeera’s reporters since they founded the station in London after the BBC WorldServiceshut downits Arabic-speaking programs in 1996. At the time, Karawanhad taken a leave from the U. to become di rector of the International Institute for Strategic Stud ies, and Al-Jazeera’s Lon don studio was a fewblocks 9” Councilman Marv Hendrickson repeated twice during Tuesday’s County Council meeting. Museum officials blamed somedifficulty in fund raising on the economic downturn. Theyalso say the museum’s business plan which last year wasjust a “thumbnail” outline is now readyandwill help drive contributions. tburr@sltrib.com lar commentator on global issues. When Karawan re turned to his academic duties in Utah in 1997, Al Jazeera reporters followed him home, so to speak. Since then, Karawan has continued to grant most of Al-Jazeera’s requests to analyze current events, he said in a recent interviewin his clutteredofficeat the U. He comments on breaking news and offers expertise gained at the University of California-Los Angeles, Ox ford University and the World Economic Forumin Switzerland. Sometimes he speaks via a phoneline while the sta tion broadcasts his photograph; at other times, he strolls over to KUED and the station helps send a live imageviasatellite. To him, it is no different from being interviewed by BBC World Service, Swiss Radio International, Radio Franceor Voice of America. All pay Karawana nominal fee, usually less than $60, but he says the moneyhas no effect on the content of his comments. “1 don’t call them,” he says. “Theycall me.” Nordo the reporters try to control or manipulatehis observations, Karawan says. “I didn’t say obnoxious things, but I did say critical things. They don’t interfere in what yousay. Every word I said was UTAH/WORLD Wednesday, September 17, Utahstudents big on Mideast studies broadcast on television.” And heard by as many as 35 million viewers in the Arab world, as well as hun dreds of U.S. government officials who monitor Al Jazeera as closely as they do CNN He could tell his Arab viewers, as he said he did after the Sept. 11 attacks, that “al-Qaida had not de feated America, that Amer ican rage was hugeandthat the country would strike back.” “The people who think they can conduct a memo rial service for America as superpowerare hallucinat ing,” he warned. Karawan also empha sizes the need for American restraint “People who think power can be exercised with no limits wayoverstep the boundaries of pru dence,” he says. “The most important thing is to know whento stop. It would not be prudent to go and hit Syria and then three weeks later hit Iran. All [U.S.] ac tions should beselected and measured.” These are the kinds of perspectives Karawan of fers any broadcast station that asks andto colleagues on a task force studying “American Policy Toward the Muslim World” at the BrookingsInstitute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. But there are some Al Jazeera requests he de clines. Karawan refuses to par ticipate in its talk show, “The Other Direction,” whichpits guests one as signed to be a “bad guy” and the other “a good guy” against each other “It involves a lot of screaming,” he says. “I don’t play according to a script. 1am a scholar. | say what I think.” Besides, he adds, “I wouldn't go on ‘Crossfire,’ either.” From its headquarters in Doha, Qatar, Al-Jazeera has the largest reach and most credibility of any Arab station, Karawan says, revolutionizing news coveragein a region where [CNN's] A9 2005 center would not continue to exist and be By Peaey FLercHEer STACK nationally competitive without it.” the Salt Lake Trifnine But the interest goes well beyond the Utahns have an unusually terest in the Middle East, Salt Lake Valley In 2002, LDS Church-owned Brigham intense In says Ibrahim of Young University established an under Utah’s Middle East Center As evidence, Karawan points to the 43 year history of the U.’s Middle East Center, one of only 13 such centers in the nation that receive funding from the U.S. Depart graduate major in Middle East/Arabic Karawan, director of the University Studies focusing on government service or international business. It requires three years of Arabic, including at least one se mester of study in the Middle East BYU's Jerusalem Center has been closed ment of Education. It is among a handful that have never lost that funding. The cen ter offers an interdisciplinary program of for three years because of political unrest and danger, but students can study in Syria or Egypt, said Chad Emmett, director of the Near Eastern Studies department BYU applied for federal aid to establish a center like the U.’s but was turned down, Emmett said. “We didn’t have enough courses in the major languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish), literature, culture, politics, history, economics, social institutions, religion geography and philosophy Last week, the center learned it would get three more years of federal funding $235,000 a year to operate the program and $174,000 a year for student fellowships. On Turkish or Persian-language students.” However, enrollment in BYU's Arabic classes has doubled in the past two years, from around 50 to more than 100 top of that, U. President Bernie Machen just announced the new Thomas Friedman Meantime, BYU's Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Scholarship, named after The New York Times columnist on the Middle East. Texts is translating major Islamic texts in the fields of philosophy, jurisprudence, theology and mysticism. The project is co sponsored by the Institute of Global Cul tural Studies at Binghamton University, Last year, the U.’s Kingsbury Hall was filled to overflowingfor lectures by Fried man and Dennis Ross, former presidential envoy to the Middle East The hall also filled for the center's lec ture series featuring ambassadors and New York “Islam is still a widely misunderstood faith in the West,” says Daniel Peterson, professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at scholars, in the months leading up to the BYU. war with Iraq Karawan says a number of the speakers told him they had rarely seen such “deep interest and tremendous at state-owned reporters stations are assigned daily stories by government civility. “Dissemination The Party” and “World Leaders United Behind Arafat.” But alongside are arti officials cles about scientific studies Beholden only to Qatar (which it doesn’t cover), Al Jazeera has been openly critical of various govern of prayer, the health risks of smoking, the death of ment actions and institu tions, including the monar chies of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco Some programs, such as “For Women Only,” are so cially daring in that part of the world, Karawan says. Karlier this month, Al Jazeera launched an English-language Web site, english.aljazeera.net, that includes headlines such as: “U.S. Refuses to Concede Grip on traq,” “Iraq Under Occupation,” “traq Oil the Target for Years,” “The lraqi Baath z neat Re of its important works in English can dispel many miscon ceptions, increase awareness and open doors to friendly relations.” for reaching the Arab world,” he says. “We ought to use it as a means of opening a dialogue with icon them.” Just because Al.Jazeera “irks a lot of people [in the Johnny Cash and the fact U.S.] that doesn’t mean it that lacks credibility,” says Al Thompkins, broadcast and online specialist for The Poynter Institute, a jour nalism center in St. Peters burg, Fla American music disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair had signed a lucrative book deal On the whole, Al Jazeera provides an impor tant “expose of corrupt Arab governments,” says Bonner Ritchie, scholar in residence at Utah Valley State College, who was in terviewed in Beirut when he was teaching there Ritchie says he would not hesitate to be inter again by its viewed reporters. “It is a popular vehicle “They challenge our un derstanding of our place in the world,” Thompkins says. “It’s hard for me to see why that’s a bad thing “| believe in the free flow of information, whether it's a newspaper in Salt Lake City or a TVstation called Al-Jazeera. | like for there to be many truths and let us as consumerssort it out.” : ALL SO DISCONT MUSadat7s 3 75% Wag WITT NN SETS FINAL PRICE 249.99-362.99 Table & 4 arm chairs. 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