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Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/07/03/state1739EDT0122.DTL
Calif. Elementary School Weighs UAE Sheik's $15,000 Gift
(AP/San Francisco Chronicle) The president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, has given $15,000 to the Las Flores Elementary School in Bellflower, Calif., but officials in the Capistrano Unified School District are hesitant about accepting the donation. "There is always a concern about accepting money that may be somehow tainted," Superintendent James Fleming said Wednesday. Zayed has ties to the Zayed International Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a think tank that sponsors speeches by some who are labeled anti-Semitic. He recently donated $2.5 million to establish a professorship in Islamic studies at the Harvard Divinity School. Harvard said school President Lawrence H. Summers will decide in the next two weeks, after a background investigation, whether to accept the gift. The outcome of that investigation will help the elementary school make its own decision, Fleming said.