The director of the London School of Economics and Political Science resigned on Thursday evening amid swirling controversy over the prestigious British university’s links with the embattled government of Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Sir Howard Davies, who had led the institution since 2003, first came under fire last week following the emergence of details of the university’s acceptance of a £1.5-million pledge from a charitable foundation run by Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, one of the Libyan leader’s sons and an alumnus of the London School of Economics.
The controversy escalated on Thursday with the publication in The Times of London, based on leaked WikiLeaks cables from 2009, of details of additional financing the university had received from Colonel Qaddafi’s government to train hundreds of future Libyan leaders.
According to the leaked cables, the London School of Economics was just one of the British institutions cooperating with Libya’s national economic-development board “on an exchange program to send 400 ‘future leaders’ of Libya for leadership and management training.”
The cables also note that universities in France and the United States, including Michigan State University, were working with the Libyan agency on similar exchange programs and that 30 Libyan diplomats were already being trained in each country.
The Times also reported that the university had received a fee of $50,000 in exchange for advice to Libya’s sovereign wealth fund by Sir Howard, a leading economist and former head of Britain’s Financial Services Authority, the independent regulator for the country’s financial sector.
The governing council of the London School of Economics held an emergency meeting on Thursday evening, after which it released a statement announcing Sir Howard’s resignation. In the statement, Sir Howard took responsibility for the institution’s decision in 2009 to accept the pledged donation from the foundation run by Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi. “I advised the council that it was reasonable to accept the money, and that has turned out to be a mistake,” he was quoted as saying.
The university has taken steps on several occasions over the past two weeks in an effort to tamp down the controversy, as details of its ties with the Libyan regime emerged. Shortly after events in Libya turned violent over the weekend of February 19 and 20, the institution announced that it had received only £300,000, or about $489,000, of the £1.5-million gift pledged by the Qaddafi foundation, and that it would accept no more of the balance of the gift. It later announced that the £300,000 it had already received would be set aside for scholarships for North African students.
The university has also said it will investigate questions raised by student protesters about the validity of the dissertation for which Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi was awarded a doctorate by the university in 2008.
And on Thursday, the university said it would commission an independent inquiry into the institution’s relationship with Libya and related matters.
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