Representative Frank R. Wolf (R-VA) has asked Georgetown University to explain how it used a $20 million gift from Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal for its academic center on Muslim and Christian relations, the Washington Post reports.

The center, which was founded in 1993, received the gift — the second largest in Georgetown's history — in December 2005. Wolf sent a letter to university president John J. DeGioia stating that the Saudi government has financed activities that are suspected of supporting Islamic militants and extremists and asking for assurances that the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding "maintains the impartiality and integrity of scholarship" befitting a great university.

"It is also important to know if the center has examined Saudi links to extremism and terrorism, including the relationship between Saudi public education and the Kingdom-supported clerical establishment, on the one hand, and the rise of anti-American attitudes, extremism and violence in the Muslim world, on the other," the letter said. Wolf cited a December Washington Times article about the donation and other Saudi gifts to schools across the United States, quoting some experts who were concerned that they were an effort to influence U.S. scholarship on Islam.

Georgetown spokesman Julie Green Bataille said university officials would respond to Wolf, while the university issued a statement saying that the gift is being used "to advance the study of Islamic civilization and Muslim-Christian understanding, and intercultural and interreligious dialogue, and educational programs in these fields...through scholarship, teaching, learning, and other activities consistent with the CMCU and Georgetown University's."