“We’re still trying to get all the facts,” said Graham. “We do not have answers yet.”

“I’m sure our dean will scrutinize this very carefully. He is an expert in this part of the world,” said Lamont Professor of Divinity Paul D. Hanson. “Let’s face it, no money that’s generated by our modern world is not tainted, but we need to make sure that the money is constructive without entanglements. We need to do the moral thing.”

Graham said that once he had all the facts he would reach a decision with the faculty and return the gift if they found the Zayed Center to be promoting anti-American and anti-Semitic positions.

“We obviously do not want any association with a gift that is tainted by the kind of things on the website,” he said.

Both Graham and Hanson signed a petition last year calling for divestment from Israel in protest of Israel’s counter-terrorism operations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Graham later removed his name from the petition.

In a morning prayers address at Memorial Church last fall, University President Lawrence H. Summers described the petition and other calls for the University to divest from Israel as anti-Semitic “in their effect if not in their intent.”

—Staff writer Wendy D. Widman can be reached at widman@fas.harvard.edu.