A guest post on Bari Weiss’s Subsstack page paints a disturbing picture of the influence Qatar, one of the biggest supporters of Hamas, has on American colleges and universities.
Qatar, which claims to be a friend of the United States, is a well-known spot for Hamas terrorists to hide out. Yet, for some reason, the government of the U.S. seems to merely look the other way, which leads to the obvious question of why. Could the billions of dollars Qatar has poured into the U.S. be the primary reason? It seems that way.
Qatar hasn’t just bought favor with the educational system but has spread the wealth among American law firms, lobbying former U.S. officials and lawmakers, and, of course, with the big media conglomerates. By far, however, is the money thrown at major universities and so-called think tanks.
According to a study by the National Association of Scholars last year, Qatar is today the most significant foreign donor to American colleges and universities. Between 2001 and 2021, Qatar poured some $4.7 billion into U.S. colleges.
As expected, the so-called “elite” universities have been the beneficiaries of most of the cash. As payment for the capital they’ve been lavished with, such schools have partnered with the Qatari regime to build college campuses in Doha’s “education city,” a special district of the country’s capital city that hosts satellite colleges for the American universities.
Among the recipients:
- Virginia Commonwealth University, $103 million for a fine arts campus (since 1997)
- Cornell University, $1.8 billion for a medical school (since 2001)
- Texas A&M, $700 million for an engineering campus (since 2003)
- Carnegie Mellon, $740 million for a computer science campus (since 2004)
- Georgetown University, $760 million for a school of politics (since 2005)
- Northwestern University, $602 million for a school of journalism (since 2008)
After the brutal attack launched against Israel by Hamas earlier this month, one might expect these “institutions of ‘higher learning’” might wish to reconsider their partnership with a regime whose foreign minister blamed Israel for the carnage, claiming, “Israel alone is responsible” for their citizens getting attacked without provocation.
Moreover, Qatar’s prime minister refused to have the office Hamas utilizes in Doha shuttered. Yet despite all that, none of the universities appear ready to sever their relationship with the country.
The Free Press contacted the above universities for comment after the foreign minister’s shameless blame game; however, none save one, Texas A&M, would comment. That university shared the following statement:
“Maintaining relationships with countries like Qatar serve a broader purpose, including fostering international dialogue and cooperation. Texas A&M’s relationship with Qatar is focused on educational and research activities, which contribute to the academic and intellectual development of both countries. That, in turn, hopefully, will one day lead to peaceful resolutions rather than conflict.”
Continuing the statement, the university said that the university maintains clear and transparent agreements with Qatar that comply with U.S. and international laws. “No public funds are spent toward the Qatar campus,” a spokeswoman said.
Universities have spun such partnerships with a Middle Eastern autocracy as a means to “liberalize” such autocratic societies and bring American values to the Middle East. It does not appear, however, that Qatar has embraced such lofty goals.
Hunter R. Rawlings III, Cornell’s president in 2015 when it opened its medical school in Qatar, told The Washington Post: “Part of our thinking was, most American involvement in the Middle East has to do with guns and oil. This project seems to have to do with medicine and education. It’s such a different message. Why don’t we try it?”
For all the bloviating colleges and universities do about social issues important to segments of the American population, they possess selective outrage when it comes to Qatar, with many colleges having to “sell their souls” to keep the money spigot flowing. For example, in 2014, Qatar censored a romance novel set in London and Qatar, Love Comes Later, written by an English professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Doha campus.
Northwestern University, host of Qatar's school of journalism, signed a memorandum of understanding with Al Jazeera, the propaganda mouthpiece of Middle Eastern rogue countries and a sympathizer not only to Hamas but also to Hezbollah and other extremist Islamist groups over the years.
In touting the partnership, Sheikh Ahmen bin Jassim al-Thani, director general of Al Jazeera, said in 2103, “Al Jazeera Network places the development of its team’s skills at the top of its priorities, to stay par with the great media-related feats Qatar has accomplished regionally and internationally.”
It would seem to be difficult for Northwestern to justify its partnership with Qatar and Al Jazeera. Between 1996 and 2013, Al Jazeera featured Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who was denounced by the Anti-Defamation League in 2013, the same year Northwestern and Al Jazeera signed their cooperation agreement. In their statement, the ADL referred to al-Qaradawi as the “theologian of terror.” One of his claims to fame is a 2009 sermon aired on Al Jazeera where he said, “I will shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus I will seal my life with martyrdom.”
In 2015, Stephen Eisenman, then president of Northwestern’s faculty senate, complained in a report on the Doha campus that professors at that location enjoyed only “limited academic freedom,” not because of Qatar’s strict censorship policies but rather because they lacked tenure and were answerable only to the dean of Northwestern’s Qatar campus.
Eisenman also noted that “the ethics of establishing a campus in an authoritarian country are murky, especially when it inhibits free expression and counts several oppressive regimes or groups among its allies.”
Eisenman made sure to make only a brief reference to Qatar’s alliance with Hamas and Iran and is the only mention of any partnership between them and Qatar’s funding of terrorism. An apparent environmentalist, Eisenman complained that countries that export oil and natural gas are “bad” for the environment and contain “social and racial inequality.” Oh, and that includes the United States “no less than Qatar” and shouldn’t “prevent Northwestern from maintaining campuses in Evanston and Chicago.” A false equivalency.
The Substack writer Eli Lake reached out to Eisenman, now an emeritus professor, for an interview for her piece, which he declined. He did tell her, however: “Now more than ever, we need sincere efforts to achieve rapprochement between Muslims and Jews and between Palestinians and Israelis. If universities can help with this by means of educational exchanges, then I am all for them.”
Qatar isn’t doing this out of the kindness of their heart. They are doing it to obtain a foothold in the United States educational system, according to Charles Asher Small, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy. According to estimates compiled by that institute, the Qatari regime holds between $750 billion to $1 trillion worth of assets worldwide. “They are investing in Fortune 500 corporations, Heathrow Airport [in London], the Empire State Building,” he said.
Why would Qatar be permitted to invest so much in American colleges, universities, and businesses? Because the U.S., through its foreign policy, embraces Qatar primarily because it allows the U.S. to maintain an Air Force base, Al Udeid, there.
Qatar has also acted somewhat as an intermediary between the U.S. and Iran. Also, with Biden’s bungled Afghanistan withdrawal that saw thirteen U.S. servicemembers needlessly killed, Qatar processed more Afghan refugees than any other Arab country. Qatar holds the $6 billion in Iran oil revenues that Biden unfroze in September, an ill-advised move widely criticized among conservatives. The Biden administration “refroze” the assets after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
Qatar is also a major supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist terror organization that spawned Hamas and the ruling party in Turkey. According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the country funds the International Association of Muslim Scholars, the clerical component of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In 2017, several Middle Eastern countries–Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE imposed a trade and travel embargo on Qatar due to its support for the Muslim Brotherhood. That country's support for the Muslim Brotherhood stands in stark opposition to the other countries, who turned against that movement after the so-called “Arab Spring” in 2010 and 2011.
Small noted one consequence of Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and its so-called “soft power operation” was to make Israel “toxic” in Western political and intellectual discourse.
“Their soft power is aimed at demonizing Israel as well as promoting anti-Western and anti-Democratic discourse to weaken the West. Antisemitism is the fuel to light that fire,” Small said.
As previously mentioned, colleges and universities weren’t the only recipients of Qatari cash. The Brookings Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank, received a four-year, $14.8 million grant in 2013 to establish the Brookings Doha Center. Four years later, Brookings received an additional four-year grant from Qatar, amount unknown. The institute doesn’t provide the exact amount of its foreign money. In 2021, at the expiration of the second four-year grant, Brookings cut its relationship with the Doha Center, claiming it was refocusing on “digital and global engagement.”
The timing was ironic because it happened to overlap with an FBI investigation into the president of Brookings between November 2017 and June 2022, retired Marine general John Allen, who was forced out of his job after the AP reported the investigation into Allen’s unregistered lobbying for Qatar.
Court papers revealed Allen tried to pressure the White House to oppose a Saudi-proposed blockade of Qatar, which the Trump administration initially supported. This past January, the Justice Department mysteriously closed the investigation into Allen and didn’t pursue charges.
Other think tanks, however, continue to avail themselves of Qatari generosity. A 2020 report from the Center for International Policy revealed the Stimson Center received funding from Qatar. In 2022, the center received $615,000 from the Qatari Embassy for a program described as “protecting people.”
Lake said she reached out to the center for comment. A spokesperson, Caitlin Goodman, wouldn’t confirm if the center was reassessing its relationship with Qatar.
“The integrity and independence of Stimson scholars and their research is central to the trust that policymakers and the public put into our work,” she said. “Our work does not reflect the view and motives of any individual funder.”
Qatar is, of course, one of many foreign countries seeking to buy influence on college campuses. As Law Enforcement Today has previously reported, China has been heavily infiltrating college campuses by strategically placing so-called “Confucius Institutes.”
Earlier this month, House Select Committee on China Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) warned leaders at several top American universities that the Chinese Communist Party was exerting “coercive influence” on campuses nationwide. Fox News reported Gallagher warned dozens of university presidents to be aware of the Chinese threat.
“The question–as I see it–is how do we respond in a way that preserves our free and open society–including our higher education system with all its natural strengths–while maintaining our moral, intellectual, and financial integrity?” Gallagher asked.”
That question should naturally extend to nations other than China, nations such as Qatar, which have openly embraced and protected the leaders of Hamas while playing ball with rogue states such as Iran.
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