By Karen Paikin Barall

Written by Karen Paikin Barall

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

The United States faces a conundrum when it comes to Qatar. On the one hand, Qatar is an important strategic player in the Middle East, particularly as the U.S. navigates the war with Iran and broader regional security concerns. On the other hand, Qatar is the leading foreign funder of higher education here. It has poured billions into American colleges and universities, including $737 million to Northwestern University alone, raising serious questions about the influence it is buying inside some of our most important institutions.

Those two realities need to be confronted together. A country can be a useful diplomatic or strategic partner abroad while it pursues an influence strategy that may undermine American interests at home.

The explosion of antisemitism on American college campuses since the Oct. 7 attacks should be viewed in this larger context. Social media and extremists on both the left and right have undoubtedly contributed to the problem. But we should also be asking harder questions about the role foreign governments and foreign money have played in shaping the institutions, professors, programs and ideas that influence how young Americans understand Israel, Jews and the Middle East.

While many nations participate in this influence game, Qatar deserves particular scrutiny. Unlike relatively obvious propaganda often seen on platforms such as TikTok, we believe Qatar uses its deep pockets to twist universities to its views. This is particularly pernicious because the product presents itself as academic, nonpartisan scholarship. Students and the American public may have no idea that the institutions shaping their understanding of the Middle East have received enormous sums from a foreign government with its own interests and worldview.

Start with Qatar’s clear antisemitic viewpoint. Setting aside the nation’s long-standing relationship with Hamas, school textbooks in Qatar teach its children that Jews are inherently disloyal. This is not subtle. “Treachery and treason are among the traits of the Jews,” one book states. Other books explain that Adolf Hitler was justified because the Jews caused the Germans to lose World War I.

Next, Qatar’s large financial deals with universities such as Northwestern, Georgetown and Carnegie Mellon have been documented. To argue that this significant funding does not affect the recipients flies in the face of common sense. Indeed, it has now come out that aspects of these deals give Qatar control and direction — or at least substantial influence — over the actions of the institutions. For example, there is an agreement with Qatar that requires Georgetown University to “consult” with Qatar when choosing themes and speakers for certain conferences and events.

All this should concern Americans regardless of their views on Israel. When a foreign government has a role in shaping the speakers, themes or programming presented under the banner of an American university, transparency is essential.

Similarly, in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 atrocities, the Qatar Foundation, which is supported by the Qatari government, set up a call with deans of American universities in Doha, including Northwestern, on Oct. 17, 2023, The Washington Free Beacon reported. During this meeting, the foundation instructed Northwestern’s communications team to be “aligned and in touch” with it, and it requested “information sharing and no surprises.”

That exchange illustrates why the issue cannot be dismissed as simply a debate over academic freedom and raises a much larger question about foreign influence over American institutions and the messages those institutions transmit to students and the public.

It goes further. Qatar has a significant role in the selection of professors who teach at the Qatar campuses of these universities. For example, Northwestern’s website announces that several faculty members are “available to discuss the complex history and broad impact of the war in Iran and various other conflicts across the Middle East.” Among the experts that Northwestern has put forward as preferred experts is a faculty member of its Doha campus, Ibrahim Abusharif, an associate professor in residence in journalism. Abusharif is a co-founder of the Quranic Literacy Institute and was its treasurer from 1990 to 1998. The institute, an Illinois-based nonprofit, was found to be “a money-laundering clearinghouse”: In the early 2000s, it sent more than $1 million to Hamas.

When an American university promotes a faculty member from its Qatar campus as an expert to explain Middle East conflicts to the American public, the university’s financial and institutional relationship with Qatar becomes directly relevant.

It is for these reasons that the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has filed complaints under the Foreign Agents Registration Act with the U.S. Department of Justice against Northwestern and Georgetown. The FARA unit should now investigate, and these institutions should register as foreign agents of Qatar.

But the problem is broader than any individual university or legal complaint. The United States needs to understand whether foreign funding is shaping the way a generation of Americans views Israel, the Middle East and America’s own strategic interests.

University students will become tomorrow’s journalists, lawyers, professors, business leaders, policymakers and elected officials. If foreign governments can use American institutions to influence how those future leaders understand Israel and the Middle East, they can ultimately influence American foreign policy itself.

None of this means the United States should refuse to work with Qatar when our interests align. Foreign policy rarely offers such simple choices. But strategic cooperation abroad cannot require blindness to foreign influence at home.

The American public deserves to know who is funding our universities, what those foreign governments receive in return, and whether that money is shaping what American students are taught and told. Foreign influence is not some distant or theoretical threat. It is already reaching American campuses and institutions, shaping the thinking of the next generation in our own backyard.

-Karen Paikin Barall

Karen Paikin Barall is chief policy officer and Evan Slavitt is general counsel at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.

This piece was reproduced with the permission of the Brandeis Center. Any opinions articulated herein are those of the author, not The Prickly Pear. To read the original piece, please visit HERE.

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