The congressional Republicans who spearheaded investigations into antisemitism on US college campuses are turning their focus on the Qatari government, one of the largest donors to American universities over the past decade.
The line of inquiry, led by Republicans on the US House’s education committee, focuses on suggestions among conservative activists that Qatari funding has influenced attitudes towards Israel at elite US universities, which have come under intense scrutiny since Hamas’s October 7 attacks.
Virginia Foxx, the conservative North Carolina Republican who chairs the committee, has asked three Ivy League schools — Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia — to disclose any Qatari donations since January 2021.
Foxx has also requested information about enrolment data for Jewish students and various other details about the universities’ responses to antisemitic incidents.
Qatar is the only nation mentioned in the inquiries about funding from “foreign sources”. A person close to the committee said the goal was to determine “what is innocuous and what is bleeding into what’s happening on campus”.
The focus on Qatar comes amid a campaign by activists and alumni donors to scrutinise elite American universities after a surge of anti-Israel protests following the October 7 attacks and Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza — including demonstrations of outright support for Hamas. The protests have come at the same time as a rise in reports of harassment and intimidation of Jewish students.
The Republican-controlled House committee already helped bring down the presidents of two Ivy League schools, Penn and Harvard, who were forced to resign after their testimony before the panel was seen as insensitive to the concerns of Jewish students.
Qatar has emerged as the largest foreign donor to US universities, contributing $5.1bn since 1986, according to one study. Most of the donations were made in the past decade.
Much of that has been spent to entice US universities to establish campuses in Doha, a more than two-decade long initiative that the Qataris have promoted as a way to bring western-style higher education to the Gulf state.
A Qatari official said the Gulf state’s financial contributions to US universities were “allocated within Qatar, covering expenses such as the construction and maintenance of buildings and the salaries of employees”.
“Recent claims about university funding have unfortunately been influenced by a well-funded and vicious campaign of disinformation,” the Qatari official said. “Hatred for any group is wrong — including both antisemitism and Islamophobia alike. Through international collaboration on education, Qatar’s aim has always been to forge partnerships, learn from one another, and tear down stereotypes.”
Defenders of Qatar’s funding say it is no different from the lobbying efforts of other sovereign governments trying to burnish their reputation in the US. After Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led a regional embargo against Qatar in 2017, the nation of just 2.6mn people has moved aggressively to rebuild its image, including spending heavily on Washington lobbyists.
Qatar is an important US ally in the Gulf region. Ruled by the Al-Thani family, its sits atop the world’s third-largest natural gas reserves and hosts the largest US military facility in the Middle East.
In the past, Qatar’s alleged support for Islamist groups and its independent foreign policy have drawn the ire of regional neighbours. The stance has allowed the Gulf state to position itself as a neutral party in a complicated region, and US President Joe Biden has designated Qatar a major non-Nato ally and lauded its assistance in hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
But that policy has been a source of concern among some conservatives, many with ties to Israel or American Jewish causes. In the wake of October 7, scrutiny of Qatar’s relationship with Hamas and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood has intensified.
Texas A&M University last month announced that it would close the satellite campus it established in Doha in 2003. The university cited “regional instability” for its decision, but it has also faced unwanted publicity since October 7 about its patron’s ties to Hamas.
A report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy think-tank piled further pressure on Texas A&M by claiming that the university was licensing sensitive nuclear technology to Qatar as part of the campus agreement. Mark Welsh, the school’s president, rejected that accusation as false in a lengthy statement.
Qatar, meanwhile, called Texas A&M’s decision “deeply disappointing” and driven by “a disinformation campaign”. An official at the Qatari embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment on the larger issue of the country’s donations to US universities.
Mitchell Bard, author of The Arab Lobby and a longtime analyst of Gulf nations’ influence operations in America, saw little evidence that Arab money was contributing to hostility towards Jews and Israel on campuses.
Some US universities that have seen incidents of antisemitism and large anti-Israeli demonstrations, such as the University of California at Berkeley, received little or no Qatari money, Bard noted. The biggest US recipient was Cornell University, which received $1.9bn to establish a medical school in Doha.
“If several hundred million dollars go [to Cornell], what does that have to do with antisemitism in Ithaca?” Bard asked, referring to Cornell’s campus in upstate New York.
US universities are supposed to report any foreign donations of $250,000 or more. But the relevant law, dating to 1965, is seldom enforced. Universities tend to share little information about where the money goes or if any conditions are attached. In 2019, a Senate report called foreign money at US universities “effectively a black hole”, noting that many donations pass through charitable organisations and other third parties.
Foxx has sponsored legislation, known as the Deterrent Act, that would tighten reporting rules.
Additional reporting by Andrew England
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