‘Dark Money Nightmare’: How Qatar Bought the Ivy League

by Robert Williams, GATESTONE December 31, 2023

  • “At least 100 American colleges and universities illegally withheld information on approximately $13 billion in undocumented contributions from foreign governments, many of which are authoritarian…. Speech intolerance—manifesting as campaigns to investigate, censor, demote, suspend, or terminate speakers and scholars—was higher at institutions that received undocumented money from foreign regimes.” — ISGAP report, “The Corruption of the American Mind,” November 2023.
  • Qatar makes it possible for Ivy League universities to claim that they receive no funds from the Qatari state, because the donations are funneled through the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, a not-for-profit organization established in 1995 by the Emir of Qatar. This ensures that the foundation can identify itself as a private organization, which enables Qatar to conceal its state funding as private donations.
  • “At the time of writing, the State of Qatar contributes more funds to universities in the United States than any other country in the world, and raw donation totals omit critical, concerning details about the nature of Qatar’s academic funding.” — ISGAP report, “Networks of Hate,” December 2023.
  • “We would pay them [journalists]… Some of them have become MPs now. Others have become patriots…. We would pay [journalists] in many countries. We would pay them every year. Some of them received salaries. All the Arab countries were doing this. If not all, then most of them.” — Former Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim, February 2022.

The hapless testimony by three Ivy League university presidents from Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce can be traced to Qatar and its insidious campaign to buy itself influence in US academia.

Qatar, oil-rich and with an estimated population of only 2.5 million, is the largest foreign donor — that we know about — to American universities, with at least $4.7 billion donated between 2001 and 2021. Many of those billions went unreported to the Department of Education, according to research done by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). Under federal law, colleges and universities that receive donations from foreign sources that total at least $250,000 must disclose such transactions to the Department of Education.

Qatar is far from the only authoritarian nation that donates to American universities. According to a Department of Education report from April 2023, American universities and colleges have received $19 billion from unreported sources, more than half of which has come from authoritarian and antidemocratic Middle East governments.

Flouting the law by failing to disclose foreign donations to universities has been declared a “dark money nightmare.”

Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos wrote in February 2023:

“While there’s nothing inherently inappropriate about foreign-sourced gifts, there is a significant reason for concern if these gifts are not disclosed, as required by law.

“Unfortunately, the higher-ed lobby has made it no secret it opposes true transparency. The American Council on Education — the lobbying organization for colleges and universities — praised the Biden administration in an open letter for ending the investigations we launched into schools that were skirting the law and failing to report sources of foreign money.

“One major cause for concern is the high correlation between foreign gifts, especially from our geopolitical adversaries, and American universities that are home to major research laboratories, including those with Department of Defense contracts.”

To assess properly the damage that Qatari influence in the US is causing, it is important to understand what Qatar stands for and promotes. Qatar has for decades cultivated a close relationship with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, whose motto is: “‘Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Its aim appears to be ensuring that Islamic law, Sharia, governs all countries and all matters.

CONTINUE

December 31, 2023 | 1 Comment »

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