Universities Should Not Be Accepting Money from Qatar, a Hamas-Supporting Plutocracy

Qatar’s influence-buying continues on a grand scale: “Universities Are Selling Out to Qatar, and Selling Off Their Integrity,” by Mitchell Bard, Algemeiner, May 18, 2025:

Cornell University is the biggest beneficiary, receiving more than $2.1 billion. In 2001, it launched the Weill Medical College in Qatar, with the emirate pledging $750 million in 11 years, including undisclosed “fees” to Cornell. According to a 2024 report from the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), Cornell failed to report $1.4 billion of this funding (out of $3 billion in unreported contributions for campuses in Qatar).

More than $1.2 billion in Qatar funding previously attributed to Northwestern and Georgetown universities was also inexplicably deleted from the February 2024 DoE report.

Qatar also attempts to exert influence through donations to prestigious university centers. It has contributed, for example, to the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Texas, which was also supported at one point by the Al Jazeera Media Network of Qatar. Diplomats can also get an education from Georgetown University in Qatar, initially called the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. The Qatar Foundation collaborated with the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School to establish a graduate law school at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha. Harvard received a $1 million donation from Qatar in 2024, but no further details were provided.

Academic freedom suffers when oppressive regimes control the purse strings. Northwestern’s campus in Doha censored a Lebanese band with a gay lead singer. A professor was reportedly dismissed for expressing pro-Israel views. These are not isolated incidents; they are symptoms of a deeper rot. Money from autocratic regimes inevitably comes with strings, spoken or unspoken. When universities accept these funds, they assume those strings.

Money from autocratic regimes inevitably comes with strings, spoken or unspoken. When universities accept these funds, they assume those strings.

No pro-Israel professors should expect to work at the Doha campus of an American university. And at universities in the US that accept Qatari money, they should expect that the Qataris will not be hands-off disinterested philanthropists, but will try to mold the programs they are funding. Qatar is not shy about exerting pressure to make sure that individual professors, departments, and centers receiving its support reflect its pro-Hamas anti-Israel views.

In a rare act of financial sacrifice, Texas A&M announced that it would close its program in Qatar after 21 years, just three years after renewing a 10-year contract. To that point, the DoE recorded seven contributions worth almost $105 million. According to The Washington Post, the previous contract was worth more than $750 million, so the decision was costly. The public reason given was regional instability and changing institutional priorities; however, some believed it was related to a report by ISGAP raising concerns about Qatari access to nuclear-energy research. The university claimed this was misinformation and had no bearing on the decision to leave Qatar….

Apparently Qatar had been seeking to find out more about the nuclear energy research being conducted at Texas A&M. That must have made the university nervous, sufficiently so that it cancelled a ten-year contract with the emirate after just three years, thereby forfeiting hundreds of millions of dollars.

Universities should not be accepting money from a Hamas-supporting plutocracy, that crushes dissent at home and sponsors Palestinian terrorists abroad, that savagely mistreats its foreign workers, and bribes its way into becoming a venue for international sports (the millions of dollars in bribes Qatar gave to become the host in 2022 for the World Cup in soccer is only one such example).

In the United States, Qatar is the most lavish dispenser of largesse among the fabulously rich oil states of the Persian Gulf. It has outdone the others in the colossal sums it dispenses to obtain its goals: first, to turn away wrath from the American government that chooses to ignore the emirate’s long history of supporting Hamas and other terrorist groups including, in the past, Al Qaeda and ISIS; second, to ensure that the American military, ensconced at the Al-Udeid airbase, continues to provide security for the emirate; third, to influence generations of students at universities where Qatar has contributed large sums to endow chairs for professors in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. One hopes that the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, led by the redoubtable Virginia Foxx, will hold hearings on Qatar and its hitherto successful attempt to spread its influence in American higher education. As one way to clean up the Augean Stables of American academic life, I’d call that a good start.