Qatar as Daddy Warbucks

Fabulously rich from the sale of its natural gas — it has the third largest gas reserves in the world, after Russia and Iran — the Emirate of Qatar has perfected the art of winning influence through what is demurely called “soft power,” that is, the kind of power that not armies, but only money can buy. Since 2012, Qatar has spent $72 million for Washington lobbyists, which is more than any other country has spent in that time, in order to help make its case in the corridors of Congressional power. When some Congressmen accuse Qatar of “harboring senior officials of Hamas,” which it does, Qatar rolls out other congressmen, who have received briefings and money from those K Street lobbyists, who remind their colleagues that Qatar allows the United States to maintain its largest military base in the Middle East — the Al-Udeid Airbase — and invests so very much in American securities. Shouldn’t those facts outweigh all other considerations?

Qatari money also helps to mold young American minds in those universities that Doha chooses to support quite extravagantly. The money comes with strings attached, of course. Any sums from Qatar given to universities go to support faculty members who are sympathetic to the Emirate itself, or to “Palestine,” or to the “religion of peace.” Qatari money goes to pay the salaries of those teaching courses about “the faith of Islam,” or the political evolution of the Gulf states, or on “Al-Andalus and the Birth of ‘Convivencia,’” or — absolutely de rigueur — a course on the “Israel-Palestine conflict,” and woe betide any faculty member who, having received Qatari support (as by holding a chair that Doha has endowed), dares in his lectures to be less than admiring of Islam, the “religion of peace,” or even worse, to be even slightly understanding of the Jewish state. The students’ minds are thus filled with the belief that Islam is quite admirable and only “Islamophobia” explains the reluctance of some in the West to be enthusiastic about the adherents of that religion. And those students are provided with a view of a long-suffering “Palestine” and a preternaturally wicked Israel that the ghost of Edward Said could not have bettered.

More on deep-pocketed Qatar and how it uses its money to influence Americans can be found here: “US Education Department’s New Database Reveals Qatar Ranks as Top Foreign Funder of American Universities,” by Corey Walker, Algemeiner, January 8, 2026:

Qatar is the single largest foreign source of funding to American colleges and universities, according to a newly launched public database from the US Department of Education that reveals the scope of overseas influence in US higher education.

The federal dashboard shows Qatar has provided $6.6 billion in gifts and contracts to US universities, more than any other foreign government or entity, outpacing the next highest contributions from Germany ($4.4 billion), England ($4.3 billion), China ($4.1 billion), Canada ($4 billion), and Saudi Arabia ($3.9 billion).

Of the schools that received money from Qatar, Cornell University topped the list with $2.3 billion, followed by Carnegie Mellon University ($1 billion), Texas A&M University ($992.8 million), and Georgetown University ($971.1 million).

It would be fascinating to know what courses on Islam and the Middle East have been or are now being taught at those four universities, and about the publications of the professors teaching them. Perhaps AIPAC would like to look into this.

The newly publicized figures come as universities nationwide face heightened scrutiny over campus antisemitism, anti-Israel activism, and academic priorities, prompting renewed concerns about foreign influence on American campuses.

US Education Secretary Linda McMahon unveiled the Foreign Gift and Contract transparency portal this week, saying the tool gives taxpayers, lawmakers, and students a clearer view of how billions of dollars from abroad flow into US universities. Under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, federally funded institutions are legally required to disclose gifts and contracts from foreign sources worth $250,000 or more annually….

This “Foreign Gift and Contract transparency portal” has long been needed. Now universities are required to list all gifts and contracts worth more than $250,000 that they receive from foreign sources — both individuals and institutions. And those lists are now open to everyone. Let’s all have a look about where Qatar is spending its money, and how much, and for what obvious purposes? Reporters for Fox News, do your stuff.

How have those elite universities handled antisemitism? They haven’t. They’ve let it flourish, for the administrators at these places are either too scared, or too indifferent, to do anything about the antisemitic brownshirts on campus calling for Israel to disappear, to be replaced by a 23rd Arab state (“from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”), and for Jews to be killed worldwide (“globalize the Intifada”). Now the Trump administration has been cutting government money to the offending universities, sometimes amounting to billions of dollars, by cancelling research contracts. As a result, those institutions have suddenly discovered that yes, after all, there are some things they can do to discourage antisemitism on their campuses. “And please, President Trump, renew those contracts. We promise not to be so indifferent to antisemitism ever again.”

Now let’s count the ways, beyond those sums provided to universities, that Qatar can spend its money to win friends. It could agree to invest what for Doha would be a most modest sum — a few hundred million dollars is nothing to the Al-Thani family — in your company, or in your hotel, or in your golf course. You need investors for your movie? No problem. And by the way, for your next film why not tell the story of the Nakhba that too few Americans know about. We’ll finance the whole thing.

Qatar has spent $20 billion on American universities. You can imagine on what that largesse was lavished. Chairs for tenured professors in the Middle East Studies Department. One earmarked for a specialist in “Palestinian studies,” another on “Qatari studies.” In the History Department, a professor to be hired whose field of study is the “History of Medieval and Early Modern Palestine.” And another professor, also with tenure and an endowed chair, who teaches a course on “What The West Owes To Islam.” And of course, in the graduate program in architecture, a new professor will be hired, on Qatar’s request, who has just published a coffee-table book, with lots of photographs of Cordoba, Seville, and Granada, entitled simply “Al-Andalus.” You get the picture.

Does University X need a new extension built to its current library building? Does University Y need a new sports stadium? Does University Z need a half-dozen newly-endowed chairs? Or a new dormitory? Qatar is ready to oblige. Perhaps here and there — very much here and there — some of these places will bear the names of the Al-Thani family and of the country that family owns.

And of course, Qatar will be prepared to donate half the cost — $200 million — of the new ballroom that will replace what was formerly the West Wing of the White House. Everyone who passes into that vast ballroom — the movers and shakers of America — will see on the wall a list of the donors who made Trump’s dream come true, and the Al-Thani Family of Qatar will lead all the rest.

As for the lobbyists on K Street, Qatar has dozens of its firms working full time, including the one that Tim Mynett, the husband of Ilhan Omar, owns, to make the case that Qatar, despite its care and feeding of Hamas leaders, has been a friend indeed to the U.S.A. Just look at all those young Qataris, so many of them members of the Al-Thani family, who are going to school at Northwestern, where they hope to make a deep impression on their American classmates. Just like the deep impression Qatari money has made in every aspect of American life.