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Qatar’s Back Door to Higher Education
Doha, Qatar. Photo: StellarD via Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – In an earlier column, I debunked a recent study suggesting that foreign contributions to higher education were responsible for the rise in antisemitism. In my work, I have illustrated some cases where Arab donations have had a nefarious impact, but it’s difficult to do because universities don’t report what most of the money they receive is used for. Besides demanding greater transparency, the United States and the world need to expand our investigation to trace indirect funding to “independent” institutions.
Qatar is by far the largest donor to universities. Since 1986, it has contributed more than $5 billion (billions more are undocumented) contributions since 1986. The largest gifts were for the creation and operation of Weill Cornell Medical College-Qatar in Doha, which can’t be said to cause antisemitism at the Ivy League’s main campus in Ithaca, N.Y. Because of the U.S. Department of Education’s failure to require universities to publish how they spend the foreign donations, we don’t know if any is going to professors or departments because they are pro-Qatar, anti-Israel or antisemitic, or if they adopt those policies after receiving the money. We can only surmise that universities will not want to risk losing funding by publishing anything critical of the emirate.
Meanwhile, gone largely unnoticed is Qatar’s backdoor to universities, the Arab Center Washington DC (ACW), which is affiliated with the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha.
The ACW describes itself as “a nonprofit, independent and nonpartisan research organization dedicated to furthering the political, economic and social understanding of the Arab world in the United States and to providing insight on U.S. policies and interests in the Middle East.”
It says it relies on tax-deductible contributions from “individual supporters, organizations, foundations and corporations.” However, according to its tax return, all but $900 of its $2,262,150 in donations came from the center in Qatar.
A hint of its orientation can be found in its two most recent events: “Gaza and the Crime of Genocide: Legal and Political Dimensions of Accountability” and “Repression of Palestine Activism Amid the War on Gaza.”
Khalil E. Jahshan, the executive director and a veteran of several Arab lobby groups, has said the “clearest political message” of Hamas’s attack on Israel was “the one addressed to the ‘Camp of Normalizers’—be they Israeli, Arab, Americans or Europeans—that their plans to forge a ‘New Middle East’ without Palestine shall not pass unopposed.”
He also tweeted: “Top #Biden adviser and confidant Brett #McGurk is obsessed with rewarding #Israel for its #genocidal war in #Gaza by furthering the #Trump-era cash-&-carry #normalization deal between #Saudi_Arabia & Israel at the expense of #Palestinian national rights.”
The center has 14 academic advisers, 13 of whom are professors from universities such as Georgetown, George Washington, Maryland and Princeton. It does not indicate whether any members are paid. Among the professors on the list are Columbia University professor Hamid Dabashi. He refers to ISIS as “murderous thugs” and says, “Their Israeli counterparts meanwhile conquered parts of Syria and declared it part of their Zionist settler colony.” Dabashi does see one difference, which suggests that he doesn’t read The New York Times, “ISIS does not have a platoon of clean shaven and well coiffured [sic] columnists at the New York Times propagating the cause of the terrorist outfit as the Zionists columnists do on a regular basis.”
While Dabashi wears his disdain for Israel on his sleeve, a more slippery example is the University of Maryland’s Shibley Telhami. An Israel critic, he is best known for producing widely quoted surveys related to Israel with questions consistently written to elicit negative responses towards the Jewish state.
Another adviser, Osama Abi-Mershed, an associate professor in the influential Walsh School of Foreign Service and Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) at Georgetown University, is a supporter of the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He has pledged “not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions.”
Abi-Mershed’s colleague, Marwa Daoudy, an assistant professor in International Relations at the Walsh School and CCAS, tweeted “Palestinians are denied the right to exist as human beings.” He also praised South Africa’s foreign minister for comparing Israeli policy to apartheid, and accused Israel of genocide and “cultural genocide.”
Another adviser is retired USC professor Laurie Brand, former president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and now chair of its Committee on Academic Freedom, which devotes much of its attention to criticism of Israel and defense of antisemitic speech, as in its post-Oct. 7 letter to universities denying that anti-Zionism is antisemitic. While expressing heartbreak over the loss of Israeli and Palestinian lives, the letter has nothing to say about the Hamas massacre that created the toxic campus environment. She is indignant over the supposed silencing of Israel’s detractors while defending the boycott of Israel.
George Washington University history professor Dina Khoury is another former MESA president who supports BDS and has condemned Israel in a prior Gaza conflict for its actions to defend its citizens. Another BDS’er is Amaney Jamal, the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics at Princeton University.
Sheila Carapico, a professor of political science and international studies at the University of Richmond, is another BDS supporter and a consultant to Human Rights Watch. She wrote an article complaining about Saudi Arabia bullying Qatar.
‘The price we had to pay’
ACW also has 18 research fellows, including Dana El Kurd, an assistant professor at the University of Richmond who wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post assailing the normalization of relations between Israel and the Gulf states, claiming that rather than advancing peace, Israel is giving the Arab regimes tools to solidify their authoritarian rule. She claims the Palestinian issue is the “root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict” and suggested that the Abraham Accords emboldened Israel to annex Palestinian territory, ignoring that Israel gave up a plan to exercise sovereignty to achieve the agreement with the Gulf states.
One member of the ACW board is Mohammed Abu Nimer, director of the Peacebuilding and Development Institute at American University. Hamas, he says, has “engaged in the fight against the Israeli occupation since 1987”; that is, two years after every Israeli was withdrawn. He also repeats the canard that Hamas changed its charter and no longer seeks Israel’s destruction. The man who received the 2023 Distinguished Scholar Award for his “groundbreaking work in interreligious dialogue and faith-based peacebuilding” refers to the situation in Gaza as “genocide.”
Another board member is Laurie King, an anthropology professor at Georgetown who was a co-founder of the virulently anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada. She has compared Israel to Afrikaner South Africa and called for it to be boycotted. She falsely accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing.” Not surprisingly, she objects to antisemites being called out for antisemitism.
Predictably, I found no statements condemning Hamas for massacring 1,200 Israelis.
The creation of the ACW is not Qatar’s first effort to use a Washington think tank as part of its influence operation. In 2007, it convinced the Brookings Institution to open a center in Doha. A few years later, the emirate agreed to a $14.8 million, four-year donation to help fund the affiliate in Qatar and a project on United States relations with the Islamic world. Brookings closed the center in Doha and stopped taking money from the emirate in 2017. Previously, it listed Qatar as one of its top donors, giving more than $2 million. Brookings’s divorce came after its president, Gen. John R. Allen (Ret.), was investigated by the Justice Department for illegally lobbying for Qatar (no charges were brought).
A former visiting fellow at the Doha Center who went on to teach at the University of Queensland in Australia offered one clue to the impact of associating with Qatar. Saleem Ali told The New York Times, “If a member of Congress is using the Brookings reports, they should be aware—they are not getting the full story.” He said he had been warned during his job interview not to criticize Qatar in his published work. “There was a no-go zone when it came to criticizing the Qatari government,” said Ali. “It was unsettling for the academics there. But it was the price we had to pay.”
Qatar didn’t hide what it expected to get for its contributions. When Brookings renewed its agreement for the Doha center in 2012, the Times reported that the Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced, “the center will assume its role in reflecting the bright image of Qatar in the international media, especially the American ones.”
When Brookings finally dumped Qatar, the emirate lost the prestige of associating with a prominent think tank. Undeterred, the Qataris created their own to give an academic veneer to their influence campaign.
Evaluating the impact of Arab funding on higher education is often a chicken-and-egg proposition. Are professors on the advisory board spreading propaganda because they get paid or are they recruited by Qatar to its stable of apologists because they are anti-Israel (I’ll leave it to others to decide if they’re also antisemitic)? If there is no financial or professional benefit, why associate with Qatar?
Whatever their reasons, they have affiliated themselves with the country that supports Hamas and Islamists.
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Harvard Faculty Oppose Deal With Trump, Distancing From Hamas Apologists: Crimson Poll
Harvard University president Alan Garber attending the 373rd Commencement Exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 23, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
A recently published Harvard Crimson poll of over 1,400 Harvard faculty revealed sweeping opposition to interim university President Alan Garber’s efforts to strike a deal with the federal government to restore $3 billion in research grants and contracts it froze during the first 100 days of the second Trump administration.
In the survey, conducted from April 23 to May 12, 71 percent of arts and sciences faculty oppose negotiating a settlement with the administration, which may include concessions conservatives have long sought from elite higher education, such as meritocratic admissions, viewpoint diversity, and severe disciplinary sanctions imposed on students who stage unauthorized protests that disrupt academic life.
Additionally, 64 percent “strongly disagree” with shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, 73 percent oppose rejecting foreign applicants who hold anti-American beliefs which are “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence,” and 70 percent strongly disagree with revoking school recognition from pro-Hamas groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC).
“More than 98 percent of faculty who responded to the survey supported the university’s decision to sue the White House,” The Crimson reported. “The same percentage backed Harvard’s public rejection of the sweeping conditions that the administration set for maintaining the funds — terms that included external audits of Harvard’s hiring practices and the disciplining of student protesters.”
Alyza Lewin of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law told The Algemeiner that the poll results indicate that Harvard University will continue to struggle to address campus antisemitism on campus, as there is now data showing that its faculty reject the notion of excising intellectualized antisemitism from the university.
“If you, for example, have faculty teaching courses that are regularly denying that the Jews are a people and erasing the Jewish people’s history in the land of Israel, that’s going to undermine your efforts to address the antisemitism on your campus,” Lewin explained. “When Israel is being treated as the ‘collective Jew,’ when the conversation is not about Israel’s policies, when the criticism is not what the [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism] would call criticism of Israel similar to that against any other country, they have to understand that it is the demonization, delegitimization, and applying a double standard to Jews as individuals or to Israel.”
She added, “Faculty must recognize … the demonization, vilification, the shunning, and the marginalizing of Israelis, Jews, and Zionists, when it happens, as violations of the anti-discrimination policies they are legally and contractually obligated to observe.”
The Crimson survey results were published amid reports that Garber was working to reach a deal with the Trump administration that is palatable to all interested parties, including the university’s left-wing social milieu.
According to a June 26 report published by The Crimson, Garber held a phone call with major donors in which he “confirmed in response to a question from [Harvard Corporation Fellow David M. Rubenstein] that talks had resumed” but “declined to share specifics of how Harvard expected to settle with the White House.”
On June 30, the Trump administration issued Harvard a “notice of violation” of civil rights law following an investigation which examined how it responded to dozens of antisemitic incidents reported by Jewish students since the 2023-2024 academic year.
The correspondence, sent by the Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, charged that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a torrent of racist and antisemitic abuse following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre, which precipitated a surge in anti-Zionist activity on the campus, both in the classroom and out of it.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the four federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
The Trump administration ratcheted up pressure on Harvard again on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre.
Citing Harvard’s failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated other forms of hatred in the past, The US Department of Educationthe called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.
“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Balancing Act: Lebanese President Aoun Affirms Hope for Peace with Israel, Balks At Normalization
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun attends a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, March 28, 2025. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier/Pool
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Friday carefully affirmed his country’s desire for peace with Israel while cautioning that Beirut is not ready to normalize relations with its southern neighbor.
Aoun called for a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory, according to a statement from his office, while reaffirming his government’s efforts to uphold a state monopoly on arms amid mounting international pressure on the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah to disarm.
“The decision to restrict arms is final and there is no turning back on it,” Aoun said.
The Lebanese leader drew a clear distinction between pursuing peace and establishing formal normalization in his country’s relationship with the Jewish state.
“Peace is the lack of a state of war, and this is what matters to us in Lebanon at the moment,” Aoun said in a statement. “As for the issue of normalization, it is not currently part of Lebanese foreign policy.”
Aoun’s latest comments come after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar expressed interest last month in normalizing ties with Lebanon and Syria — an effort Jerusalem says cannot proceed until Hezbollah is fully disarmed.
Earlier this week, Aoun sent his government’s response to a US-backed disarmament proposal as Washington and Jerusalem increased pressure on Lebanon to neutralize the terror group.
While the details remain confidential, US Special Envoy Thomas Barrack said he was “unbelievably satisfied” with their response.
This latest proposal, presented to Lebanese officials during Barrack’s visit on June 19, calls for Hezbollah to be fully disarmed within four months in exchange for Israel halting airstrikes and withdrawing troops from its five occupied posts in southern Lebanon.
However, Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem vowed in a televised speech to keep the group’s weapons, rejecting Washington’s disarmament proposal.
“How can you expect us not to stand firm while the Israeli enemy continues its aggression, continues to occupy the five points, and continues to enter our territories and kill?” said Qassem, who succeeded longtime terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah after Israel killed him last year.
“We will not be part of legitimizing the occupation in Lebanon and the region,” the terrorist leader continued. “We will not accept normalization [with Israel].”
Last fall, Israel decimated Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive, following the group’s attacks on Jerusalem — which they claimed were a show of solidarity with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas amid the war in Gaza.
In November, Lebanon and Israel reached a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a year of fighting between the Jewish state and Hezbollah.
Under the agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.
However, Israel maintained troops at several posts in southern Lebanon beyond the ceasefire deadline, as its leaders aimed to reassure northern residents that it was safe to return home.
Jerusalem has continued carrying out strikes targeting remaining Hezbollah activity, with Israeli leaders accusing the group of maintaining combat infrastructure, including rocket launchers — calling this “blatant violations of understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
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Peace Meals: Chef José Andrés Says ‘Good People’ On Both Sides of Gaza Conflict Ill-Served By Leaders, Food Can Bridge Divide
Chef and head of World Central Kitchen Jose Andres attends the Milken Institute Global Conference 2025 in Beverly Hills, California, US, May 5, 2025. Photo: Reuters/Mike Blake.
Renowned Spanish chef and World Central Kitchen (WCK) founder José Andrés called the Oct. 7 attack “horrendous” in an interview Wednesday and shared his hopes for reconciliation between the “vast majority” on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide who are “good people that very often are not served well by their leaders”
WCK is a US-based, nonprofit organization that provides fresh meals to people in conflict zones around the world. The charity has been actively serving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank since the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel. Since the Hamas attack, WCK has served more than 133 million meals across Gaza, according to its website.
The restaurateur and humanitarian has been quoted saying in past interviews that “sometimes very big problems have very simple solutions.” On Wednesday’s episode of the Wall Street Journal podcast “Bold Names,” he was asked to elaborate on that thought. He responded by saying he believes good meals and good leaders can help resolve issues between Israelis and Palestinians, who, he believes, genuinely want to live harmoniously with each other.
“I had people in Gaza, mothers, women making bread,” he said. “Moments that you had of closeness they were telling you: ‘What Hamas did was wrong. I wouldn’t [want] anybody to do this to my children.’ And I had Israelis that even lost family members. They say, ‘I would love to go to Gaza to be next to the people to show them that we respect them …’ And this to me is very fascinating because it’s the reality.
“Maybe some people call me naive. [But] the vast majority of the people are good people that very often are not served well by their leaders. And the simple reality of recognizing that many truths can be true at the same time in the same phrase that what happened on October 7th was horrendous and was never supposed to happen. And that’s why World Central Kitchen was there next to the people in Israel feeding in the kibbutz from day one, and at the same time that I defended obviously the right of Israel to defend itself and to try to bring back the hostages. Equally, what is happening in Gaza is not supposed to be happening either.”
Andres noted that he supports Israel’s efforts to target Hamas terrorists but then seemingly accused Israel of “continuously” targeting children and civilians during its military operations against the terror group.
“We need leaders that believe in that, that believe in longer tables,” he concluded. “It’s so simple to invest in peace … It’s so simple to do good. It’s so simple to invest in a better tomorrow. Food is a solution to many of the issues we’re facing. Let’s hope that … one day in the Middle East it’ll be people just celebrating the cultures that sometimes if you look at what they eat, they seem all to eat exactly the same.”
In 2024, WCK fired at least 62 of its staff members in Gaza after Israel said they had ties to terrorist groups. In one case, Israel discovered that a WCK employee named Ahed Azmi Qdeih took part in the deadly Hamas rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Qdeih was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in November 2024.
In April 2024, the Israel Defense Forces received backlash for carrying out airstrikes on a WCK vehicle convoy which killed seven of the charity’s employees. Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said the airstrikes were “a mistake that followed a misidentification,” and Israel dismissed two senior officers as a result of the mishandled military operation.
The strikes “were not just some unfortunate mistake in the fog of war,” Andrés alleged.
“It was a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by” the Israeli military, he claimed in an op-ed published by Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot. “It was also the direct result of [the Israeli] government’s policy to squeeze humanitarian aid to desperate levels.”
In a statement on X, Andres accused Israel of “indiscriminate killing,” saying the Jewish state “needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon.”
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