Billions in Middle East donations to U.S. universities linked to campus antisemitism

The same U.S. universities that increasingly are seen as breeding grounds for antisemitism have taken billions of dollars in previously undisclosed donations from the Middle East — and their critics don’t believe in coincidences.

The Lawfare Project filed a lawsuit this week on behalf of former Carnegie Mellon University student Yael Canaan, saying she was subject to “pervasive anti-Jewish discrimination” and tying her allegations to the half-billion dollars received by the university since 2021 from Qatar.

“Carnegie Mellon happens to be one of the largest recipients of Qatari money,” said the Lawfare Project, which works with the online movement End Jew Hatred. “The question one must ask is, what is the money being used for?”

Concerns about the influence of foreign money in academia for years have focused on China and its Confucius Institutes, but that was before widespread anti-Israel protests broke out on college campuses following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli civilians.

Recent reports of Middle Eastern nations funneling billions into higher education prompted the House last week to pass bipartisan legislation toughening up financial reporting requirements, despite the objections of the American Council on Education, which said the bill would curtail international research as well as cultural and academic exchanges.

Harvard President Claudine Gay insisted at last week’s House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing that the university has “strict policies” on which gifts and contracts it accepts and that donors do not influence its policies. Advocates for Jewish students on campus were skeptical.

“No matter what the universities say, it is hard to imagine that foreign entities are pouring vast amounts into American institutions and not expecting that they will receive something in exchange,” Kenneth Marcus, president of the Brandeis Center, told The Washington Times. “What they want is influence.”

Those worries accelerated after the Network Contagion Research Institute released an explosive report last month showing that universities reported more than $13 billion in Section 117 gifts, or those received from foreign sources, for the five-year period ending in 2019.

Many of those donations weren’t reported until the Trump administration prodded universities to update their Section 117 filings in the aftermath of a 2019 report to the Justice Department by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy on its “Follow the Money” project.

“The project revealed, for the first time, the existence of substantial Middle Eastern funding (primarily from Qatar) to U.S. universities that had not been reported to the Department of Education (DoED), as required by law,” the institute said in its Nov. 6 report, “The Corruption of the American Mind.”

The list of foreign donors from 2014-19 was topped by Qatar, at $2.7 billion; followed by England, at $1.4 billion; China, at $1.2 billion; and Saudi Arabia, at $947 million.

Carnegie Mellon was the leading recipient, with $1.47 billion; then Cornell University, which received $1.3 billion; Harvard, which took $894 million; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with $859 million; Texas A&M, with $521 million; and Yale, which received $495 million.

The report went a step further by looking at campus antisemitism, concluding that from 2015 to 2020, universities that had accepted gifts from Middle Eastern donors saw on average “300% more antisemitic incidents than those institutions that did not.”

Not only that, but campaigns to censor speakers and scholars were also more prevalent at the universities receiving support from the Middle Eastern regimes.

The report concluded that a “massive influx of foreign donations to American institutions of higher learning, much of it concealed and from authoritarian regimes, with notable support from Middle Eastern sources, reflects or supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry and free expression,” the report said.

The National Association of Scholars reported last year that Qatar had become a “major donor to U.S. universities,” contributing at least $4.7 billion from 2001 to 2021.

In her lawsuit, Ms. Canaan said she was subjected to a “cruel campaign of antisemitic abuse” at Carnegie Mellon, including a professor who said she should focus her studio project on “what Jews do to make themselves such a hated group.”

Carnegie Mellon said that it is evaluating the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

“We are steadfast in our commitment to create and nurture a welcoming, inclusive and supportive environment where all students can reach their potential and thrive,” a spokesperson for Carnegie Mellon told The Washington Times. “We take any allegations of mistreatment or harassment seriously.”

A question of influence

Ms. Gay defended the foreign-based giving at the House Education and the Workforce Committee’s Dec. 5 hearing on campus antisemitism, saying that Harvard is careful not to accept donations from sources on restricted lists.

“We go further and only accept gifts that align with our mission and provide autonomy for research and faculty,” Ms. Gay said. “We have alumni all over the world and their philanthropy supports student aid and scholarships and cutting-edge research.”

She also denied that the funding has any impact on Harvard’s decision-making when asked why the university allows the pro-Hamas group Students for Justice in Palestine to remain on campus. Hamas has been designated a terrorist group by the State Department.

“Our donors do not influence how we run the university, how we enforce our policies or how we keep our students safe,” Ms. Gay said.

Her assurances failed to assuage the House, which the next day passed the DETERRENT Act [Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions] with 215 Republican and 31 Democratic votes.

The legislation would strengthen Section 117 reporting requirements, including lowering the threshold on individual gifts from $250,000 to $50,000, and eliminating the floor entirely for “countries of concern”: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

The measure, which now goes to the Senate, also would require institutions of higher learning to report such gifts within the same calendar year. Colleges that fail to do so — a 2019 Senate report found that 70% of universities were out of compliance with Section 117 — would face fines and loss of Title IV funding.

Rep. Michelle Steel, the California Republican who sponsored the bill with Rep. Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Republican and chair of the House education committee, said that “there is no such thing as a free lunch.”

“When foreign governments give money to our universities, they don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts; they want something in return,” Ms. Steel said. “Whether it’s terror-friendly states like Qatar and Iran, or brutal human rights abusers like the Chinese Communist Party, our campuses must not become puppets of countries who hate America.”

Opposing the legislation are 17 higher-education groups led by the American Council on Education, which called the new restrictions “duplicative” and “unnecessary,” pointing out that universities have stepped up their reporting since 2018.

The Education Department reported Nov. 21 “nearly 5,000 additional foreign gifts and contracts transactions valued at nearly $4 billion since ED’s last data release as of Oct. 13, 2023.”

“The largest dollar amounts of gifts and contracts reported to ED between April 6, 2023, and Oct. 13, 2023, were from sources in Germany, Kuwait, Qatar, China, and France,” the notice from the Federal Student Aid office said.

Correction: An earlier version of this report incorrectly reported the amount of money China donated to universities as listed by the Network Contagion Research Institute. China gave $1.2 billion.