Follow The Money

Qatar Funding of Higher Education

In July 2019 at the Department of Justice (DOJ), in Washington, D.C., Dr. Charles Asher Small, the ISGAP Director, presented the findings of an ISGAP research project started in 2012, entitled “Follow the Money”. The ongoing research project examines illicit funding of United States universities by foreign governments, foundations and corporations that adhere to and promote anti-democratic and antisemitic ideologies, with connections to terrorism and terror financing.

The project revealed, for the first time, the existence of substantial Middle Eastern funding (primarily from Qatar) to US universities that had not been reported to the Department of Education (DoED), as required by law. In fact, ISGAP’s research uncovered billions of dollars of unreported funds, which, in turn, led to the launch of a federal government investigation in 2019.

As part of its continued research, ISGAP has uncovered and established that the foreign donations from Qatar, especially, have had a substantial impact on fomenting growing levels of antisemitic discourse and campus politics at US universities, as well as growing support for anti-democratic values within these institutions of higher education. With the explosion of antisemitism at US universities in recent weeks, there are also security concerns that have potential domestic and global implications.

This page will be updated as each new report is published.

Networks of Hate

Qatari Paymasters, Soft Power and the Manipulation of Democracy

ISGAP REPORT LAYS OUT HOW QATAR IS FUNNELLING MONEY INTO THE USA, EUROPE AND THE REST OF THE WORLD THROUGH STATE PROXIES.

On December the 5th, 2023 – U.S. House of Representatives committee members asked Presidents of four prestigious universities in the United States about the funding that they received from Qatar. The impression given by most of them was that their Qatari funding is not coming from the state. This answer is a partial truth as $Billions USD is going to them via Qatari State-owned NGO’s and commercial entities!

The ISGAP Follow the money project’s previous reports have laid out the following:

  • Qatar is the largest foreign donor to U.S. universities.
  • The Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist ideology is intertwined with the State and furthermore the links that Qatar has with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian Chapter – Hamas
  • The fact that money coming from foreign states such as Qatar is having a direct effect on increasing antisemitism and anti-democratic vies/activity.

This report lays out the way that Qatar is operating a war-chest with in between $500 Billion USD – $1 Trillion of assets and growing, to affect soft power in the west – including U.S.’ prestigious universities. 

The report examines the main Qatari institutions, their investments, the amounts of money and how it is being funneled directly into U.S. universities by using Qatari state-owned NGO’s such as The Qatar Foundation as well as other methods of transferring funds without reporting to either to the Department of Education or the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)

In the report, ISGAP examines the following sectors:

  • Hospitality
  • Real Estate
  • Energy
  • Food and Beverage
  • Education
  • Media

For the first time, the mechanisms and figures are laid out in one comprehensive report.

The Ongoing Failure to Report

Yale, Qatar, and Undisclosed Foreign Funding
As part of the Follow the Money Project, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) released a report: The Ongoing Failure to Report: Yale, Qatar, and Undisclosed Foreign Funding
 
This revelation comes in the wake of ISGAP’s initial research in 2019, which brought to light the failure of several universities to disclose funds received from Qatar and other Middle Eastern sources. Subsequently, the U.S. Department of Education initiated a federal investigation, resulting in reprimands for each university found in violation. The concrete evidence now presented by ISGAP underscores the persistence of non-disclosure practices, including Yale University, that are still falling short of complying with federal reporting requirements. These findings raise concerns about transparency and accountability within the higher education sector, particularly regarding financial dealings with foreign entities.
 
The findings reveal that some universities, including Yale:
  • Are potentially defrauding the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) by not fully disclosing the financial support received from Qatar.
  • Are in breach of federal law, particularly after prior warnings and compliance orders.
  • Are evading the disclosure of funding from Qatar, and potentially from other sources.
  • Are potentially engaged in laundering funds through unreported payments in kind or “indirect funding”. 

ISGAP believes that this warrants further federal intervention.

These findings — in combination with ISGAP’s mapping of the Muslim Brotherhood (Islamist)/Qatar network in U.S. universities, the documentation of changing discourse in higher education pertaining to Jewish people, Israel and Zionism, and its connection to funds — all point to a context that is increasingly hostile to Jewish students and faculty. This report argues that these factors play a significant role in the current explosion of antisemitism.

ISGAP’s report was featured today in Tablet Magazine: “What Yale Has in Common With Hamas” can be read here.

ISGAP calls on the U.S. Department of Education to intensify its scrutiny and enforcement measures to ensure that all universities, regardless of their standing, uphold their obligation to disclose financial support from foreign sources. Furthermore, ISGAP encourages a broader public discourse on the potential impacts of undisclosed foreign funding on academic freedom and institutional autonomy.

Hijacking Higher Education, Qatar, The Muslim Brotherhood, and Texas A&M

Buying Nuclear Research and Student Information

The report details Qatar’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist groups such as Hamas and the Taliban and reveals why unrestricted access to Texas A&M University Qatar’s (TAMUQ) sensitive research poses an alarming national security risk to the United States.

Texas A&M is a public university leading state-of-the-art nuclear research with potential weapons applications. It has access to research nuclear reactors and maintains advanced projects in sensitive areas such as biotechnology, cybersecurity, robotics, and artificial intelligence. The Texas A&M Qatar campus was established in 2003 through a confidential agreement between Texas A&M and the Qatari Government-funded Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development.

The Report details the problematic nature of the agreement between the Qatar Foundation and Texas A&M:

  • ALL intellectual Property for research and development funded (including Nuclear) – belongs to Qatar
  • Qatar has access to Sensitive student information.
  • Qatar is working with Texas A&M on weapons development.
  • The lack of transparency of the agreement and reporting of funds received by Texas A&M to the Government

Through an analysis on Texas A&M Qatar’s grants, ISGAP identified over 500 Qatari-funded projects, with an average award amount of approximately $1 million USD, with maximum grants up to $5 million USD, some of which going to highly sensitive research areas.

Qatar’s significant control over Texas A&M’s research poses serious questions.

  • What does Qatar do with the resulting sensitive intellectual property and technologies?
  • Will the Qatari Regime, an ally to Hamas and Iran, secretly provide or sell intellectual property or technologies to other dangerous regional actors?

The sweeping terms of this agreement make it possible for Qatar to proliferate dual-use sciences and compromise US national security.

The Qatari Regime, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood

The Globalisation of Antisemitism and Anti Democracy

The Qatari Regime, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood” report is part of a series of papers that is part of the ISGAP research project entitled “Follow the Money”.  This 11-year project exposes a cause of antisemitism, rather than a symptom, which the Jewish community and Higher Education have been grappling with for years.

To truly understand Hamas, one needs to understand the Islamist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and its connection to and support from Qatar as well as to Hamas and other Islamist entities.

The Muslim Brotherhood ideology is committed to the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people around the world, including the United States, Canada, Europe and beyond and is intertwined within the Qatari infrastructure and civil society.

This report lays out the history and the ideological tenets of the Muslim brotherhood as well as its relationship and connections to Hamas and Qatar.

The Corruption of the American Mind

How Concealed Foreign Funding of Higher Education in the United States Predicts the Erosion of Democratic Values and Antisemitic Sentiment on Campus

Over the last decade, institutions of higher education across the United States of America received billions of dollars from foreign donors that were not reported to the U.S. Department of Education, as required.  The U.S. Department of Education required that those institutions file reports detailing how much such funding they received and from where.

Using the information that ISGAP uncovered and via other sources that are publicly available, ISGAP commissioned the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) to examine the correlation between this funding and the deterioration of liberal democratic norms around free speech and academic freedom, as well as antisemitism on campus.

As part of the ISGAP Follow the Money research project, we found that:

  • The receipt of undocumented money was associated with the erosion of free speech norms: Increased campaigns to punish scholars for their speech (it was associated with increased levels of such campaigns from both the left and the right).
  • The receipt of undocumented money was associated with increased levels of campus antisemitism, and this relationship was larger when the undocumented funding came from Middle Eastern/authoritarian states – Qatar is the largest donor to U.S. universities.
  • The receipt of undocumented money predicted increased perceptions of campus antisemitism.
  • The money preceded the rise of antisemitism and drove this into its local communities.
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