Qatari Money in American Academia: Data, Influence, and Controversy
 

The Overall Scale
 

According to data from the U.S. Department of Education, published pursuant to Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which requires academic institutions receiving federal funding to report any gift or contract from a foreign source worth $250,000 or more, Qatar is the largest foreign source of reported funding to universities and institutions of higher education in the United States, ahead of China.
 

• Under Section 117 reporting, which formally began in 1986, a reported total of approximately $8.8 billion from Qatari sources had accumulated by early 2026. The latest figure, based on Department of Education data, places Qatar first among reported foreign sources of funding, with approximately 1,300 transactions; China ranks second with approximately $4.9 billion.
   

• According to Department of Education data, U.S. universities received more than $1.1 billion from Qatar in 2025 alone, out of more than 8,300 transactions and more than $5.2 billion in total reported foreign funding that year. In other words, Qatar alone accounted for more than 20% of all reported foreign funding to American academia in 2025.
   

• The Department of Education has identified widespread compliance deficiencies among institutions, including missing, inaccurate, and late reports, and has opened Section 117 reviews involving four leading universities: Harvard, Penn, Berkeley, and Michigan. At the same time, the Department of Education reported that more than $2 billion in reportable transactions were filed late during 2025.
   

"Education City" in Doha — The Central Project
 

The "Education City" project of the Qatar Foundation, which is headed by the ruling family, began taking shape in the late 1990s: the first campus, belonging to Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), opened in 1998, while Education City in its current form was officially inaugurated on October 13, 2003. The complex currently hosts satellite campuses of six American universities: VCU, Cornell , Georgetown, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, and Texas A&M (which has announced the closure of its campus by 2028).
 

• The Qatar Foundation provides substantial funding, and in many cases covers most of the operating costs, of these campuses. Various estimates place the combined annual cost of the six campuses at between approximately $320 million and more than $400 million.
   

• The FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) included Georgetown's Qatar campus on its list of the 10 worst institutions for free speech in 2019, following the cancellation of a student discussion concerning whether God should be described in feminine terms. The incident sparked criticism over the boundaries of political and religious free speech on a campus operating under Qatari law.
   

 Documented Cases of Influence over Faculty, Courses, and Content
 

1. Qatari-Funded Chairs at Georgetown

Georgetown, which has received approximately $971 million to $1.07 billion from Qatar over the past twenty years, hosts four academic chairs directly funded by Qatari entities:
 

• Three chairs named after Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the former emir, funded directly by the Qatar Foundation, in the fields of "Muslim Societies" (held, by Dr. Shanila Khoja-Moolji), Islamic history, and Indian politics (held by Professor Irfan Nooruddin).
   

• The Clovis and Hala Salaam Maksoud Chair in Arab Studies, funded by the Qatari Embassy in Washington, is currently held by Dr. Fida Adely, who also serves as director of Georgetown's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS). Adely is active in Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine and supports the BDS movement. An ISGAP report argues that under her leadership, the center has increasingly become a platform for promoting anti-Israel positions.
   

• Professor Irfan Nooruddin, holder of the Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Chair in Indian Politics, has publicly called for a "post-Western world order."
   

It is important to note: all four of these chairs, as well as CCAS itself, are located on Georgetown's main campus in Washington, D.C., not at Georgetown's campus in Doha. This distinction is particularly important in the context of the claim concerning direct Qatari funding of academic activity in the United States.
 

2. The "Bridge Initiative" Contract — A Contractual Condition on Conference Content

In 2024, Georgetown's "Bridge Initiative" entered into a $630,000 contract with the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, divided into three payments of $210,000 in 2024–2026. The contract requires the project to "consult and consider recommendations" from an organization called the Islam and Muslims Initiative, which is supported by the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, regarding speakers, topics, and sessions at conferences hosted by Georgetown itself in Washington.

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3. Brown University's "Choices" Program — A Highly Controversial Case

An ISGAP report from 2025 alleged that Brown University's Choices Program — a history and political science education program that, according to Brown itself, has been used by approximately 8,000 high schools and reached roughly one million students — was partially funded by Qatar Foundation International (QFI), and that between 2001 and 2022 its Middle East curriculum underwent a gradual shift in a pro-Palestinian direction, including, according to the report, the omission of references to the Balfour Declaration and the Abraham Accords.

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4. The Texas A&M Contract — Provisions Affecting Research and Curricula

A contract between Texas A&M and the Qatar Foundation, disclosed following a ruling by the Texas Attorney General, contains several mechanisms worthy of attention:

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• With regard to course changes that could have a significant academic or budgetary impact, the contract stipulates that they require "advance consultation" with the Qatar Foundation.
   

• A separate 2021 agreement concerning "Research Priorities and Governance" grants the Qatar Foundation specific guidance and consultation authority regarding research areas funded by it in Doha.
   

• In addition, the contract contains less frequently discussed restrictions: proposals for new graduate-degree programs at the Doha campus were subject to "consultation and approval" by the Qatar Foundation, and the agreement also restricts Texas A&M from establishing competing engineering programs elsewhere in the Middle East without the Qatar Foundation's approval — a provision that effectively limits the university's academic and commercial freedom of action in the region.
   

Texas A&M announced in February 2024 that it would close its Doha campus by 2028.

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5. Northwestern in Qatar (NU-Q) — Legal Subordination and Faculty with Media Ties

Northwestern's operating agreement with Qatar stipulates that staff, faculty, and students on the campus are subject to the laws and regulations applicable in the State of Qatar — a fact that was also presented in congressional testimony in 2025. The implication is that the campus operates within a Qatari legal system that imposes significant restrictions on freedom of expression, political criticism, and religious expression, in contrast to Northwestern's stated commitment to "free expression and academic freedom."

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At the same time, among the faculty teaching at NU-Q is Dr. Khaled Al-Hroub, a scholar with longstanding ties to Al Jazeera — between 2000 and 2007, he hosted a book-review program on the network and has written, among other works, Hamas: A Beginner's Guide. Critics cite the direct institutional and journalistic connection between the campus faculty and Qatar's state-backed broadcaster as an example of the merging of Qatari government funding with the identity of the faculty teaching its students.

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6. Yale University — Reporting Gaps in Research Grants

Yale officially reported only $284,668 under Section 117 from Qatari sources between 2010 and 2022. The actual scale of Qatari support is believed to be considerably larger — according to estimates, approximately $15.9 million — because a significant portion of the funding came through individual research grants from the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF), which does not publish a public database containing the value of its grants. As a result, such funding does not necessarily appear in Section 117 reporting in the same manner.

For example, Professor Paul Anastas, who previously headed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, participated in a research collaboration at Texas A&M's Doha campus supported by the Qatari fertilizer company QAFCO, alongside additional funding from QNRF — a more complex funding structure than "direct QAFCO funding" alone.

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7. Northwestern — Qatari Chairs at the Main Campus in Evanston, Illinois 

This is a documented example of direct Qatari funding for the university's U.S. home campus: in October 2010, the Qatar Foundation announced funding for three chairs at Northwestern's main campus in Evanston, Illinois — not in Doha — in the fields of journalism, communication, and Middle East studies. The chairs were named after the former emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, similarly to the chairs at Georgetown.

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One of the chair holders, Professor Hamid Naficy, a specialist in Middle Eastern cinema and television, received the title "Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in Communication." In other words, Qatari funds directly support an academic position at an American campus operating on U.S. soil, rather than at the satellite campus in Doha. This is documented in Northwestern's own official announcement with Qatar, rather than solely in a critical report.

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8. Arab Center Washington DC and the Brookings Doha Precedent 

• Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) describes itself as an "independent, nonpartisan research organization," but according to its Form 990 tax filing, all but $900 of its $2.26 million in contributions came from a sister center in Doha (the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies), which is linked to Qatar. ACW has a 14-member academic advisory board, most of whose members are professors at leading American institutions — Georgetown, George Washington University, Maryland, and Princeton — including Professor Hamid Dabashi of Columbia, Professor Shibley Telhami of Maryland, and Professor Osama Abu-Irshaid of Georgetown (then director of CCAS).
   

• Another relevant precedent dates from 2007–2017: the Qatar Foundation funded a branch of the Brookings Institution in Doha, with funding reaching $14.8 million over a four-year period at one point. Former center research fellow Salim Ali told The New York Times that he was warned during his job interview "not to criticize the Qatari government" in his publications and described it as a "no-go zone." According to the same article, Qatar's Foreign Ministry itself stated publicly that the center was intended to "reflect Qatar's bright image in the international, and especially American, media" — wording that, according to critics, indicates an expectation of influence over content rather than merely neutral research funding. Brookings — a leading Washington think tank, rather than a satellite campus in Qatar — closed the center and ceased accepting Qatari funding in 2017.
   

The Claim of Funding for Student Organizations and Campus Activist Groups

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Alongside claims of influence over faculty and academic content, the press and critical reports have raised a separate and more serious allegation: that Qatari funds also reach student organizations and activist groups operating on campuses, most notably Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

SJP is not formally a registered umbrella organization, but rather a network of local chapters on university campuses. According to critical sources such as Canary Mission and others, the organization was founded in 2001 by Hatem Bazian, a Berkeley professor who also founded American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). Bazian previously raised funds for KindHearts, an organization that was shut down in 2008 after being found to have assisted in financing Hamas.
 

• A November 2023 report by the House Ways and Means Committee, From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners, and a separate report by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, The Rise of Radical Antisemitism on College Campuses, presented serious allegations concerning SJP's activities and its attitudes toward Jews and Israel.
   

• In October 2019, ISGAP published a report, Contextualization of the National Students for Justice in Palestine, alleging an ideological connection between SJP, the Muslim Brotherhood, and organizations that had previously supported violence.
   

Beyond Higher Education: The K–12 Educational Arm
 

Some reports published in 2026 focus not only on universities but also on a separate arm — Qatar Foundation International (QFI) — which operates within the American K–12 education system.

QFI has funded more than $65 million across more than 220 educational programs between 2009 and 2025, reaching elementary and secondary schools, teacher-training programs, and national educator networks.
 

QFI's activities extended beyond its official mission of promoting Arabic-language education and became involved in developing curricula in history, geography, and culture, including collaborations with federally funded National Resource Centers for Middle Eastern Studies at universities such as Duke-UNC and the University of Texas at Austin.
 

Following the exposure of these activities, QFI itself announced that it would scale back its activities in the United States.

 

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Qatari involvement in American academia is not limited to isolated donations. For more than two decades, Qatar has built a broad network of influence through funding campuses, academic chairs, research, academic centers, and educational programs, both in Qatar and within the United States. Even where direct intervention cannot be proven in every individual case, the scale of these relationships and financial dependencies creates significant avenues of influence over academic priorities, research, and discourse. The danger lies not only in what Qatar funds, but in the influence it can accumulate through that funding — over scholars and students, and ultimately over public discourse and decision-making in the United States.