International Christian Concern (ICC) President Jeff King warned on Monday that pro-Hamas rallies are flourishing on American campuses because “there is a massive, hidden, and illegal flow of dollars being funneled to American Ivy League schools from the governments of Qatar and the Saudis.”
King said in statements emailed to the press that the curious inability of Ivy League university presidents to explain how their safe-space schools suddenly became bubbling cauldrons of anti-Semitic hatred is not difficult to explain, even though the administrations seem to have trouble articulating the reasons to Congress.
“The answer is simple: What’s being taught is bought!” he contended.
King pointed to a report published by the Gatestone Institute at the beginning of 2024 called Dark Money Nightmare: How Qatar Bought the Ivy League. The report, in turn, cited data compiled by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism & Policy (ISGAP) and the Department of Education under the Trump administration, which made a serious effort to probe foreign influence on American higher education.
ISGAP noted that at least 100 American colleges and universities “illegally withheld information on approximately $13 billion in undocumented contributions from foreign governments, many of which are authoritarian.”
Universities that secretly accepted foreign funding tended to have much higher levels of “speech intolerance” and antisemitism, creating a culture of censorship in which pro-Hamas students might easily come to believe they have the right and duty to shout down Jewish students or prevent them from attending classes.
Qatar makes it particularly easy for universities to accept large amounts of unreported funding because it launders its money through a non-profit called the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development. Although it was established by the Emir of Qatar some 30 years ago, this “not-for-profit” organization is technically “private,” so its donations can elude much of the scrutiny directed against money coming directly from foreign governments.
As of 2023, Qatar contributed more money to American universities than any other country in the world – and Qatar hosts the leadership of the murderous Hamas terrorist gang in luxurious accommodations, protecting them from the consequences of actions such as the October 7 atrocities against Israeli civilians.
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Qatar also nourished and protected the Muslim Brotherhood and its numerous Islamist offshoots, which led to a years-long diplomatic conflict with the Gulf states allied with America, because the Muslim Brotherhood sought to undermine their governments.
ISGAP pointed out that even with full disclosure, the total dollar amounts pumped into American universities by Qatar do not paint an accurate picture of Qatari influence, because that money is concentrated “within a contained number of elite U.S. universities to maximize its influence” – a donation strategy suggesting a strategy to “advance Qatari state interests,” rather than “pure philanthropy.”
Another report on Qatar’s “tuition of terror” from CalCalist in October 2023 found that some of the biggest recipients of Qatar’s billions were also the campuses where ugly and violent anti-Semitic demonstrations flourished the most rapidly, in part because those schools tend to have large and well-funded pro-Palestinian groups. Some of those groups were organizing pro-Hamas “days of rage” even before Israel commenced its military response to the October 7 attacks.
“We should not be surprised when we see students at many colleges voicing support for extremist Islamist movements like Hamas. Follow the money. Christians need to understand that these groups are just as anti-Christian as they are anti-Jewish,” said the ICC’s Jeff King.
The Jerusalem Post took a similar view in April of Qatar’s influence on campus protests:
The disgraceful success of the despicable protests against Israel and in support of Hamas on US campuses stems from the fact that they are anything but spontaneous. They are meticulously organized and generously funded. To uncover the entities behind this organization, one should revisit the Middle East of 2019, when a coalition of Arab states – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt – levied a boycott against Qatar for its support of terrorism.
In contrast to the present, during the boycott period, Arab commentators and journalists published articles that exposed Qatar’s propaganda efforts in the US and the substantial funds it poured into “educating” America. Before the Saudi-Qatari reconciliation five years ago, the Arab press in the coalition countries disclosed how the “Muslim Brotherhood” movement had begun to dominate segments of the American educational system.
During the period of eye-opening Saudi-Qatari hostility described by the Jerusalem Post, Arab media commented on how professors and students aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood became disturbingly influential on American campuses. They used the censorship and thought-control tools of political correctness to turn Islamism into a new element of “wokeness,” sanctifying the Palestinians as oppressed people of color and treating all opposition to their cause as politically incorrect “racist thought” that should be silenced.
Writing at the Orange County Register in late April, columnist Thomas D. Elias pointed to Qatari money as one reason there were demonstrators marching around on campuses yelling “We Are Hamas!” and “Gas the Jews” on the morning after the October 7 attacks, “as if the Jewish nation had already bombed Gaza to smithereens.”
“For those who have wondered why many faculty members at California campuses like UC Berkeley, Stanford, USC, UCLA and UC Santa Barbara participate enthusiastically in the ongoing protests,” Elias noted, “where an unknown but significant percentage of participants are not actual students, the Qatari and other Arab contributions might provide a clue, as they help fund hundreds of teaching positions.”