A sweeping new report has cast fresh light on the growing role of foreign influence in American higher education, reporting that Georgetown University received more than $1 billion from Qatari sources over the last three decades. The findings, released by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), claim that the Gulf state has strategically invested in U.S. universities to shape policy discourse, normalize Islamist ideologies, and establish long-term influence pipelines into government and civil society.
In the wake of the report, it was announced today that a Congressional hearing on campus antisemitism scheduled for July 3 will include testimony from Georgetown’s interim president Robert Groves, in addition to testimony from leaders of University of California, Berkeley and the City University of New York.
At the heart of the Georgetown controversy is Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q), a branch campus founded in 2005 in partnership with the Qatar Foundation, a government-controlled organization under the patronage of the country’s ruling family. According to the report, titled “Georgetown University, Qatar and the Normalization of Radical Ideologies,” the agreement has transformed Georgetown into what ISGAP describes as a “prestige façade for authoritarian soft power.”
The tension surrounding Georgetown’s Qatari ties reached a symbolic peak earlier this year during a gala celebrating GU-Q’s 20th anniversary. At the event in Doha, Georgetown renewed its contract with the Qatar Foundation for another 10 years and awarded its prestigious President’s Medal to Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, a central figure in the Qatari royal family and longtime patron of GU-Q.
Sheikha Moza became the center of controversy after posting a public tribute to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, widely considered the mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on southern Israel. Her post, stating, “He will live on, and they will be gone,” was viewed by many as an endorsement of Hamas’s actions and ideology.
“To award Georgetown’s highest honor to someone openly praising a mass murderer is not intercultural dialogue. It’s capitulation,” said Dr. Charles Asher Small, ISGAP’s executive director.
The report’s core claim is that Qatar’s financial relationship with Georgetown extends far beyond philanthropic support. ISGAP researchers say the funding has enabled Qatar to exert influence over key academic and administrative decisions, including staffing, research agendas and curriculum development. By anchoring its ideological foothold in one of America’s most respected academic brands, Qatar has created what the report calls “a gateway for legitimizing the illiberal values of the Muslim Brotherhood within American thought leadership.”
ISGAP claims that more than $1.069 billion has been funneled into Georgetown from Qatari entities, most of it tied to the operations of GU-Q. Georgetown reportedly receives annual management fees and operates under conditions that limit academic freedom, particularly when research touches on topics sensitive to the Qatari regime. These include women’s rights, LGBTQ+ issues, democracy promotion and critical analyses of political Islam.
“The Qatari regime identified Georgetown as a strategic investment,” Small said. “It is a university that produces diplomats, policymakers, and scholars who shape the ideological architecture of the future. That makes it a prime target for influence.”
Georgetown’s Global Footprint, Local Consequences
Founded in 1789 as a Jesuit institution, Georgetown has long held a reputation for academic excellence and elite political access. Its School of Foreign Service has educated U.S. presidents, senators, diplomats and global leaders. That pedigree makes the Qatar partnership particularly sensitive, ISGAP argues, because it effectively gives a foreign authoritarian regime a seat at the table in shaping American and international policy dialogue.
Critics of the partnership argue that GU-Q’s role has expanded beyond education. According to the report, the campus acts as a training ground for Qatari bureaucrats and a legitimizing force for the regime’s ideological preferences. While Georgetown maintains that academic freedom is respected at GU-Q, ISGAP argues that faculty self-censorship is common, particularly on topics that may run afoul of Qatar’s legal codes, which criminalize dissent and restrict free expression.
Centers in Washington Also Under Fire
The report also scrutinizes Georgetown’s main campus in Washington, particularly its Middle East-focused centers, including the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). Both centers have received significant funding from Gulf states and have come under previous scrutiny for their alleged ideological bias.
A 2020 Department of Education inquiry cited ACMCU for promoting a narrow, politicized worldview in ways that appeared to align with the interests of foreign donors. The ISGAP report goes further, arguing that these centers help mainstream views that downplay the threat posed by Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood and create a hostile environment for Jewish and pro-Israel voices on campus.
In recent years, speakers affiliated with GU-Q and its connected centers have platformed voices sympathetic to groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. The report claims that these platforms blur the line between academic freedom and ideological promotion.
The report warns that the ideological influence is now bearing fruit in Washington. According to ISGAP, graduates and former faculty members from Georgetown’s Qatar campus and Middle East centers now hold positions within the State Department, intelligence agencies, think tanks and advocacy organizations.
The fear, Small said, is that this influence is not merely academic but actively shaping foreign policy in ways aligned with Qatari interests. The report describes this as a “long game,” whereby soft power investments today yield political influence tomorrow.
Campus Climate and Rising Antisemitism
Georgetown is not immune from the broader surge in campus unrest and antisemitism. In recent months, students have held pro-Hamas rallies, and Jewish students have reported feeling unsafe. ISGAP suggests that these incidents are the predictable consequence of years of ideological grooming funded by foreign regimes.
“Just three miles from the site where two Israeli embassy workers were murdered last week, Georgetown continues to host a program that for decades has whitewashed extremism,” Dr. Small said. “We are now seeing the impact of this normalization — on campus, in the media and on our streets.”
The report on Georgetown is part of ISGAP’s larger “Follow the Money” initiative, which investigates Qatari and Muslim Brotherhood-linked funding across American academia. Previous reports have exposed large contributions to Cornell, Yale, Texas A&M and other institutions.
What sets Georgetown apart, ISGAP argues, is the depth of integration and the symbolic importance of its global brand.
Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident and current chair of ISGAP, summed up the stakes: “This [report] is not a campaign against education. It is a campaign to save it. When foreign powers exploit our freedoms to undermine them, we must respond.”
A Call for Reform
The report concludes with several recommendations, including congressional hearings, a full audit by the Department of Education and the immediate enforcement of transparency requirements for foreign donations. It also calls on Georgetown to end its relationship with the Qatar Foundation and issue a public accounting of its foreign-funded programs.
Advocates for reform say the moment has come for American universities to choose between global partnerships and their founding values.
“This is no longer theoretical,” one academic freedom advocate told ISGAP. “It’s about whether American institutions remain bulwarks of liberal democracy or become vessels for its erosion.”
To read the full report, download it here.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.