A new study from the National Assc. of Scholars (NAS) found that the “flow of foreign money from adversarial nations into our universities” has continued. This comes four years after important reports from the Trump Dept. of Education and the Clarion Project showed that American universities were receiving billions of dollars in foreign funds, much of it from countries that are at odds with the United States, like China.
The NAS study, Uncovering Hidden Foreign Funds to U.S. Universities, suggests that extremely large amounts of hidden foreign funding may have been one reason for the shockingly big pro-Hamas movement that sprung up on American universities after the October 7 crime.
“When American college students campaign for terrorist groups and dictatorships in other countries, we have to wonder where and how they get this kind of information.” NAS said, “The hundreds of millions of dollars that Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia spent are a good place to start the search.”
Neetu Arnold, who wrote the report, said that Qatari money was “the main source behind the spread of pro-Hamas messaging on American college campuses.”
Arnold said for the first time in 2022 that Qatar’s money in American colleges “led to compromises on freedom of speech to appease Qatar’s authoritarian government. It is no secret that the Qataris hate Israel and are big supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.”
Arnold discovered that Qatar has given billions of dollars to American colleges, some of which were huge gifts that were not reported. His work has some connections to the important investigation the Trump Education Department did in 2020, which found that some colleges were only disclosing a small part of the foreign money they got.
The Education Department didn’t look into these gifts very closely before President Trump named Betsy DeVos Secretary of Education. After Trump left office, the Biden-Harris government ignored the flow of foreign money again.
This summer, the Biden-Harris Education Department completely shut down its record on foreign funds.
“As a result, Americans don’t know how much foreign money colleges get, what those funds pay for, or which foreign governments have an impact on our universities,” Arnold warned.
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