Qatari Quietly Funds US Academia with Billions

On 28 Novem­ber 2023, Tablet Mag­a­zine report­ed that the Qatari gov­ern­men­t’s part­ner­ships with Amer­i­can high­er edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the pres­ti­gious Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, have raised con­cerns about fund­ing sources for US acad­e­mia, par­tic­u­lar­ly since Hamas, a Qatar-spon­sored ter­ror­ist group, com­mit­ted the Octo­ber 7 attacks on Israel. A research con­sor­tium has revealed that $2.7 bil­lion in Qatari fund­ing reached US uni­ver­si­ties between 2014 and 2019, much of it with­out pub­lic acknowl­edg­ment of the insti­tu­tions them­selves. The Qatar Foun­da­tion and relat­ed enti­ties, clas­si­fied as non-gov­ern­ment enti­ties, often fund schol­ars or pro­grams with­out dis­clo­sure. The report high­light­ed Yale’s lim­it­ed dis­clo­sure of $284,668 in fund­ing from Qatar, reveal­ing addi­tion­al undis­closed fund­ing through var­i­ous chan­nels. The arti­cle also under­scored Qatar’s strate­gic influ­ence in US acad­e­mia and media, aim­ing to por­tray itself pos­i­tive­ly while engag­ing with influ­en­tial insti­tu­tions. Addi­tion­al­ly, it dis­cussed Qatari invest­ments in Amer­i­can sports leagues, rais­ing con­cerns about due dili­gence and poten­tial impacts.