A new legal battle is unfolding over Qatar's financial influence on prominent American universities, as watchdog organizations seek transparency about billions in foreign funding flowing into US higher education institutions.
The Zachor Legal Institute, in conjunction with Judicial Watch, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the US Department of Education a couple of weeks ago, seeking records related to Doha’s funding and operations at five prestigious American universities: Georgetown, Northwestern, Cornell, Harvard, and the University of Michigan.
The legal action comes in the wake of Texas A&M University's February 2024 decision to shut its Qatar campus, following revelations from a previous lawsuit that uncovered nearly half a billion dollars in funding from the Gulf nation hosting the Hamas leadership to the university.
According to a February 2024 report, Qatar has provided or contracted approximately $6 billion to American universities since 2007.
Critics argue this substantial financial involvement has granted Qatar significant leverage in both American political discourse and academic institutions.
In a public statement, Marc Greendorfer, president of the Zachor Legal Institute, reiterated his frustration at the non-transparent funding of Doha to US universities. “We were disappointed with the opacity and obstruction of the prior administration, which seems to have had a policy of preventing the American people from knowing what terror-supporting foreign actors have been doing in our schools,” Greendofrer said, expressing his optimism about the new legal action.
Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, urged the Trump Education Department to "expose the details of this foreign influence operation as soon as possible,” denouncing the last administration’s lack of will to address what he deemed are “Qatari government funds manipulating American universities.”
According to the statement, the lawsuit was prompted by the Department of Education's failure to respond to a detailed FOIA request submitted by the Zachor Legal Institute in March of 2024.
The request sought various documents, including inquiries, reports, and memoranda concerning Qatar's involvement with several university programs, including Georgetown's campus in Doha and its Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in Washington.
The heightened scrutiny of Qatar's academic influence follows a broader pattern of concerns about the nation's international activities. In March 2024, a major corruption scandal dubbed "Qatargate" emerged in Europe, involving alleged bribes of $4.3 million to European Union officials to influence policy decisions favorable to Qatar.
Qatari influence over US education – a dubious history
The current lawsuit builds on previous successful legal efforts, in which the organizations spent over five years battling the Doha-owned Qatar Foundation in Texas courts to obtain information about Texas A&M's funding.
Their victory led to the disclosure of more than $522 million in Qatari funding to the university between January 2013 and May 2018, with the Qatar Foundation providing approximately $485 million of that amount.
More concerning, the legal victory revealed contracts suggesting Texas A&M may have granted the Qatar Foundation access to sensitive intellectual property.
After discovering that it had been providing intellectual property to Qatar, the Texas A&M University board decided then to close its Doha campus in February.
Texas A&M and the Qatar Foundation, a regime-controlled agency that upholds relationships between Qatar and foreign universities, signed the agreements.
These contracts allowed Qatar to obtain control of research and discoveries, including those related to nuclear research, made at Texas A&M’s Doha campus using the university’s world-renowned resources.
Critics argue that Qatar's financial involvement in American universities has served to mainstream anti-Israel propaganda and silence criticism about Doha's longstanding ties to Hamas and other terror groups, hoping that the new US administration would press forward to expose foreign intervention in universities, especially following the pro-Hamas trend in campuses following the October 7th massacre.
The Zachor Legal Institute, which focuses on combating anti-Semitism, has been particularly active in raising awareness about Qatar's global influence operations.
The current legal challenge, which seeks transparency from five American institutions, represents the latest chapter in ongoing efforts to understand and evaluate the impact of foreign funding on American higher education.
Doha’s involvement in the education sector of the US is not limited to universities: reports have shown that Qatar Foundation International is funding and promoting courses for K-12 schools in several school districts in California and across the US in hundreds of millions of dollars, many of them revolving around anti-Israel narratives that erases Jewish presence in and ties to the Land of Israel.
While exerting its influence on American schoolchildren and promoting anti-Israel stances, Qatar was also reportedly slammed by the US State Department last year for propagating antisemitism and violence in their own school system at home.
Also on the issue of Qatari influence in the US, the Zachor Legal Institute has published a report regarding AJ+, a subsidiary of Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera outlet, which has been flouting a demand to register under the foreign agent act (FARA) sent by the US Department of Justice several years ago.
According to Judicial Watch, the Department of Education has not yet publicly responded to the lawsuit, and representatives from the five universities named in the FOIA request have not issued formal statements regarding the legal action.