Christian Group: Qatari Dark Money Behind Campus Uprisings

(Dreamstime)

The head of a nongovernmental Christian organization warned Monday of a direct link between the anti-Israel and antisemitic uprisings on college campuses to the billions of dollars of dark money being funneled from the government of Qatar to American universities.

International Christian Concern President Jeff King said in a statement Monday, “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,” Breitbart reported.

According to the watchdog Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, Qatar gave $4.7 billion to dozens of U.S. colleges and universities between 2001 and 2021.

“The answer is simple: What’s being taught is bought!” King said in the statement.

Further, the ISGAP wrote in its November 2023 report that at least 100 U.S. universities “illegally withheld information on approximately $13 billion in undocumented contributions from foreign governments, many of which are authoritarian.”

According to the Gatestone Institute, Qatar funnels the contributions through its Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, a not-for-profit established in 1995 that allows it to conceal its funding as “private donations,” enabling universities not to disclose the origins of the gifts.

Even a coalition of Arab states — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt — highlighted Qatar’s funding into “educating” America during the group’s boycott of Qatar supporting terrorism in 2019, the Jerusalem Post reported.

An UAE researcher wrote an article headlined, “Qatar and the funding of American universities” in July 2020 asserting that Qatari influence helped to stem dissenting views on American campuses as “political correctness” and “racist thought.”

ISGAP noted U.S. universities that took in foreign funding saw higher levels of “speech intolerance.”

“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,” King said in the statement.