OPINION:
Georgetown University’s interim president will testify before Congress on Wednesday in a pivotal hearing on the root causes of campus antisemitism. The House Education and Workforce Committee has pledged to examine not only campus incidents, but the deeper forces driving them, including foreign funding. You do not need a microscope to see one key source of this problem.
Qatar’s billion-dollar grip on Georgetown is part of a long-term strategy by a Middle Eastern power to influence political thought and public opinion in America. The rot is not at the margins. It is at the core, in the form of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
This elite institution — the most prolific training ground for U.S. diplomats, foreign policy officials and intelligence analysts — has become the centerpiece of a decades-long campaign by Qatar to influence the way young Americans perceive the world and how future leaders act.
A new report from the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) reveals that Georgetown has received over $1 billion from Qatari sources since 2005. That money did not just build Georgetown’s Doha campus, it embeds Qatari and Muslim Brotherhood influence deep into Georgetown’s programs, faculty appointments and research agenda in Washington. Indeed, the Qatari royal family has a bay’ah (spiritual oath) to the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and follows the terror group’s religious rulings and edicts, which oppose democratic principles and are aimed at destroying Israel and the United States.
At Georgetown’s Qatari-funded centers, curricula increasingly reflect the geopolitical narratives of Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood. These minimize the threat of Islamist extremism, promote political Islam and portray Western liberalism as a source of global injustice. The students absorbing these ideas are the very people who will shape American diplomacy and intelligence.
This is not abstract. Georgetown’s alumni are now embedded throughout the State Department, CIA, National Security Council and major media outlets. The School of Foreign Service functions as a conveyor belt to real-world authority. When that pipeline is shaped by a foreign regime with an authoritarian ideology, the consequences are profound.
The Doha campus of Georgetown (GU-Q), one of six American university branches in Qatar, is entirely funded by the Qatari regime. It operates under laws that criminalize criticism of the emir, mandate censorship and suppress dissent. Faculty and curricula operate under the shadow of state scrutiny. Scholarship is permitted only if it aligns with regime interests.
This has created a dangerous hybrid: a Washington-based institution shaped by a government that curtails academic freedom and promotes extremist ideologies. Over time, courses on Islamism have been watered down or rebranded. Faculty critical of Qatar have been blocked from appointments. Advisory boards tied to GU-Q include figures such as Lolwah Alkhater, a Qatari official known for praising Hamas leaders, and Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who has declared that Qatar’s state apparatus is in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In one case, a seminar on Middle East governance was reportedly cancelled after Qatari officials objected to material critical of the Muslim Brotherhood. Rather than defend academic freedom, Georgetown’s leadership made concessions, effectively allowing a foreign regime to shape the curriculum of one of America’s most prestigious schools of diplomacy.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) named GU-Q one of the 10 most censored U.S. campuses in 2019. Georgetown responded not by reforming, but by entrenching its system of censorship.
This long-running ideological capture is now playing out in real time. Since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, Georgetown’s Washington campus has witnessed pro-Hamas demonstrations, antisemitic incidents, and ideological defenses of terrorism. Many involved are linked to Qatari-funded centers. These are not spontaneous, but reflect a worldview seeded and cultivated over years.
Georgetown is not alone. ISGAP’s research tracks billions in Qatari funding to other top U.S. institutions including Cornell and Texas A&M. But Georgetown stands apart. Its Doha campus and its flagship School of Foreign Service combine to create a uniquely influential platform that shapes global policy by shaping the minds that write it.
Universities are supposed to be bastions of critical thinking and free inquiry. But when authoritarian regimes are allowed to select faculty, steer research and underwrite entire academic centers, the result is not education. It is indoctrination.
Georgetown has become a vessel for foreign influence. The Trojan horse is already inside the gates, not carved from wood but built with prestige, petrodollars and silence.
As Congress prepares to question Georgetown’s leadership under oath, it must look beyond surface-level statements about inclusion and tolerance. The true threat to Jewish students and to American national interests lies in the quiet normalization of a regime that funds terror, censors thought and manipulates elite institutions.
This hearing will be a success only if lawmakers have the clarity and courage to name the force behind the rot: the Qatari regime.
Correction: A previous version of this story mislabeled FIRE. It is the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
• Dr. Charles Asher Small is the founding director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) and a globally recognized scholar on contemporary antisemitism studies. He leads the “Follow the Money” research project into illicit funding of United States universities by foreign governments, foundations and corporations that adhere to and promote anti-democratic and antisemitic ideologies.
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