by Khaled Hamoud Alshareef
Qatari Government and Qatar Foundation is using university grants to fund radical ideologies…
The Qatari project with American Universities to nurture and educate their own journos in America gave us Qatari loyalists. From AJ+ to Karen Attiah and others who I will be covering alongside Sharon Collins throughout this article and a series of videos on Sharon’s account.
Qatar Foundation’s Grants and Funding to the North West University is done in ways to avoid registering the North West University as a foreign agent in the service of the State of Qatar. I hope senator Ted Cruz and governor Governor Greg Abbott can shed some light on why this is happening.
The NU-Q (North West University of Qatar), but Qatar has been funding the North West University since 2004, almost 16 years of foreign funding that went unnoticed.
Qatari activities in the United States wasn’t limited to North West University, in fact Qatar Foundation (QF), spent at least $1.5 billion since 2012 to fund a range of educational initiatives at 28 universities across America, making the state of Qatar one of the education system’s most prolific foreign funders, according to information obtained by the Lawfare Project, a U.S.-based legal group that has been petitioning universities to disclose information about their financial relationship with Qatar.
Georgetown has received more than $415 in foreign funding since 2012 and Texas A&M has received $285 million since 2014 hope Mayor Mureil Bowser Georgetown University can explain how a tremendous amount of foreign money is going unmonitored.
All U.S. colleges and universities are required by law to report all foreign sources of funding of $250,000 or more, if Georgetown and Texas A&M did not fully disclose these foreign sources of funding, they should face legal action and financial penalties, yet they didn’t.
Texas A&M university gets $76 million each year to operate in Qatar.
Qatari Government and Qatar Foundation is using university grants to fund radical ideologies, pro Islamist, socialism, antisemitism and anti capitalism on campuses since 2004.
Judicial Watch and the Zachor Legal Institute are battling in court for the truth about how Qatar got Texas A&M into setting up a campus in a country run by a government known for its promotion and funding of terrorism, partnership with extremist groups.
For years, the government of Qatar has been financing an extensive influence operation in America. By funding think tanks, activist organizations, mosques and now American universities and education programs. The influence operation has engaged in political activities that benefit Qatar while inculcating virulent antisemitism, Pro Islamist that continues to spread in American society.
Qatar is the top supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist groups like Hamas and al-Qaeda affiliates, among others. Al-Jazeera, one of the most influential Islamist extremist propaganda outlets in the world, is influencing American Universities.
Since 2012, Qatar has paid approximately $1.5 billion to 28 universities in the form of monetary “gifts and contracts” and we are supposed to believe that? This support comes through the Qatar National Research Fund and its parent organization, the Qatar Foundation QF.
QF was founded in 1995 by Hamad Bin Khalifa, Emir of Qatar, and chaired by Mozah al-Missned, is registered with the U.S. government as a foreign principal since at least 2006, in accordance with FARA.
The registration indicates that it is supervised, directed, controlled, financed and subsidized by a foreign government, foreign political party, or other foreign principal, namely Qatar.
Apart from the support given to universities in the United States, QF spends approximately $405 million a year to cover the expenses for six American universities that have opened campuses in Qatar. Northwestern, Texas A&M, Georgetown, Virginia Commonwealth, Cornell and Carnegie Mellon.
Saudi Ministry of Education, UAE Ministry of Education should stop sending students to these universities FFS.
In addition to its spending on universities, Qatar funds training programs for American students in schools across the United States. Qatar Foundation International (“QFI”), the U.S.- based subsidiary of QF, has spent more than $30 million funding programs in public schools.
QFI was formed for the purpose of advancing the vision of Qatar, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood. Schools that accept money from QFI are required to give over a degree of access and control to the Qatari organization, seriously let that sinks in.
QFI and QF are inextricably linked, not just to each other, but also to the Qatari government. QFI’s Executive Director and ghost writer for Khashoggi Maggie Mitchell Salem, stated in 2018 “QF’s CEO Hind Al-Thani and her mom, QF Chairperson Moza are my bosses”.
Additionally, QFI has received significant funding from QF. According to QFI’s submissions to the IRS, it received over $10 million from QF between 2010 and 2012. Notably, when reporting QFI’s transfer of cash assets, these forms refer to QF as “a related party”.
Surprisingly Jamal Khashoggi’s Editor Karen Attiah was a Student at North West University at the hight of Qatari funding of the college and in sync with the Qatari government agendas of bashing enemies of Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood.
In June 2019, Duke University held an immersion program for teachers of grades 6-12 titled “Dimensions of the Middle East”, more like Muslim Brotherhood’s version of the Middle East.
This teacher training program aimed to train 40 teachers hand-selected by QFI, which provided more than $111,000 in funding. Teachers applied for this program by registering for an account on Qatar Foundation International’s Grants Management Portal, FluidReview.
The teachers invited to participate in the program were ostensibly selected by QFI, rather than Duke making QFI control the Selection process.
Candidates (selected by Qatar) for this program teachers from school districts ranging in location from North Carolina, Illinois and Virginia – first had to commit to QFI that they will create and submit a Middle East curriculum based on the content provided.
In fact, the curriculum appears to minimize and downplay, if not outright ignore, the history and contributions of non-Muslim people in the Middle East while exaggerating the role and influence of the Ottoman Empire.
Notably, some of the “specialists” chosen by Duke (actually by Qatar) to present the program were also involved in a controversial March 2019 conference, “Conflict Over Gaza People, Politics and Possibilities” which is being investigated by the Department of Education for anti-Israel bias and for featuring anti-Semitic songs.
The Education Department launched an investigation into how $235,000 in federal grants were used to fund a series of anti-Israel events.
Organized by Duke University and UNC that featured speakers and events tied to Palestinian terrorist groups, and several of the events held during the conference were organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (“SJP”), a group that has a history of distributing anti-Semitic propaganda on many American college campuses, and thereby fostering unsafe environments for Jewish students. Additionally, several speakers at the conference were videotaped discussing how they held meetings with members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (“PFLP”), which was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. Secretary of State in 1997.
As noted above, at all relevant times, Duke received funding from Qatar.
On December 3, 2019, Duke entered into a Resolution Agreement with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to “resolve a complaint alleging that Duke discriminated on the basis of national origin (“shared ancestry, Jewish”) in connection with the anti-Israel events, Supra. Pursuant to the Resolution Agreement, Duke agreed to issue a statement that it does not tolerate anti-Semitic harassment or discrimination, and would provide a description of the forms of anti-Semitism that can manifest in the University environment.
Duke also agreed to host a meeting to discuss harassment or discrimination (not limited to anti-Semitic harassment), and to include a component on discrimination (not limited to anti-Semitic harassment) in its training modules and orientation sessions through 2021 – for two years.
Notably, the Resolution Agreement neither identifies the underlying anti-Semitic events and conduct that gave rise to the complaint against Duke, nor addresses in any way the influence of foreign funding on the discrimination and harassment experienced on campus. Providing a “description” of anti-Semitism is a far cry from taking concrete action to prevent it.
The Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies the “Consortium” or “CMES” is a collaboration between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (“UNC”) and Duke University.
It encourages collaboration and cooperation in all aspects of Middle Eastern studies across their two campuses and across disciplines. According to the Consortium’s website, this is clearly Qataris rewriting history of the Middle East to serve the Muslim Brotherhood’s agendas.
On August 29, 2019, the Department of Education expressed concerns regarding UNC’s use of Title VI funds vis-à-vis the Consortium’s activities, including its activities for elementary and secondary school students and teachers.
In a letter to Dr. Terry Magnuson, UNC’s Vice Chancellor for Research, Assistant Secretary Robert King wrote: “The Duke-UNC CMES appears to lack balance as it offers very few, if any, programs focused on the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of religious minorities in the Middle East, including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Yadizis, Kurds, Druze, and others. Also, in your activities for elementary and secondary students and teachers, there is a considerable emphasis placed on the understanding the positive aspects of Islam (more like Islamist ideology, while there is an absolute absence of any similar focus on the positive aspects of Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion or belief system in the Middle East”.
This lack of balance of perspectives is troubling and strongly suggests that Duke-UNC CMES is not meeting legal requirement that National Resource Centers, in fact I can see that Qataris are reshaping opinions of future generations in favor of the Islamist ideology.
Qatar is building an army of journalists and politicians with no true understanding of the political structure and conflicts history of the region, the history and ideological risks that comes from embracing the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots.
In 2008, Northwestern University established a campus in Qatar. Funded by the Qatar Foundation and overseen by Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University in Qatar (“NU-Q”) focuses on journalism and communications.
The Medill School of Journalism advertises NU-Q as their “onsite presence in the Middle East” and offers American students opportunities to experience semester or journalism residency programs in Qatar, or pursue their entire degree there.
In 2013, NU-Q and Al-Jazeera Network signed a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) to “facilitate collaboration and knowledge transfer between two of Qatar’s foremost media organizations.”
According to the press release announcing the MOU: The agreement, which deepens ties between the two organizations that have worked together since NU-Q’s inception, will allow professionals and budding journalists from both sides to benefit from the combined expertise of the two institutions through joint research and strategic studies projects, training workshops, a co-designed lecture series, internships and faculty contributions as well as journalist-exchange programs.
In addition, NU-Q will conduct consultations with Al Jazeera leadership based on its faculty research interests and expertise in the American media industry, as the news network moves forward with its planning for Al Jazeera America but ended up with AJ+.
A recent example of the so-called scholarship coming from NU-Q is a tweet from one of the university’s journalism professors, Justin Martin, which used the anniversary of 9/11 to downplay the horrific nature of that terrorist attack.
Martin has a long history of expressing support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (“BDS”) Movement against Israel, and has written about how Al-Jazeera can make itself appear more credible to American audiences.
Unsurprisingly, he has been rewarded with two grants from QF’s National Priorities Research Program, totaling over $1.3 million.
In connection with preparing this memorandum, The Lawfare Project contacted Canary Mission, an organization that documents individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on college campuses.
Canary Mission is in the process of, inter alia, tracing the anti-Semitic effects of NU-Q’s programs by identifying the publicly available content its students and graduates have put forth in various media, including Al Jazeera, AJ+, TRT, the BBC and other MB platforms.
Qatar had its claws in the American education system for almost 18 years, I urge countries to pull their scholarship students from those States and Universities until they can prove that they are not influenced by Qatar and Islamist extremist groups.
I call on people from those states to push for transparency on the subject and end the Qatari influence of the education system and their own children. Now you know what are you going to do?
Khaled Homoud Alshareef holds PhD in Business and he earned Masters in Philosophy. He often writes about Islamism, Islamist factions and modern Terrorism. He tweets under @0khalodi0.
