How Qatar Corrupts Georgetown and Many Others

When Islamists get good value for their money.

by Hugh Fitzgerald | Feb 5, 2026

Georgetown University.  Photo by Daderot – Self-photographed, Public Domain, Wikipedia

Qatar is that nasty little emirate on the Persian Gulf, owned by the Al-Thani family, that owes its hold on the world’s attention solely to the fact that it sits on the third largest reservoir of natural gas in the world. Culturally, it does not exist. Qatar has made hundreds of billions of dollars from this accident of geology, and some of those billions are used to corrupt institutions and individuals in the Western world, to make them susceptible to Qatar’s propaganda campaigns and to cause them to overlook Qatar’s role both as the chief financier of Hamas and as the place of luxurious refuge for the senior Hamas leadership.

Qatar has a special interest in molding the minds of young Americans by contributing billions to American universities; it has taken a special interest in Georgetown University, strategically located in Washington, D.C., where it trains many of the people who will then go on to become America’s diplomats. More on Qatar’s billions, and their malign effect on Georgetown’s choice of faculty and on both their teaching and their research, within a general atmosphere of anti-Israel animus that has taken hold throughout the campus, can be found here: “Qatari Money Corrupting Georgetown University, New Report Says,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, January 22, 2026:

Georgetown University’s suspect relationship with the country of Qatar is the subject of another report which raises concerns about what the Hamas-friendly monarchy is getting in exchange for the hundreds of millions of dollars it spends on the institution for ostensibly philanthropic reasons.

Titled, “Qatar’s Multidimensional Takeover of Georgetown University,” the new report, by the Middle East Forum, describes how Qatar has allegedly exploited and manipulated Georgetown since 2005 by hooking the school on money that buys influence, promotes Islamism, and degrades the curricula of one of the most recognized names in American higher education.

“The unchecked funds provided by Qatar demonstrate how foreign countries can shape scholarship, faculty recruitment, and teaching in our universities to reflect their preferences,” the report says. “At Georgetown, courses and research show growing ideological drift toward post-colonial scholarship, anti-Western critiques, and anti-Israel advocacy, with some faculty engaged in political activism related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or anti-Western interventionism.”…

The federal dashboard shows Qatar has provided $6.6 billion in gifts and contracts to US universities, more than any other foreign government or entity. Of the schools that received Qatari money, Cornell University topped the list with $2.3 billion, followed by Carnegie Mellon University ($1 billion), Texas A&M University ($992.8 million), and Georgetown ($971.1 million)….

Another recent Middle East Forum (MEF) report raised concerns about Northwestern University’s Qatar campus (NU-Q), accusing it of having undermined the school’s mission to foster academic excellence by functioning as a “pipeline” for the next generation of a foreign monarchy’s leadership class.

MEF found that 19 percent of NU-Q graduates carry the surnames of “either the Al-Thani family or other elite Qatari families.” Additionally, graduates from the House of Thani, the country’s royal family, are overrepresented in NU-Q by a factor of five despite being only 2 percent of the population.

The report also said that NU-Q uses its immense wealth, which includes a whopping $700 million in funding from Qatar, to influence the Evanston campus in Illinois, Northwestern’s flagship institution. “Endowed chairs, faculty exchanges, and governance links” reportedly purchase opinions which are palatable to the Qatari elite instead of investments in new NU-Q campus facilities and programs….

The Northwestern University satellite campus in Qatar has two functions: it ensures that lots of young Al-Thanis will have an “American college experience” without leaving home, and it makes sure that American students studying in Qatar in the program run by Northwestern will be subject to endless propaganda about Qatar and the cause of “Palestine,” from the faculty, whose salaries are paid by Qatar, and whose research and teaching will loyally parrot the Qatari party line on the colonial-settler, genocidal Israelis, on the natural affinity of Qatari Arabs for Americans, on the “resistance” to Israeli aggression by Hamas, and on the splendors of Islam, that “religion of peace” that young Americans must learn to appreciate. And the same Qatari money is helping to spread the same poison at the flagship campus of Northwestern in Evanston, at Georgetown, and at other schools — including Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, and Texas A & M, each of which has received nearly a billion dollars — where Doha finances Middle Eastern studies.

The men in Doha who deploy billions of dollars among American institutions are getting good value for their money. It’s up to us to pull the curtain aside and shine a steady light on this scandalous and intolerable tableau.