REPORT: Yale and Other Universities Took Millions from Hamas Sponsor
In the wake of massive antisemitic protests and campus takeovers by pro-Hamas elements, new revelations have discovered that Qatar, which has been accused of allowing terror financiers to operate within its borders, has contributed millions of dollars to US universities. Qatar is also a major patron of the Palestinian Hamas terrorist group.
Qatar has made large and highly publicized gifts to American institutions, including $760 million to Georgetown and $1.8 billion to Cornell. However a recent investigation has revealed that the true extent of Qatar’s influence over US universities may be much more extensive.
The Washington Free Beacon reported last week that in a report titled “The Ongoing Failure to Report: Yale University, Qatar, and Undisclosed Foreign Funding, Volume Two,” the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) determined that Yale received at least $15,925,711 from Qatari entities since 2012 but only publicly reported one grant worth $284,668. The report is part of ISGAP’s ongoing “Follow the Money” project. If true, this could violate federal disclosure laws that require American universities to list all foreign-funded gifts and contracts exceeding $250,000 semi-annually.
“It is difficult to ascertain the exact amount” of Qatari money flowing to the university, “as Yale does not disclose all its foreign funding. This even though, by law and according to the ethics guides of most major universities, all agreements, contracts, [memoranda of understanding], and service-in-kind arrangements should be made public.” ISGAP determined that many U.S. schools, including Yale, “remain in breach of these rules and regulations and are thus engaged in illegal activity. These universities would face serious consequences if the law were properly enforced properly.”
Volume One of the report, released in 2023, unveiled non-disclosure practices at several institutions, including Yale, which led to federal investigations in 2019. The report suggests that Qatar’s financial contributions to U.S. institutions are part of a broader strategy to wield influence and promote the interests of the Qatari regime.
The ISGAP report discovered that some $2.7 billion in Qatari funding made it to American colleges and universities between 2014 and 2019 without public acknowledgment from the institutions themselves. This also included some $1.2 billion from China and $1.06 billion from Saudi Arabia.
In addition, the report suggested that the universities are potentially defrauding the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) by not fully disclosing the financial support received from Qatar and may be engaged in laundering funds through unreported payments in kind or “indirect funding.”
ISGAP’s claimed that its latest report “highlights financial activities that could be classified as criminal and could potentially form the basis for litigation against several U.S. universities, including Yale.”
ISGAP claims Yale has received “financial support directly and indirectly from Qatar…that remains unreported.”
This includes Qatari-funded joint projects involving Yale employees, in-kind gifts, projects financed by Qatari subsidiaries, various seminars and conferences, the publication of books distributed by the Qatar Foundation, and fellowships, thus avoiding public scrutiny.. At least three Yale schools have been awarded Qatari money, including its School of Medicine, Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, and the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale.
Yale disputed the report’s findings in a statement.
“Yale disputes the conclusion of this report, which contains factual errors and misleading statements,” a spokesperson said. “The university is not aware of any funding from Qatar that has not been reported as required under federal law.”
In 2020, the Education Department investigated Yale’s failure to report foreign funds, including those from Qatar. The federal agency determined that “Yale University apparently failed to comply with federal reporting obligations when it underreported its foreign gifts and contracts by $375 million.” The probe further determined that Yale “failed to report its foreign gifts and contracts for four years, then retroactively reported them.”
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