Qatar’s Vision Shapes American Classrooms
School children in Fairlawn, Ohio (Photo: Duane Prokop/Getty Images )
Qatar’s vision for America is now being peddled through our children’s classrooms, targeting a pliable population and one with a long shelf life.
Beyond its media empires and bought-off D.C. influencers and think tanks, Qatar has set its sight on the next generation of Americans.
In the last 10 years, Qatar has given over $30 million to public schools and over $1.4 billion to universities. Those universities include:
- Georgetown
- Texas A&M University
- Virginia Commonwealth University
- Cornell
- Michigan
- Arizona State University
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Harvard University
- Johns Hopkins University
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- University of Iowa
- University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
- University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
- University of Southern California
- University of Washington – Seattle
- Washington State University in St. Lousi
- Northwestern University
Donations from Qatar streamed in through:
- Qatar Foundation
- RasGas Company Limited
- Qatar Airways
- Qatar Petroleum
- Qatar National Research Fund
- Qatar Foundation for Education
- Qatar University
- Doha Film Institute
- Embassy of the State of Qatar
- [See full list]
Funding universities isn’t just about charitable giving that trickles down to the benefit of academia. Although we might like to think that academia is more insulated from political pressure than other sectors of American society, in fact, college campuses have become a breeding ground for irrational emotional outbursts that only tolerate the pre-scripted narrative of political correctness.
However, even that is a generous description. In truth, the problem began much earlier.
In The Closing of the American Mind, author Allan Bloom discusses the 1969 incident at Cornell University involving the guns-on-campus crisis, narrating the events in a way that help us understand how Qatari money into schools not only shapes policy and planning but dictates which behaviors will be tolerated:
“The temptation to alter the facts in these disciplines [in social sciences] are enormous. Reward, punishment, money, praise, blame, sense of guilt and desire to do good, all swirl around … Thus it was in social science that the radicals first stuck.A group of black activists disrupted the class of an economics teacher, then proceeded to the chairman’s office and held him and his secretary hostage for thirteen hours. The charge, of course, was that a teacher was racist in using a Western stand for judgment of the efficiency of African economic performance.The students were praised for calling the problem to the attention of the authorities, the chairman refused to proffer charges against them, and the teacher disappeared miraculously from campus, never to be seen again.This kind of problem solving was typical… Historians were being asked to rewrite the history of the world, and of the United States in particular, to show that nations were always conspiratorial systems of domination and exploitation.”
That incident took place over half a century ago. Today, it is more or less the narrative of most college campuses. The American education system has become so insipid and malleable that one needs only whisper a micro-aggression or cry racism to manipulate the academic environment.
The Qataris understand this well, and their funding of schools and programs not only inevitably influences decision makers but also primes the next generation with talking points the undermine American excellence and interests.
Bloom describes how social sciences — a relatively new academic department — became the blank slate for people to write their stories. Social sciences became a battleground, but it didn’t stop there.
Departments of history, religion, and the humanities are all under similar pressure and influence. Their curriculum, faculty and thematic work, and even the students those departments retain, are often shaped by funding streams.
In short, the money writes the story.
We have a MASSIVE problem when it comes to foreign funding of our universities. Ex, Qatar gave Texas A&M millions—and have been trying to hide it. @DailyCaller is one of only outlets to report on it. https://t.co/j1banBg62P https://t.co/qkyr0NxUdW— David Reaboi (@davereaboi) March 28, 2019
Heavy Qatari investment in Islamist organizations in the U.S., along with significant investment in universities, creates both opportunity and means for other groups to repeat the same play. The right combination of hysteria, offense and criticism of racism is a winning ideological warfare strategy of Islamists and their Leftist allies — both of whom employ similar shock tactics to create gains.
Within public schools, Qatar’s vision deploys a softer assault. According to a Fox News report,
The Qatar Foundation, through its American subsidiary Qatar Foundation International (QFI), has donated more than $30 million to public schools in Texas, Oregon, Arizona, and elsewhere for Arabic language education, a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed.While Qatar’s generosity to K-12 schools pays for teacher training programs, cultural events, and curriculum development, a closer look shows that its support is not always in step with American values. The Foundation’s main curriculum resource website, for example, offers a lesson plan titled “Express Your Loyalty to Qatar,” while another lesson plan states that the U.S. began the Iraq war to “feast on” Iraq’s economy.
Yet, somehow despite school districts across the U.S. having very stringent requirements for what makes it onto a campus and what qualifies as curriculum, the Qataris have been able to buy their way in with cold cash.
Most recently, The Federalist reported that Qatari funding supplied Duke University with more than $111,000 to fund teaching k-12 teachers biased info about Islam.
Duke University Teaches K-12 Teachers Biased Info About Islam https://t.co/w7o3tL6gXf— Sloan Rachmuth (@SloanRachmuth) July 9, 2019
Speaking to the culture of failing education systems at large (versus specifically in reference to Qatar’s vision), Notre Dame Professor Dr. Patrick Deneen describes the situation most succinctly when he calls failing educational standards as “civilizational suicide,” going further to narrow the devastation that comes with a compromised education system:
“What our educational system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, history-less free agents, and educational goals composed of content-free processes and unexamined buzz-words like ‘critical thinking,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘ways of knowing,’ ‘social justice,’ and ‘cultural competence.’Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country, cultureless ciphers who can live anywhere and perform any kind of work without inquiring about its purposes or ends, perfected tools for an economic system that prizes ‘flexibility’ (geographic, interpersonal, ethical).”
It’s important to remember that the Qataris are not just buying their way through the door — they’re buying direct access to the hearts and mind of the next generation of Americans.
There is no doubt Qatar is playing the long game in the ideological war, looking at a multi-generational strategy across tiers of influence — something the United States should have been planning for on September 12, 2001.
***************
- Qatar on Our Campuses... • FULL LIST
For years the government of Qatar has engaged in an extensive influence operation on American campuses.
At the same time that the government of Qatar has supplied aid and support to al-Qaeda, the Iranian regime and Hamas, it has attempted to sway political opinion in the U.S. by spending millions of dollars each year on a vast network of lobbyists, think tanks and media outlets. As part of the same effort , it has also thrown enormous sums of money at American universities.
The ties between Qatar and U.S. universities are extensive. U.S. law requires universities to disclose information about foreign gifts, as well as “any ownership interests in or control over the institution by a foreign entity.”
Since 2012 the Department of Education (DOE) reports that Qatar has given close to $1.5 billion ($1,478,676,069 to be exact) to U.S. universities in the form of monetary gifts and contracts.
These university gifts and contracts have been sent by multiple Qatari entities either owned by the government or closely connected to the Qatar royal family. They include, for example, RasGas Company Limited; Qatar Petroleum; Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) which is member of the Qatar Foundation.
Background:
Qatar Petroleum is a state-owned public corporation established in 1974. It is responsible for all phases of the oil and gas industry in the state of Qatar. RasGas Company Limited was a liquefied natural gas (LNG) producing company that merged with QatarGas in January 2018. QatarGas is the world’s largest LNG company. Sheikh Khalid Bin Khalifa Al Thani is the CEO of QatarGas and Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi serves as chairman of the board of directors. Saad Sherida al-Kaabi is Qatar’s current Minister of State for Energy Affairs.
QNRF and its parent organization, the Qatar Foundation, are listed as two primary Qatar gift givers to American universities. The Qatar Foundation is an arm of the Qatari government, founded and led by top Qatari officials.
The Qatar Foundation covers the expenses for six U.S. universities to have campuses in the country: Texas A&M (TAMU), Virginia Commonwealth, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, and Georgetown. The cost is nearly $405 million.
The Qatar Foundation petitioned to stop its contract with TAMU from being disclosed. TAMU is the recipient of the largest monetary gift from Qatar, according to DOE data. Recently, the groups Judicial Watch and Zachor Legal Institute announced an investigation into Qatar’s influence at the university.
The Qatar Foundation’s involvement in Islamist extremism is clear to see with its establishment of its Al-Qaradawi Research Center in 2008 under the direction of the foundation’s chairman and the Qatari emir.
The center is named after Yousef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it uses his works as the basis of its Islamic teachings. The c
Qatar’s Vision Shapes American Classrooms
School children in Fairlawn, Ohio (Photo: Duane Prokop/Getty Images )
Qatar’s vision for America is now being peddled through our children’s classrooms, targeting a pliable population and one with a long shelf life.
Beyond its media empires and bought-off D.C. influencers and think tanks, Qatar has set its sight on the next generation of Americans.
In the last 10 years, Qatar has given over $30 million to public schools and over $1.4 billion to universities. Those universities include:
- Georgetown
- Texas A&M University
- Virginia Commonwealth University
- Cornell
- Michigan
- Arizona State University
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Harvard University
- Johns Hopkins University
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- University of Iowa
- University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
- University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
- University of Southern California
- University of Washington – Seattle
- Washington State University in St. Lousi
- Northwestern University
Donations from Qatar streamed in through:
- Qatar Foundation
- RasGas Company Limited
- Qatar Airways
- Qatar Petroleum
- Qatar National Research Fund
- Qatar Foundation for Education
- Qatar University
- Doha Film Institute
- Embassy of the State of Qatar
- [See full list]
Funding universities isn’t just about charitable giving that trickles down to the benefit of academia. Although we might like to think that academia is more insulated from political pressure than other sectors of American society, in fact, college campuses have become a breeding ground for irrational emotional outbursts that only tolerate the pre-scripted narrative of political correctness.
However, even that is a generous description. In truth, the problem began much earlier.
In The Closing of the American Mind, author Allan Bloom discusses the 1969 incident at Cornell University involving the guns-on-campus crisis, narrating the events in a way that help us understand how Qatari money into schools not only shapes policy and planning but dictates which behaviors will be tolerated:
“The temptation to alter the facts in these disciplines [in social sciences] are enormous. Reward, punishment, money, praise, blame, sense of guilt and desire to do good, all swirl around … Thus it was in social science that the radicals first stuck.
A group of black activists disrupted the class of an economics teacher, then proceeded to the chairman’s office and held him and his secretary hostage for thirteen hours. The charge, of course, was that a teacher was racist in using a Western stand for judgment of the efficiency of African economic performance.
The students were praised for calling the problem to the attention of the authorities, the chairman refused to proffer charges against them, and the teacher disappeared miraculously from campus, never to be seen again.
This kind of problem solving was typical… Historians were being asked to rewrite the history of the world, and of the United States in particular, to show that nations were always conspiratorial systems of domination and exploitation.”
That incident took place over half a century ago. Today, it is more or less the narrative of most college campuses. The American education system has become so insipid and malleable that one needs only whisper a micro-aggression or cry racism to manipulate the academic environment.
The Qataris understand this well, and their funding of schools and programs not only inevitably influences decision makers but also primes the next generation with talking points the undermine American excellence and interests.
Bloom describes how social sciences — a relatively new academic department — became the blank slate for people to write their stories. Social sciences became a battleground, but it didn’t stop there.
Departments of history, religion, and the humanities are all under similar pressure and influence. Their curriculum, faculty and thematic work, and even the students those departments retain, are often shaped by funding streams.
In short, the money writes the story.
We have a MASSIVE problem when it comes to foreign funding of our universities. Ex, Qatar gave Texas A&M millions—and have been trying to hide it. @DailyCaller is one of only outlets to report on it. https://t.co/j1banBg62P https://t.co/qkyr0NxUdW
— David Reaboi (@davereaboi) March 28, 2019
Heavy Qatari investment in Islamist organizations in the U.S., along with significant investment in universities, creates both opportunity and means for other groups to repeat the same play. The right combination of hysteria, offense and criticism of racism is a winning ideological warfare strategy of Islamists and their Leftist allies — both of whom employ similar shock tactics to create gains.
Within public schools, Qatar’s vision deploys a softer assault. According to a Fox News report,
The Qatar Foundation, through its American subsidiary Qatar Foundation International (QFI), has donated more than $30 million to public schools in Texas, Oregon, Arizona, and elsewhere for Arabic language education, a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed.
While Qatar’s generosity to K-12 schools pays for teacher training programs, cultural events, and curriculum development, a closer look shows that its support is not always in step with American values. The Foundation’s main curriculum resource website, for example, offers a lesson plan titled “Express Your Loyalty to Qatar,” while another lesson plan states that the U.S. began the Iraq war to “feast on” Iraq’s economy.
Yet, somehow despite school districts across the U.S. having very stringent requirements for what makes it onto a campus and what qualifies as curriculum, the Qataris have been able to buy their way in with cold cash.
Most recently, The Federalist reported that Qatari funding supplied Duke University with more than $111,000 to fund teaching k-12 teachers biased info about Islam.
Duke University Teaches K-12 Teachers Biased Info About Islam https://t.co/w7o3tL6gXf
— Sloan Rachmuth (@SloanRachmuth) July 9, 2019
Speaking to the culture of failing education systems at large (versus specifically in reference to Qatar’s vision), Notre Dame Professor Dr. Patrick Deneen describes the situation most succinctly when he calls failing educational standards as “civilizational suicide,” going further to narrow the devastation that comes with a compromised education system:
“What our educational system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, history-less free agents, and educational goals composed of content-free processes and unexamined buzz-words like ‘critical thinking,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘ways of knowing,’ ‘social justice,’ and ‘cultural competence.’
Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country, cultureless ciphers who can live anywhere and perform any kind of work without inquiring about its purposes or ends, perfected tools for an economic system that prizes ‘flexibility’ (geographic, interpersonal, ethical).”
It’s important to remember that the Qataris are not just buying their way through the door — they’re buying direct access to the hearts and mind of the next generation of Americans.
There is no doubt Qatar is playing the long game in the ideological war, looking at a multi-generational strategy across tiers of influence — something the United States should have been planning for on September 12, 2001.
***************
- Qatar on Our Campuses... • FULL LIST
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Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani/Harvard Librar( Inset photo: LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI/AFP/Getty Images; Background: Wikimedia Commons/John Phelan)
For years the government of Qatar has engaged in an extensive influence operation on American campuses.
At the same time that the government of Qatar has supplied aid and support to al-Qaeda, the Iranian regime and Hamas, it has attempted to sway political opinion in the U.S. by spending millions of dollars each year on a vast network of lobbyists, think tanks and media outlets. As part of the same effort , it has also thrown enormous sums of money at American universities.
The ties between Qatar and U.S. universities are extensive. U.S. law requires universities to disclose information about foreign gifts, as well as “any ownership interests in or control over the institution by a foreign entity.”
Since 2012 the Department of Education (DOE) reports that Qatar has given close to $1.5 billion ($1,478,676,069 to be exact) to U.S. universities in the form of monetary gifts and contracts.
These university gifts and contracts have been sent by multiple Qatari entities either owned by the government or closely connected to the Qatar royal family. They include, for example, RasGas Company Limited; Qatar Petroleum; Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) which is member of the Qatar Foundation.
Background:
Qatar Petroleum is a state-owned public corporation established in 1974. It is responsible for all phases of the oil and gas industry in the state of Qatar. RasGas Company Limited was a liquefied natural gas (LNG) producing company that merged with QatarGas in January 2018. QatarGas is the world’s largest LNG company. Sheikh Khalid Bin Khalifa Al Thani is the CEO of QatarGas and Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi serves as chairman of the board of directors. Saad Sherida al-Kaabi is Qatar’s current Minister of State for Energy Affairs.
QNRF and its parent organization, the Qatar Foundation, are listed as two primary Qatar gift givers to American universities. The Qatar Foundation is an arm of the Qatari government, founded and led by top Qatari officials.
The Qatar Foundation covers the expenses for six U.S. universities to have campuses in the country: Texas A&M (TAMU), Virginia Commonwealth, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, and Georgetown. The cost is nearly $405 million.
The Qatar Foundation petitioned to stop its contract with TAMU from being disclosed. TAMU is the recipient of the largest monetary gift from Qatar, according to DOE data. Recently, the groups Judicial Watch and Zachor Legal Institute announced an investigation into Qatar’s influence at the university.
The Qatar Foundation’s involvement in Islamist extremism is clear to see with its establishment of its Al-Qaradawi Research Center in 2008 under the direction of the foundation’s chairman and the Qatari emir.
The center is named after Yousef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it uses his works as the basis of its Islamic teachings. The center’s stated objective is promoting the ideology of Qaradawi. Qaradawi also runs a network of charities that were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for financing Hamas, a terrorist group that he openly supports.
The Qatari government (which controls the Qatar Foundation) is also committed to promoting the Islamic teachings of Muhammad al-Wahhab, the founder of what is oftentimes referred to as “Wahhabism.” In 2011, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, then Qatar’s emir, publicly pledged to “spare no effort” to promote Wahhab’s views. He said that the country was founded on Wahhab’s preaching and the government would spread it around the world.
The Qatar Foundation’s mosque is a stage for other radical clerics, including one who took joy in the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in France, describing it as “the sequel to the comedy film of 9/11.” Some openly praise Osama Bin Laden. One lamented that Hitler didn’t succeed in exterminating every last Jew.
The Qatar Foundation is also linked to the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood front group linked to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
While Doha claims to be a U.S. ally, the country continues to provide ideological and financial support to terrorist organizations, all while attempting to influence U.S. opinion through our elite institutions.
Here are the donations given to U.S. universities from the government of Qatar since 2012:
enter’s stated objective is promoting the ideology of Qaradawi. Qaradawi also runs a network of charities that were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for financing Hamas, a terrorist group that he openly supports.
The Qatari government (which controls the Qatar Foundation) is also committed to promoting the Islamic teachings of Muhammad al-Wahhab, the founder of what is oftentimes referred to as “Wahhabism.” In 2011, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, then Qatar’s emir, publicly pledged to “spare no effort” to promote Wahhab’s views. He said that the country was founded on Wahhab’s preaching and the government would spread it around the world.
The Qatar Foundation’s mosque is a stage for other radical clerics, including one who took joy in the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in France, describing it as “the sequel to the comedy film of 9/11.” Some openly praise Osama Bin Laden. One lamented that Hitler didn’t succeed in exterminating every last Jew.
The Qatar Foundation is also linked to the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood front group linked to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
While Doha claims to be a U.S. ally, the country continues to provide ideological and financial support to terrorist organizations, all while attempting to influence U.S. opinion through our elite institutions.
Here are the donations given to U.S. universities from the government of Qatar since 2012:
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