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- [00:01]
A
This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability. Veris 18 when you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing, you can do anything so people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing.
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B
Hello, I'm Tim Rice. Welcome back to another edition of behind the Story. Joining me today is Cassie Akiva. She is the Daily Wires foreign affairs correspondent and she's joining me to talk about a new story of hers that is both shocking and important. The headline is Qatar's Billions in campus donations come with a dangerous Price. Cassie, thank you so much for joining me today.
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C
Thanks for having me.
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B
So let's just start before we really get into it, by just kind of walking us through this story. What's going on? What's the issue here?
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C
Right. So for many decades there have been concerns about Confucius Institutes and Chinese money going into universities. And for a while nobody was paying attention to one of the biggest funders of American universities or foreign funders, which is Qatar. Right. So Katar has tried to have so many, so much influence with various universities, but there's two universities in particular that they have a very close relationship, which would be Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and Northwestern University. And these relationships are so close where they have their own campuses in Qatar where American students can go and learn. And in exchange, Qatar gives a lot of money to these universities and has bought influence with these universities. They have boards where they get to recommend which deans they hire and recommend different curriculum and that sort of thing and conferences. And they also use what there are arguing in the study that I'm covering in my article is that they are using the reputation and influence of these universities to try to push their own foreign policy agenda.
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B
So let's back up a second because you mentioned the Confucius Institutes, which for listeners who don't know are sort of these Chinese. Chinese Communist Party sponsored, you know, kind of clubs basically, right. Or institutes on college campuses that sort of, you know, they give money to the universities. In exchange, they get to set up these, these centers where students come and learn. Kind of a sanitized pro China version of China, of world events involving China. What are the Qataris? What's their like? It's easy to see what China is going for, right? You know, pro Beijing propaganda. What's the exchange here? Is it just influence or are they looking to push some sort of narrative?
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C
Right, so I'm going to back up even further. Concert is a tiny country in the Gulf. It only has350,000 citizens. Other people live in Qatar, but these are mainly indentured servants and foreigners who are sort of slaves who are building there and get their passports taken away and all sorts of controversies. So Qatar has had a very complex relationship with the United States. Mainly they, you know, are diplomatically close with various American administrations. I mean, when President Trump went there last year, they welcomed him in with an F35 escort and they had, you know, this big parade and they really rolled out the red carpet for him. But at the same time, Qatar has been a country that has been a safe haven for various terrorist groups. This is including the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, different groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, mainly Hamas. I mean, the leaders of Hamas who were exiled from Gaza were living in Qatar and you know, the most fancy hotels living at large, becoming billionaires, all living in Qatar and being completely, you know, safe there. So they've had this reputation. Now Qatar is also the primary funder of Al Jazeera. And Al Jazeera is one of the biggest media companies in the world. And it's known for some troubling things, including constantly pushing terrorist propaganda. Mainly Hamas, but, but not just Hamas. Even during the Iraq war, they're pushing anti American sentiments, having people on who were calling for American troops to be attacked. Al Jazeera has been compelled to register with Farah in the United States, which is basically saying that they're a foreign agent. And they have refused to comply with this even to this day. This happened, you know, many years ago. They were told that they had to do this, and even to this day they are still refusing. Kotser has tried various ways to get into different areas of American society. A few years ago I reported that they had created this new right wing outlet, it was called rightly. And they had these podcasts where they would pay conservative type C or list C influencers to come on and they would pay them to be on their podcast, which, as somebody who's been in the conservative world for a long time, I don't think I've ever been paid to go on a podcast. So they were really trying to gain influence, and so they found, you know, susceptible people that would take the money and push the propaganda, and they quickly failed. So they've tried various ways to get involved. Now, when it comes to academia, their primary foot in the door is funding. So, you know, since 2001, Katar has given $8.8 billion that we know about. I'm sure there's more money that we don't know about, depending if they're funding conferences or funding different institutes. But the 8.8 billion is what we know about.
- [05:58]
B
So, I mean, first of all, that's. Thank you for walking through that, because I. I do think even people who are kind of vaguely familiar with what this country is, spelling it out like that really makes it clear, you know, that there's a lot going on here and that it's all pretty shocking stuff. But that brings me back to what's the goal? Is it just reputation? Right? I mean, do they just want. Do they want to sort of launder all of that stuff through this image of being partnered with these tentpole American institutions? Are they trying to make students terrorist sympathizers? Are they trying to put pro Hamas, quote unquote, intellectuals in, you know, tenured chairs at Georgetown University? Is it all of the above? Is it something that I'm not even thinking of?
- [06:46]
C
Right? So it's sort of like pushing an anti Western worldview. So the report that we're covering here is by the Jewish Institute for National security of America, Ginsa. And what they did is they drew on 900 pages of contractual and institutional documentation from a House Committee, House Committee on Education, Workforce. So they reviewed all these congressional documents and they came up with this. With this report. And what they're arguing in this report is that Qatar is getting foothold in higher education and turning academic institutions into their vehicles for Islamic propaganda. Now, one thing that they cite is that Qatar was giving money for conferences and different initiatives to fight Islamophobia. And that was the sort of mask that they were using. And, and what this report is arguing is that in reality, they were using those things as a political tool to discourage critic of Islamist movements and governments that are aligned with Qatar. So it wasn't just fighting people being discriminated against in America. It was actually saying, no, you can't criticize these governments. That might be Anti American, because you're being an Islamophobe.
- [07:53]
B
And so you've covered this topic a lot, not just your most recent article. Can you give us some examples of. You've sort of alluded to it to conferences and whatnot. But what does this look like in practice? What are some instances of what happens at Georgetown or at Northwestern once they take the Qatar Atari money?
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C
Right. So like I said, there's a lot of issues with Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera is not a favorable outlet to America. They definitely don't push pro American things. They actually don't allow their reporters to use the word terrorist. I guess for them, terrorists is a freedom fighter, even when they're killing innocent civilians. So one of the most troubling parts that are cited in this report is that Northwestern University has been allowing their students and actually encouraging their students to work with Al Jazeera. They have established cooperation on research projects, journalism and media studies programs, scholarships, trainings for students, employment pathways for graduates, all to get into the Al Jazeera network. So that's definitely one where Al Jazeera is closely aligned.
- [08:58]
B
And, and, and we should just, before you go on, we should just note for listeners to what, like, what really makes that shocking is that Northwestern has the Medill School of Journalism, which is one of the most prestigious, you know, such as these things are prestigious journalism schools in the country. Right. It's sort of the feeder school to all of the, the networks and the newspapers. That's one of the places you go if you want to kind of get credentialed and, you know, go become a kind of mainstream media journalist is the way, you know, and all the places where mainstream media journalists go to work. So the fact that they're then cozying up to, and in some cases outsourcing this stuff to the Qataris is. It's more than just like these journalists. These students are ending up places is the thing to stress there, but continue.
- [09:43]
C
Right. And another thing is Qatar is trying to be strategic with this and hide their affiliation. So they're not directly having the governments give this money. They have a sort of shell foundation called the Qatari Foundation. But the interesting thing is it's headed by the Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of the guitar. So the Qatari family is very much in control of their society. And if you're part of the family, that's where you're controlling things. So, yes, they might say that it's not government, but it's, it's clear. It's the Government.
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B
So at risk of asking a stupid question, why are the universities doing this? I mean, obviously the answer is money, right? But, you know, there are, these universities are not hurting for cash. And you know, I think that even if, as we sort of alluded to, even if the sum total of what the Qatari, their sort of crimes and misdemeanors or whatever you want to call it are is not totally known, you know, it's pretty clear that this is not a neutral actor. So why these schools in particular? Why are they taking so much of this money and ceding so much control to, you know, it's functionally, if not a hostile foreign nation, certainly as you said, an anti Western foreign nation.
- [10:58]
C
So I think there's a few things here. I don't think these universities are hurting for money necessarily, but I think they love money. So the tuition cost at Georgetown University right now is $74,000 thousand dollars. If you live on campus and are full time, your estimated cost is 95 to $98,000 a year. We're not talking for a degree, we're talking per year. And this is because a lot of these universities are entirely bloated. They keep hiring all of these administrators for these various useless positions. And, you know, they're competing with each other constantly where who has the best food and who has this. And they're constantly building and they're turning campuses into resorts, honestly, for these students. So college is getting very expensive and they love the foreign money. The foreign students are not coming in and getting all these scholarships. They're actually subsidizing these campuses to keep spending frivolously. And, you know, a lot of these campuses do give scholarships to the American students, and so they welcome in these foreigners who are bringing in more money. So I think one, they like the foreign students and two, they definitely like the foreign money coming in. And I mean, Qatar is a place where their students can go and study and it's relatively safe, even if Iran is attacking Qatar sometimes.
- [12:15]
B
Let's talk a little bit about the schools in Qatar, the Georgetown campus and the Northwestern campus. Do we know anything specifically about what goes on there? Like, are these, are we seeing students come out of these campuses with, you know, sort of indoctrinated or, you know, coming back and doing kind of causing trouble, you know, whipping up sort of anti American or, you know, pro Islamist things like what's going on there?
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C
Right. So I did an article back in 2024 talking about a conference hosted at the Georgetown Qatar campus. And let me just tell you a few of the people who are there, I'm going to pull this up. So first it was hosted by Matthew Hassan from MSNBC or the former, our
- [12:55]
B
boy friend of the show.
- [12:57]
C
Right, so let me just give you a few examples. Right, so they had Wada Khanfar, who has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. So he was also previously the director general of Al Jazeera. So he was there and he was speaking on Palestine. And we have all sorts of posts from him after October 7th where he's saying it came out the perfect moment for a radical real shift struggle and liberation. That's what he said after, you know, 1200 people were murdered in Israel, including at a music festival. So we have him, and then we also have Shawan Jabarin, who is a former senior member of the pflp, which is a terrorist organization, Popular Front for
- [13:36]
B
the Liberation of Palestine.
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C
Right, right, right. These are the commie terrorists in Israel. And then we also have Issam Yunus, who employs PFLP and Hamas members at his think tank called Al Mazen center for Human Rights. So I don't know what human rights they're talking about. And then we just have like, there's a list of them. There's many other people on this list. But it's just an examp that they have very troubling people coming to these campuses. And they feel like because it's in their concert campus, they don't have to hold up to the scrutiny that they would get if this was in America. And don't get me wrong, they do host people like this in America, too. But this was a whole list at one conference. Usually you'll have one or two bad eggs at these types of conferences in America.
- [14:18]
B
So, I mean, this, all of this sort of leads to the question how, setting aside, obviously they can do what they want on the Qatari campuses, but here in the States, how is this legal? How is it, how are there no restrictions on these universities? How is Qatar getting away with not registering if they're not registering under Fara or whatever? Like, how is there for all the focus that our lawmakers have on American higher education, how is this not either a bigger story or a problem that has already been solved?
- [14:52]
C
Right, so Al Jazeera not registering under Farah. This is, I mean, there have been so many op eds and people pushing for this, it's unclear why the Trump administration and Congress are not pushing this harder, especially when they do require, like RT and various Russian outlets to register with fara. So I don't know why Al Jazeera is getting away with it. It is worth mentioning that Al Jazeera has a reputation as a credible news outlet in the liberal media. I mean, even, even for me, if I need to know what's going on in some Arab parts of the world, they're the quickest ones to tell you. You have to take it with a grain of salt, especially because they like to editorialize. Quite a reporting. But they, they have this reputation. So maybe they're afraid of going up to Al Jazeera. But when it comes to the foreign funding, it's not only shocking that this funding exists, it's shocking that there's almost no transparency on it. The fact that the House had to have a 900 page study into what's going on instead of just knowing what's being given to these universities is quite shocking. So there are movements in Congress right now to try to change this. But. And I also want to point out that a lot of Middle Eastern studies programs have this issue. So much so that Pepperdine University just created their new graduate program to have their own Middle Eastern studies major and institution where they will not accept any foreign funding at all. And that's actually what they're using to sell it to people. Because so many of these universities do get the foreign funding that there is an ability to go to the market and compete with them by saying you will not take the funding.
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B
Super interesting. And again, sort of a shocking lacuna there, but it seems like, as you said, there's movement and fortunately we have folks like you covering this, so definitely not the last that we're going to hear about this issue. But hopefully we'll see some movement on this soon. Cassie Akiva is the Daily Wires foreign affairs reporter. Everyone go to dailywire.com right now and check out her piece one more time. The headline there is Qatar's Billions in Campus Donations Come up with a dangerous Price. Cassie, thank you so much for taking us behind the story.
- [16:49]
C
Thanks for having me.