Inside the Qatar Influence Pipeline

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And further ado, take a look and enjoy. Aldi. Good, just for Aldi. 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, Katar's billions in campus donations”

come with a dangerous price. Cassie, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. 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? Right, so for many decades, there have been concerns about Confucius institutes in Chinese money going to universities. And for a while, nobody was paying attention

to one of the biggest funders of American universities or foreign funders, which is Katar. So Katar has tried to have 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, DC in Northwestern University. And these relationships are so close where they have their own campuses in Katar,

where American students can go and learn. And in exchange, Katar 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 in conferences. And they also use what they're 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.

- So let's back up a second

because you mentioned the Confucius institutes, which for listeners who don't know or sort of these Chinese Communist Party sponsored, kind of clubs basically, right? Or are institutes on college campuses

that sort of, they give money to the universities and exchange to get to set up these centers where students come and learn kind of a sanitized pro China version of China, of World Events involving China, what are the Kataries,

what's their, it's easy to see what China's 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?

- Right, so I'm gonna back up even further. Katar is a tiny country in the Gulf. It only has 350,000 citizens. Other people live in Katar but these are mainly indentured servants

and foreigners who are sort of slaves who are building there and get their passwords they can away in all sorts of controversies. So Katar 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 F-35 escort and they had, you know, this big parade

and they really rolled out the red carpet for him. But at the same time, Katar has been a country that has been a safe haven for various terrorist groups. This is including the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. There are different groups affiliated

with the Muslim Brotherhood mainly Hamas. I mean, the leaders of Hamas who were exiled from Gaza were living in Katar and, you know, the most fancy hotels living at large, becoming billionaires all living in Katar and being completely safe there.

So they've had this reputation. Now, Katar 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 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,

And even to this day, they are still refusing.

“Katar 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 somebody who's been in the conservative world for a long time, I don't think it's 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 in, 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. - So, I've been first of all,

that's thank you for walking through that, because I do think even people who are kind of vaguely familiar with what this country is, spelling it out like that, really makes a 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 reputationally right? I mean, do they just want? Do they want to sort of wander all of that stuff through this image of being partnered

with these 10-pole American institutions?

“Are they trying to make students terrorist sympathizers?”

Are they trying to put pro-Hamas quote unquote intellectuals

in, you know, 10-year chairs at Georgetown University?

Is it all of the above? Is it something that I'm not even thinking of? - Right, so it's sort of like pushing an anti-western world of view. So the report that we're covering here is by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, Gensa.

And what they did is they drew on 900 pages of contractual and institutional documentation from a House Committee on Education and Workforce. So they reviewed all these congressional documents and they came up 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 in different initiatives to fight Islamophobia. And that was the sort of mask that they were using and what this report is arguing is that in reality, they were using those things as a political tool

to discourage criticism of Islamist movements and governments that are online with Qatar. So it wasn't just fighting, you know, people being discriminated against in America who's actually saying, "No, you can't criticize these governments."

That might be an anti-American because you're being in Islamophobia. - And so you've covered this topic a lot and not just in this recent article, can you give us some examples of sort of alluded to it to conferences and whatnot.

But what does this look like in practice? Like what are some instances of what happens at Georgetown

“or at Northwestern once they take the Qatari money?”

- 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.

And 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 program scholarship, trainings for students and brilliant pathways, for graduates, all to get into the Al Jazeera network. So that's definitely one where Al Jazeera is closely aligned. - And we should just before you go on,

we should just note for listeners to what really makes that shocking is that Northwestern has the medial school of journalism, which is one of the most prestigious, such as these things are prestigious journalism schools in the country, right?

It's sort of the feeder school to all of the networks and the newspapers. That's one of the places you go if you want to kind of get credentialed and 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 guitaries, it's more than just like these journalists,

these students are ending up places, is the thing to stress there, but continue. - Right, and the other 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 Qatarifoundation, but the interesting thing is, it's headed by the Chechha Moza Bintanasser,

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 the government, but it's clear it's the government.

- So at risk of asking a stupid question, why are the universities doing this?

I mean, obviously the answer is money, right?

But these universities are not hurting for cash,

“and I think that even if, as we sort of alluded to,”

even if some total of what the Qatari, they're sort of crimes and misdemeanors, or whatever you wanna call it, or is not totally known, 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 seeding so much control to, you know, it's functionally, if not a hostile foreign nation, certainly as you said, an anti-Western foreign nation.

- 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 costs that Georgetown University right now is $74,000.

If you live on campus in our 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 with 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 resort, 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 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 in two. They definitely like the foreign money coming in. And I mean, Qatar is a place where their students can go and study it. And it's relatively safe even if Iran

is attacking Qatar some time. 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? Are these or 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, or, you know, whipping up sort of the anti-American or, you know, provis law missed things? Like, what's going on there?

Right, so I did an article back in 2024 talking about a conference hosted at the Georgetown concert campus. And let me just tell you a few of the people who are there. I'm gonna pull this up.

So first, it was hosted by a Matthew Hassan

from San Fesir, the former... - Our boys. - Friend of the show. (laughs)

“- Right, so let me just give you a few examples, right?”

So they had Watacon Far 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 postroom hen after October 7th, where he's saying it came out the perfect moment

for a radical real shift struggle in liberation. That's what he said after, you know, 1200 people were murdered in Israel and including out of music festival. So we have him.

And then we also have Michelin Jabarin, who is a former senior member of the PFLP, which is a terrorist organization. - It's a popular front for the liberation of Palestine, right? - Right, right.

It's a very common terrorist in Israel. And then we also have Easton Eunice, who employees PFLP and Hamas members at his think tank called Al Naz and Center for Human Rights. So I don't know what human rights are 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 example 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. And this was a whole list at one conference.

Usually you'll have one or two bad eggs at these types of conferences in America. - So I mean, this all of this sort of leads to the question, how setting aside the obviously they can do what they want on the Cotauric Ambuses,

but here in the States, how is this legal? How are there no restrictions on these universities? And how is Cotaur getting away with not registering, if they're not registering it 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? - Right, so Alex is here not registering under Fara. This is, I mean, there've been so many op-eds

and people pushing for this. It's unclear why the Trump administration and Congress are not pushing this harder,

to register with Fara.

So I don't know why Alex is here is getting low with it.

It is worth mentioning that Alex's era has a reputation as a credible news outlet in the liberal media. I mean, 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 'cause they like to editorialize quite a bit

and they're reporting, but they have this reputation. So maybe they're afraid of going up to Alex's era, 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

and to 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 wanna point out that a lot of Middle Eastern studies programs have this issue. So much so that Pepperdine University

has just created their new graduate program to have their own Middle Eastern studies major in 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. - Super interesting, and again, sort of a shocking Lakuna 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 one we're going to hear about this issue, but hopefully we'll see some movement

on this soon, Cassie Kiva is the Daily Wires foreign affairs reporter. Everyone go to dailywired.com right now and check out her piece one more time. The headline there is, "Cutters, Billions, and Campus Donations

"comment with a dangerous price." Cassie, thank you so much for taking us behind the story. - Thanks for having me.