"If you look at what's in the encampments, the kind of materials that are there, they are clearly not from the United States."
A couple of weeks ago, at the Anti-Defamation League's Never Again Is Now conference, two university deans sat with Dan Senor, the host of the Call Me Back podcast, to discuss some of the major issues American college campuses are facing related to antisemitism, the Israel-Hamas war, the silencing of pro-Israel voices, and the growing influence of extremist ideologies.
Washington University's Chancellor Andrew Martin, and President of the University of Michigan Santa Ono explained to the audience that on their respective campuses, they each found that, on multiple occasions during these violent campus protests, about 75% of the participants were not affiliated with their universities and were instead flown in to cause disruption and push an agenda.
For me, as someone who spent eight years as a student and professional combatting antisemitic rhetoric on campus, the most striking thing that these two deans said was that they are certain "other actors" are involved and that the material being distributed on the campuses is "not from the United States."
None of this is surprising, but it should serve as a massive wake-up call for Jewish non-profits, pro-Israel organizations, and think tanks about how deeply foreign actors have penetrated our elite institutions.
I worked as a campus professional for four years, traveling from campus to campus, supporting pro-Israel students, tackling anti-Israel programs, and fighting boycott resolutions to stop student governments from adopting hateful motions. It often felt like I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, attempting to extinguish fires.
It seems that while I was busy tackling these anti-Israel resolutions and pouring my energy into preventing antisemitism from becoming normalized in the campus space, much bigger forces were spending billions of dollars promoting antisemitic and anti-democratic discourse within these institutions.
For years now, Middle Eastern countries – particularly Qatar – have been pouring funds into these elite campuses across the US, money that is sometimes not reported to the Department of Education as required by law. The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) uncovered billions of dollars in unreported funds, which led to a formal investigation in 2019. After Hamas invaded Israel on October 7 and committed the most barbaric and depraved crimes against humanity – then live-streamed and published their crimes online – we thought the world would finally see the true evil that Israel was up against. Instead, we saw justification, celebration, and denial – from protests glorifying the attackers to academics and influencers reframing the atrocities as "resistance." The moral clarity we hoped for was replaced by a dangerous wave of victim-blaming and antisemitic narratives, exposing just how deeply rooted these biases are in academia.
Today, we are seeing the ramifications of billions of dollars from Qatar spent on our campuses, which have brainwashed students at elite universities. Despite presenting itself as a Western ally, Qatar has also built an extensive network of Islamist partners and hosts and supports Hamas terrorists and the Muslim Brotherhood. It also maintains ties with Iran and hosts the Taliban.
Even now, ISGAP has caught Qatar funding the Brown University Choices Program, a national education initiative for social studies from kindergarten to grade 12. The program is used by 8,000 schools in all fifty states and reaches over one million students. The program allegedly promotes anti-Israel narratives, removes key historical documents, and lacks transparency.
According to the report, over the years, the Choices Program shifted its narrative undetected by school districts, becoming increasingly biased against Israel, anti-democratic, and even peddling Holocaust revisionism. While Brown denied that the Choices Program was subject to outside influence, the evidence presented by ISGAP suggests otherwise.
The truth is, the pro-Israel community spent years fighting the wrong battles. While we exhausted our resources and energy combating isolated antisemitic incidents on campus – chasing down student government resolutions, protesting professors, and countering biased events – Qatar was quietly building an entire infrastructure of influence. They weren't focused on small skirmishes; they were winning the war of ideas.
By the time we realized what was happening, it was too late. Entire generations of students had already been indoctrinated by Qatar-funded academic programs and faculty hires, many of whom now hold influential positions in media, government, and think tanks. The encampments and riots we're seeing today aren't spontaneous outbursts – they're the natural outcome of years of methodical, foreign-funded brainwashing.
It's time to stop playing defense and start dismantling the machinery that got us here. We must demand a total prohibition on direct Qatari funding to US K-12 schools and universities. Any institution that accepts Qatari money – directly or through shell organizations – must face consequences, including losing federal funding. Furthermore, the Department of Justice must enforce and expand the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to require full transparency for any Qatar-linked donations, grants, or contracts, no matter how creatively they're structured to obscure their origins.
The antisemitic encampments we are seeing should not be treated as extreme reactions to what is happening in Gaza but rather as a national security crisis – one that's been manufactured, funded, and exported by a hostile foreign regime. If we don't act now, the next generation of American leaders will graduate believing Hamas are freedom fighters, Israel is the villain, and that the United States deserves to fall alongside it. We can't let that happen.
