Qatar has gained sizable control over Georgetown University, according to a new report by the Middle East Forum (MEF), a conservative think tank in the US.
The university, based in Washington, DC, established a campus in Qatar in 2005 through a partnership with the Qatar Foundation. It has renewed its contract multiple times and extended it through 2035.
Over the past 20 years, Qatar has given $1 billion to Georgetown’s Doha and Washington campuses. The money has sustained both campuses and funded faculty, research initiatives, and endowed chairs on the Washington campus, MEF reported.
“From Georgetown’s Board of Directors to numerous endowed chairs, research agendas, curricular development, and joint appointments with Georgetown University-Qatar’s (GU-Q) Qatar-funded campus in Doha, the Persian Gulf state’s petrodollars touch virtually every segment of the Jesuit school,” the report said.
This is particularly relevant given Qatar’s relative hostility to Western countries and its support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas, it added.
Georgetown’s courses and research indicate a growing ideological drift toward post-colonial scholarship, anti-Western critiques, and anti-Israel advocacy, with some faculty engaged in political activism related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or anti-Western interventionism, MEF reported.
ME Forum: Qatar influencing Western academic programs
The report broke down the “academic manipulation” into three categories: academic programs that reflect Qatar’s worldview and create a hostile climate for pro-West students; hiring terrorism-sympathizing faculty and using radical-leaning curriculum; and promoting research that emphasizes pro-terrorism, anti-West themes.
Over the longer term, Georgetown graduates become more anti-Western and enter the world with “radicalized” views, the report said.
Regarding university staff, the Qatar Foundation has established and funded chairs in three strategic fields: Muslim societies, history of Islam, and Indian politics. This, in turn, shapes how Islam, regional politics, and the modern Muslim world are interpreted within the campus context, MEF reported.
The report cited the chair in Arab Studies and director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Fida Adely. She is notably critical of Western development frameworks, and much of her work as an anthropologist focuses on critiquing Western assumptions. She is also highly active in the anti-Israel sphere, supporting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions and is a member of various pro-Palestine groups known for terrorism support.
Since August 2023, Adely has served as director of Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, which is directly connected to Qatar, as the Qatari embassy in Washington sponsors the Qatar post-doctoral fellowship, the report said.
Under Adely’s leadership, and influenced by her pro-Palestinian activism, “CCAS has increasingly centered its focus on Palestinian issues and become a platform for promoting anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiment at Georgetown University,” it said. CCAS has also formed academic collaborations with Birzeit University, which has ties to Hamas, it added.
Other ties between Qatar and Georgetown include that Sheikh Abdulla bin Ali Al Thani, son of the former emir of Qatar, serves on Georgetown’s Board of Directors, and Hamas apologist and virulent antisemite Mehedi Hasan was named a 2026 Politics Fellow at Georgetown’s Institute of Politics and Public Service.
Furthermore, Ian Almond, a professor of world literature at the Qatar campus, publicly endorsed the October 7 massacre. “I don’t blame Hamas for this,” and “it didn’t start on October 7,” he said.
According to Winfield Myers, the director of MEF’s Forum’s Campus Watch project: “Qatar has proved highly adept at compromising individuals and institutions with cold hard cash. But with Georgetown, it found a recipient already eager to do Doha’s bidding to advance Islamist goals at home and abroad. It was a natural fit.”
MEF executive director Gregg Roman said Georgetown “is Ground Zero for foreign influence peddling in American higher education. It has not only abandoned its mission to educate future generations of diplomats and scholars to represent US interests at home and abroad, but is working actively to undermine the foundations of American government and policy. No doubt they’re eager to get the money, but at base this evinces an ideological hostility to Western civilization.”