History was made days before Thanksgiving when President Donald Trump issued an executive order targeting the Muslim Brotherhood. The order creates a framework for gradually hobbling the global Islamist movement. Seen to fruition, the administration’s campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood will become particularly important for protecting the U.S. education system. The Muslim Brotherhood’s bigoted Islamist ideology is seeping into the American higher education system, and Qatari money may partly be to blame.
Foreign funding disclosures submitted to the U.S. Department of Education indicate that Qatar has pumped upward of $6.5 billion into American colleges and universities since the early 2000s. That sum places Qatar among the top foreign funders of American colleges and universities, neck-and-neck with China — a country with a GDP 85 times the size of Qatar’s and a population nearly 500 times larger.
While Chinese money in American classrooms has raised alarm bells, Qatar’s money hasn’t. It should. Despite its status as a Major Non-NATO Ally, Qatar is a leading sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its Palestinian wing, Hamas. And Qatar-owned Al Jazeera functions as a bullhorn for Hamas and the broader Muslim Brotherhood.
This ideological baggage can corrupt the American universities that Qatar supports. The most notable example is Georgetown University, which has soaked up nearly $1 billion from Qatar since 2005. That year, Georgetown established a campus in Doha (GU-Q) in partnership with the Qatar Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by the Qatari royal family. A large portion of Qatar’s funding to Georgetown has underwritten GU-Q, but not all of it. Qatar funds a post-doctoral fellowship at Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in Washington, D.C. Qatari Minister of State Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Saud Al Thani sits on the center’s board of advisors. Qatar also funds positions in Muslim Societies and Indian Politics at Georgetown’s Washington campus. Qatari royal Sheikh Abdulla bin Ali al-Thani is a member of the university’s board of directors.
It should come as no surprise, then, that Georgetown chose to award the university’s President’s Medal in April 2025 to Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of Qatar’s emir. Georgetown Interim President Robert M. Groves, who presented the award to Moza at a ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of GU-Q, says that the medal “is reserved for individuals whose contributions reflect the university’s deepest commitments.” Months before accepting the award, Sheikha Moza posted a eulogy on X for Hamas mastermind Yahya Sinwar. Surely, mourning the death of a terror chieftain with American blood on his hands is not reflective of Georgetown’s “deepest commitments.” As if the optics couldn’t get worse, Groves defended the decision to honor Sheikha Moza during a July 2025 congressional hearing.
Alas, this was not the first time Georgetown failed to live up to its values. In September 2024, GU-Q hosted former Al Jazeera executive Wadah Khanfar at a conference called “Reimagining Palestine.” Among Khanfar’s views is that Hamas’s October 7 massacre “came at the perfect moment for a radical and real shift in the path of struggle and liberation.” This position was hardly an intellectual leap for Khanfar, who previously delivered a eulogy for Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s de facto spiritual guide who died in 2022. Qaradawi endorsed suicide bombings against Israelis and preached that “the abduction and killing of Americans in Iraq is a [religious] duty.” He hosted a long-running talk show on Al Jazeera.
Georgetown is not the only university stained by Qatari money. Northwestern University also operates a satellite campus in Doha (NU-Q) and is a top recipient of Qatari funds. Among Northwestern’s self-stated “priorities” is fostering community “with a focus on free speech and academic freedom.” That Northwestern has fostered a relationship with Qatar, a country that forbids criticism of the government, is ironic. Worse yet, Northwestern’s agreement with Qatar reportedly stipulates that “NU, NU-Q, and their respective employees, students, faculty, families, contractors and agents, shall be subject to the applicable laws and regulations of the State of Qatar” — the same laws and regulations that stifle free speech.
One course at NU-Q that “discusses issues relevant to Qatar and the Gulf” was taught in the fall 2024 semester by Associate Professor in Residence Ibrahim Abusharif. Court documents name Abusharif as the former treasurer of the Quranic Literacy Institute (QLI) — a now-defunct Chicago nonprofit that the court held liable for helping fundraise for Hamas.
Downstream, Qatari influence has started to infect K-12 classrooms. The tens of millions of dollars Qatar has contributed to American elementary, middle, and high school education are modest compared to what it has spent at the university level. But Qatar’s money packs a punch. In one Brooklyn public school (P.S. 261), a Qatar-funded Arab arts and culture program presented students with a map of the “Arab World” that falsely labeled Israel as “Palestine.” Sheikha Moza, the Qatari royal-cum-Hamas apologist, visited P.S. 261 in April 2018.
Just as the Trump administration is aware of the Muslim Brotherhood threat, so too is it aware that foreign money is harming the integrity of American schools. In April, Trump issued an executive order committing to “protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments, and safeguard America’s students and research from foreign exploitation.” Yet bizarrely, the administration continues to hold Qatar in high regard. The Trump administration needs to start connecting the dots, and fast.
Natalie Ecanow is a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow Natalie on X @NatalieEcanow and FDD @FDD.