Several colleges dealing with high rates of antisemitic activity received billions of dollars from Middle Eastern governments, a new report found.
The Network Contagion Research Institute, an organization that specializes in cyber-social security threats, released a new report that linked an extensive amount of donations to U.S. higher education institutions from authoritarian foreign governments, primarily from the Middle East, to a rise in antisemitism.
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The group’s findings relied in part on a 2020 Department of Education report that revealed billions in undeclared foreign donations to major institutions of higher education. Federal law requires colleges to disclose donations from foreign governments to the Department of Education.
According to the Network Contagion Research Institute report, schools that failed to disclose the donations were more likely to have received such funding from Middle Eastern governments. Those schools have also seen a rise in intolerant behavior toward Jews and a campus climate hostile to free speech.
“A massive influx of foreign, concealed donations to American institutions of higher learning, much of it from authoritarian regimes with notable support from Middle Eastern sources, reflects or supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry, and free expression,” the report claimed.
Using information from the FBI and the Department of Education, the report’s authors said that schools that received donations from Middle Eastern nations such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia and had failed to disclose them “had, on average, 300% more antisemitic incidents than those institutions that did not.”
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The Network Contagion Research Institute report did not name any specific colleges where the funding coincided with an increased antisemitic climate, but the colleges that received the largest share of unreported foreign donations included Harvard University, Cornell University, and Georgetown University, all of which have made national headlines for student and faculty activities expressing support for the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel.
“This report raises the sobering possibility that international actors are using undisclosed channels to funnel large amounts of money into college campuses (including elite institutions that often have outsized influence on American culture and politics) for purposes harmful to the democratic norms of pluralism, tolerance, and freedom,” the authors of the report wrote. “There clearly has been an erosion of democratic norms on campuses. … These developments are surely complex and multiply determined. One possibility, however, is that receipt of undocumented funding from foreign sources, especially authoritarian ones, has contributed to these developments.”