Georgetown University’s relationship with Qatar has the potential to influence the future diplomats who come out of the School of Foreign Service (SFS), among other institutions, according to a new report detailing ties between the university and radical “Islamist movements and entities associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The university, which maintains a satellite campus in Doha, allows Qatar’s Hamas-friendly government to wield outsized influence over several key schools and centers, including SFS, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).
“Georgetown’s key centers function as platforms promoting political Islam, minimizing the threat of Islamist extremism, and advancing anti-Israel narratives,” a new probe by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) states. “Affiliations include extensive networks linked to Islamist movements and entities associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.”
These influence networks, the report found, extend far past Georgetown’s campus, with consequences that reverberate across the American government: “A substantial number of Georgetown alumni occupy prominent positions in the U.S. State Department, intelligence agencies, media, and NGOs, effectively introducing and reinforcing these ideological perspectives within American foreign policy-making processes.”
Georgetown’s Doha campus, founded in 2005 when the school entered into a 10-year, multimillion-dollar arrangement with the Qatar Foundation (QF)—a state-run nonprofit that Doha has used to peddle its influence in American higher education—gives the Qataris wide latitude in the management of the institution.
Under the school’s initial agreement, QF assumed “responsibility for the construction, ownership, and running of the School of Foreign Service campus infrastructure.” Georgetown renewed this lucrative partnership in 2015 and then again in 2025, with the current contract slated to extend into 2035.
During a ceremony earlier this year in Doha marking the 20th anniversary of Georgetown’s campus there, the school presented one of its highest honors to Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, QF’s leader and the mother of Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. The award came just months after Sheikha Moza praised former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, proclaiming, “They thought he died, but he lives.”
Qatari cash has also supported the elite school’s ACMCU, established in 1993 within Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. The ACMCU has longstanding ties to “pro-Islamist and anti-Zionist entities,” including U.S.-based groups founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, an international extremist organization that promotes terrorism.
The ACMCU has a long-term financial relationship with the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), a Virginia-based nonprofit established in 1981 by a network of “Muslim Brotherhood–affiliated figures like Yousef Nada, Ghaleb Himmat, Yusuf al-Qaradawi,” according to the report. The IIIT drew scrutiny in the early 2000s for its association with the now-defunct SAAR Foundation, a constellation of Islamic groups the FBI raided that year on suspicion of terrorism financing.
Since that time, Georgetown’s ACMCU has continued to partner with the IIIT, including for a June 2010 seminar at London’s Westminster University that was partially organized by both groups.
The IIIT’s financial relationship with Georgetown was publicly acknowledged in April 2017, when the Brotherhood-linked organization’s president and his deputy—Hisham Altalib and Ahmed Alwani—attended the Georgetown 1789 Society, a fellowship recognizing benefactors who “have contributed $1 million or more to Georgetown, as IIIT did in 2017,” according to the report.
Nader Hashemi, the ACMCU’s current director, claimed in 2022 that Israel’s Mossad was behind the attempted assassination of author Salman Rushdie, though it was an Islamic extremist who carried out the attack. Hashemi has “a long history of anti-Zionist statements,” has publicly endorsed boycotts of the Jewish state, and “continually accuses Israel of committing genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and a myriad of other crimes against humanity,” according to the report.
Approximately 25 percent of the ACMCU’s graduates enter into government service worldwide, while “many others” pursue work with international NGOs, the private sector, and media industry, according to the report.
“By steering the curriculum, faculty hires, and campus discourse, these external actors gain leverage over how prospective American diplomats are taught to interpret global conflicts and prioritize specific regional agendas,” according to ISGAP. “The end result is not simply an academic distortion but a potential compromise of the mechanisms by which U.S. society grooms its statesmen and negotiators.”
The findings are likely to increase pressure on Georgetown, which like other prominent universities, has come under fire from the Trump administration and Congress for failing to stem violent anti-Semitism on campus in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror spree. Georgetown interim president Robert Groves is slated to testify before Congress next month as lawmakers continue to investigate anti-Semitism and universities’ response to pro-Hamas activism.
Georgetown has publicly reported taking in $927,598,923 from Qatar as of October 2024. But a financial audit by ISGAP conservatively estimates gifts totaling nearly $1.1 billion. “The $146 million gap between the two figures would appear to represent Georgetown’s underreporting” to the federal government, the report reads. The school also appears to have left an additional $102 million in grants to Qatari students at the Doha campus off its official disclosures.
Financial statements from 2021 to 2024 “also reveal significant non-cash benefits from the Qatar Foundation,” the state-run nonprofit that “owns and operates Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service campus in Doha’s Education City.” ISGAP estimates that Georgetown “underreported approximately $8 million in Qatar Foundation contributions over this period, potentially indicating a broader pattern of incomplete financial disclosure regarding Qatari support.”
For ISGAP, the partnership between Georgetown and the QF presents a grave problem for the future of the United States.
“If foreign interests wield undue sway within Georgetown’s corridors, it means that American democracy itself is subtly eroded: the foundational process of diplomatic education risks being co-opted by nontransparent funding streams, ultimately shaping policies and strategies in ways that may run counter to the nation’s long-term security and democratic ideals,” the report reads.
