Who can forget that incredible exchange two years ago between a Republican congresswoman, Elise Stefanik, and three university presidents: Harvard, UPenn, and MIT?[1] When asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews constituted a form of harassment that violated their university's code of conduct, they responded in unison: "It depends on the context." One of them even stated, "If words lead to actions, then it can constitute harassment." This, of course, drew the response that Jews would have to be murdered to violate the university's code of conduct. By way of apology, she clarified that "she was focused on the fact that, under the American Constitution, you cannot be punished just for words." In American universities, calling a transgender person by their birth name can be considered an act of violence, but calling for the genocide of Jews is not, in the name of freedom of expression.
A new and extremely serious element has just been revealed in the newspaper. Atlantic[2] by Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, Director General of theAmerican Jewish Committee and Lina Murr Nehmé, a professor at the Lebanese University. They reveal that American universities are under the sway of major institutional corruption by a foreign country, Qatar. The sums involved amount to several billion dollars since 2005. They concern Georgetown University in Washington (a Jesuit university!), Cornell University in New York, Yale University in New Haven, Harvard University in Boston, A&M University in Texas, and dozens of other institutions that share this partially secret windfall.
"A significant portion of these funds was not declared to the Department of Education “American, as required by law – which triggered a federal investigation as early as 2019,” they tell us. As always with corruption, the question is what the quid pro quo is. “This funding,” they continue, “has enabled the creation of research centers, professorships, and programs that have gradually normalized a number of positions: the delegitimization of Israel as a ‘colonial project,’ the presentation of ‘Islamophobia’ as a central analytical category – in place of the distinction between anti-Muslim racism and the critique of an ideology – and the inclusion of Islamist movements in the ‘anti-imperialist’ narrative of the Western academic left.”
The question we can ask ourselves is relatively simple: is there a link between the windfall thus distributed large man by a country that serves as a front and financier for Hamas and Islamist terrorism, and the tolerance of American university presidents toward antisemitism? Certainly, they were not paid to tolerate antisemitism, but Qatar's presence can spread a pervasive antisemitism. It is also likely to influence the recruitment of faculty sympathetic to Qatar or the enrollment of students from the Middle East who will subsequently impact the policies of the host country. Cornell University was fined $60 million by the administration.[3] for this tolerance of the intolerable; the president of this university affirms that the agreement "does not constitute an admission of guilt", but he "welcomes the government's commitment to applying existing laws against discrimination, while protecting our academic freedom and institutional independence".
McGill University in Canada also does not hesitate to work with Qatari money.[4] and Kuwait[5]Even though the sums involved are quite paltry compared to the billions distributed to major American universities! The 2025 report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Politics shows that "Canada is a hub for organizations affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which exert considerable influence on Canadian civil society, academia, politics, and government."[6] And what about the United Kingdom, which created a chair of "contemporary Islamic studies" at Oxford University for an "Islamologist," Tariq Ramadan, now primarily known for having been sentenced to 18 years in prison for rape? To obtain the prestigious title of professor at Oxford, Fabrice Balanche noted, "Qatar made a donation of several tens of millions of euros to the British university."[7] "and paid him 35,000 euros per month from 2012 to 2017. It is possible that these revelations contributed to the manhunt orchestrated by about fifteen bravely masked students.
There's no guarantee that French universities are actually benefiting from the largesse of a foreign country, but the temptation certainly exists. Qatari influence is at work within French society, thanks to a great deal of complicity… Let's remember that a "colloquium" was nearly organized in November 2025 at the Collège de France under the auspices of CAREP (Arab Center for Research and Political Studies in Paris), a Qatari-affiliated organization in France.[8]Fortunately, what looked suspiciously like a political operation was unable to leverage the prestige of this institution and was held in a private venue. Freedom of expression was preserved (everyone can express their opinion within the limits set by law), as was academic freedom (politics has no place in a university lecture hall); all the prospective speakers, all the discussion panels, conveyed the same ideology: anti-Zionism, not to say anti-Semitism. The academic world, a fortiori The Collège de France must remain aloof from political propaganda. Let us hope that French universities will resist the lure of easy money and guard against institutional corruption. The warning shot fired by the Collège de France's refusal to compromise itself will, I hope, serve to keep the cup of temptation away from our universities.
