An Israel-Funded Campaign to Link Qatar to Campus Antisemitism

ISGAP is attempting to shape policy in Washington, at a time when the Trump administration is looking to justify a broader crackdown on opposition to the war on Gaza.

Israel’s bombing attack in the Qatari capital of Doha last week represented a new escalation in its campaign against its Gulf Arab rival. In addition to the Middle East itself, the standoff between Israel and Qatar has been playing out in the halls of the White House and Congress, where both sides have been working hard to jockey for support from the Trump administration.

The Quincy Institute recently published a report on Qatari influence in the United States: "Soft Power, Hard Influence: How Qatar Became a Giant in Washington." Nick Cleveland-Stout is one of the co-authors of that report. In the article below, Nick shares an investigation into a controversial non-government research organization working on the pro-Israel side, called the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy. The organization’s recent claims and shoddy statistics are now attempting to shape policy in Washington, at a time when the Trump administration is looking to justify a broader crackdown on domestic opposition to the genocide in Gaza.

—Murtaza Hussain

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Dr. Charles Asher Small testifies before the Senate HELP Committee in March.

In a congressional hearing in July of last year, a research scholar on antisemitism named Charles Asher Small shared an explosive finding: Funding from the government of Qatar had fueled a 300% spike in antisemitism on university campuses in the United States.

Members of Congress responded with rapt interest. “I want everybody to hear this. So universities that took money from Qatar had a 300% increase in antisemitism [compared to] other universities?” said Iowa Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra.

“Yeah. Compared to American universities that are not receiving money from Qatar,” responded Small.

“Unbelievable,” said Rep. Feenstra.

The statistic about Qatari funding for antisemitism became the highlight of Small’s testimony to Congress. But this precise statistic was never actually recorded in his study.

Small repeated the same claim in a Senate hearing in March of this year. But when contacted for comment about the figure, ISGAP could not point Drop Site to any specific report or finding. One ISGAP study published in 2023 did report that, from 2015-2020, universities that received money from “Middle Eastern” donors had a 300% increase in antisemitic incidents compared to those that do not. But this report is also disputed—and there is no data in it specifically linking Qatari funding to a rise in antisemitic incidents.

Small is the head of the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy (ISGAP), an organization billed as a research center, “dedicated to scholarly research into the origins, processes, and manifestations of global antisemitism and of other forms of prejudice.” But despite its influence among policymakers who continue to rely on ISGAP to provide them with data and analysis, the organization has a track record of promoting unsubstantiated claims.

Drop Site interviewed over a half-dozen former employees and scholars of ISGAP, many of whom explained that the organization has strayed from the mission of academic study of antisemitism into a hyper-fixation on Qatari funding of U.S. institutions—while ISGAP itself has accepted foreign funding from Israel.

Israel and Qatar have maintained diplomatic and trade contacts for years. But they have been in conflict recently over numerous issues, including Qatar’s support for media organizations critical of Israel such as Al Jazeera, and their conflicting alliances during the Arab Spring. The standoff between the two countries escalated sharply last week when Israel carried out an attack again Hamas in the Qatari capital of Doha.

Small also testified, without evidence, that pro-Palestine groups Students for Justice of Palestine (SJP) and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) are funded by Qatar. During the Senate hearing in March, Small was asked why Qatar is funding universities. “I think it is the use of soft power. It's funding certain institutes and professors in the classroom and connected to the encampment. SJP comes out of AMP, which is part of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Small then went on to compare Qatari funding and pro-Palestine organizations to Hitler. “The teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood is that the true believer, the true Muslim is obligated to complete the work of Hitler. This is what is now entering into our universities unchecked.”

Fixation on Qatar

The Israeli-funded ISGAP has become a go-to source for lawmakers seeking to draw critical scrutiny towards pro-Palestine protests on college campuses. The organization takes credit for helping trigger a series of high-profile hearings by U.S. lawmakers, while promoting the theory that the protests are being driven by money provided by the government of Qatar. “All these hearings were the result of our report that all these universities, beginning from Harvard, are taking a lot of money from Qatar,” ISGAP chair Natan Sharansky said during a recorded conversation at the Palm Beach County Country Club.

One former employee, granted anonymity to freely discuss their former employer, explained to Drop Site that they had concerns that the organization’s fixation on Qatar lacked hard evidence. “Charles [Dr. Small] had a theory that Qatar was funding academics and donating money to universities to get them to emphasize the Palestinian experience,” the former ISGAP employee said. “That’s when the wheels started to fall off the bus.”

Another ISGAP report estimated that Qatar has given Columbia University $7.1 million in unreported funding since 2006. The $7.1 million figure would rank Qatar 31st among the highest foreign donors to the school—but even that figure is highly inflated. Half of the unreported funding is based on tuition dollars from 14 Qatari students at Columbia between 2006 and 2023, less than one student per year. The rest of the figures are estimates for research projects to study anything from hydrogen production to water desalination.

Despite giving less money to Columbia University than Liechtenstein gives to the university, ISGAP claims that Qatar’s funding of the university is grounds for a federal investigation to “explore the impact of Qatari funding on the increase of antisemitism.” ISGAP also cited this funding as evidence to “investigate and prosecute any undisclosed Qatari and foreign funding of U.S. university programs or personnel as illegal, unregistered foreign lobbying.”

In its flagship report on foreign funding of universities, ISGAP also claimed that the Department of Education had found $13 billion in undisclosed contributions from foreign governments—led by Qatar—to American colleges and universities between 2014 and 2019. However, the report that ISGAP cited revealed $6.5 billion in unreported funding, not $13 billion. In a scathing review of the study, foreign policy analyst Mitchell Bard wrote that “the problem with this report is that it starts with the conclusion reflected in the title and then tries to contort the data to fit it.”

ISGAP did not respond to a question about this discrepancy, but appears to have quietly corrected their number, using $6.5 billion in recent testimony. The $13 billion figure, however, had already been reported by the Free Press and tweeted out by the House Committee on Education & Workforce.

In response to a question about the organization’s focus on Qatari funding of universities, ISGAP defended its research: “The ISGAP report, Corruption of the American Mind study, demonstrates a correlation between foreign government funding and increases in antisemitic incidents on U.S. campuses. Qatar emerges as a particularly influential actor within that category. This is not speculation.”

ISGAP’s own report acknowledges it is speculative research, concluding that “because our analyses were entirely correlational, we cannot make clear claims about causal directions.”

Small has gone beyond university campuses with his theory about Qatari influence over American society. In a July interview with the Canadian Jewish News (which Drop Site obtained a transcript of), Small claimed that New York Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani is “funded by Qatar” and said that “Canadians need to be proud to be called Islamophobic.” Canadian Jewish News was forced to retract the podcast, saying “some readers pointed out that some of the content within the podcast was Islamophobic.”

Doha’s Influence

Notwithstanding claims of a grand conspiracy promoted by Small, Qatar does have significant influence in the United States. Qatari lobbyists score more in-person meetings with political contacts such as members of Congress and their staffers than any other country. At least three former consultants for Qatar now boast cabinet positions in the Trump administration. The Qatari government even gifted a $400 million Air Force One jet to Trump earlier this year, triggering bipartisan concern over potential conflicts of interest.

ISGAP notes that Qatar is able to exert its influence over campuses in Education City, a hub of education centers in Qatar that hosts campuses from American universities such as Cornell, Texas A&M, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, and Georgetown. For instance, the organization points out in a report on Texas A&M’s contract that changes to curriculum require "advance consultation with Qatar Foundation.” After public pressure, Texas A&M decided to shutter the campus in Qatar by 2028, a decision ISGAP applauded.

But that is happening in Qatar, not the U.S. While Qatar is the largest foreign government funder to American higher education, the vast majority of that funding stays in Education City. For instance, Qatar pays Northwestern University some $70 million a year, 90% of which is spent in Qatar. 75% of the students in Education City are Qatari citizens or residents.

On U.S. campuses, ISGAP’s allegations rely on loose evidence. For instance, the organization claims that Georgetown professors Jonathan A.C. Brown and Nader Hashemi are examples of how “Qatar-linked intellectuals can steer discourse away from evidence-based scholarship and toward overt apologetics for political Islam.” ISGAP’s evidence is Brown’s marriage to an Al Jazeera producer. In the section on Hashemi, the report does not mention Qatar once.

One former ISGAP scholar defended the organization’s focus on Qatar, saying the Gulf Arab country is “funding universities to push their narratives and their narrative is against the existence of Israel as a state.” But at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in May of last year, then Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said she had not seen any evidence that Qatar was supporting the campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

The Israeli government benefits from casting pro-Palestine protests on campuses as Qatari-funded. In an interview with Breitbart in August, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Qatar has spent “billions on American universities, vilifying, vilifying Israel, vilifying Jews, and also, frankly, vilifying the United States.” With eroding support, especially among young people, for Israel’s war in Gaza, Qatari funding of universities has emerged as a catch-all explanation for those seeking to explain Israel’s loss of America’s youth.

Another former ISGAP employee, granted anonymity to speak freely about the organization, said that the organization’s programming “tended not to focus on experiences of bias or anti-Semitic bigotry, but rather on public perception of and support for Israel.”

The Forward reported that in 2018, ISGAP received 80% of its annual revenue from the Israeli government. According to the grant agreement, the grant was for, among other items, seminars on antisemitism and “conducting research in the field of anti-semitism/delegitimization against Israel.” While there are conflicting reports about how much the Government of Israel has funded ISGAP with estimates ranging from $123,000 to $1.7 million, the grant agreement indicates it was for $889,000 over two years. In a statement to Drop Site, ISGAP said that it “did win a government grant in the amount of $889,000 over two years for multiple activities” but that the organization “ultimately received only $123,000 for one educational activity before ending of the contract.”

The Israeli government has also maintained control over the organization’s research agenda. “The project will be managed through a steering committee in which representatives of the [Israeli] ministry will have 50% representation of the committee members. The decision-making mechanism that will be formulated will ensure the need to obtain the consent of the ministry representatives.” In an email, ISGAP told Drop Site that “there was absolutely no interference from the Ministry in the academic content of ISGAP’s programs or research.”

ISGAP does not reveal a donor list, but other known donors have ties to far-right pro-Israel organizations. The Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, one of the only known financial backers of the anonymously-run doxxing website Canary Mission, donated $10,000 to ISGAP in 2023. The Jewish Communal Fund, which gave over $60,000 to ISGAP in 2023, backs Israeli right-wing organization Lehava, a group that marches through Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem chanting “death to the Arabs.”

Several of ISGAP’s advisors are former high-ranking Israeli officials. Former Chief Censor of Israel and lDF officer Sima Vaknin-Gil co-chairs ISGAP’s board of trustees, while former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Knesset member Natan Sharansky serves as the chair of the board of advisors.

Deeper Into Advocacy

In the sworn statement that he provided to Congress during his testimony this year, Small made no mention of any organizational funding from Israel. In order to testify in front of the House Ways and Means Committee last year, he was required to fill out a witness disclosure form. In response to a question asking him to list out foreign government grants, Small opted to leave the question blank.

ISGAP has not registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the U.S. law that requires disclosure of foreign lobbying activities. An organization spokesperson told The Forward in 2020 that the organization does not need to register as a foreign agent because they are an academic institution. This exemption can apply to organizations so long as they do not engage in “political activities,” meaning any activity intended to influence the U.S. government or public about U.S. policy or other foreign interests.

ISGAP is insistent that it is an academic institution and not a political outfit. A former ISGAP employee recalled that on one occasion, Small took umbrage at their suggestion that ISGAP had a political agenda.

However, since October 7, 2023, the organization has waded deeper in political advocacy. In February of 2024, ISGAP hired a lobbying firm, Kasowitz LLP for “issues related to contemporary antisemitism and the timely and accurate reporting of foreign donations to the Department of Education, and FARA registrations.” ISGAP frequently hosts briefings and workshops on Capitol Hill. Ten days after meeting with Small and ISGAP’s lobbyists, Utah Republican Rep. Burgess Owens published a letter asking Northwestern University to cut ties to Al Jazeera.

Small has straddled the line of academia and politics before. Before founding ISGAP, Small was the director of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), a Yale-based institution similarly dedicated to the study of anti-semitism. Yale closed down the center after only five years, with some blaming Small’s lack of academic rigor.

Jeffrey Alexander, a professor of sociology at Yale, told the Chronicle of Higher Education at the time that "most—not all—of the people at YIISA's conferences have conflated any criticism of Israeli policy with anti-Semitism.” Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University,said at the time that, despite participating in a few of YIISA’s activities, some of the research was “not scholarly in nature.” Lipstadt later became Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism under Biden.