The mis-education of generations of US students: it was actually Qatar who sold us the rope with which we’ll hang ourselves
Many long years ago – perhaps thirty-five? – I read an article describing what was being taught in schools in Palestine, and it made my blood run cold. I don’t recall what periodical it was in, but it certainly wasn’t anything on the right because back then (pre-internet) I wasn’t reading media on the right. It described students macerated in murderous hatred for Israel and Jews, and it was crystal clear that this was going to bear especially disastrous fruit some day.
And it did.
Little did I know at the time that something similar had started to happen to our own children – a bit muted, yes, but similar, although I only came to know about it later on. In America, it wasn’t just about hating Israel, although that formed a significant part of it. It was also about hating the US and western civilization.
This article (hat tip: commenter “miguel cervantes”) is an in-depth look at where this was done, how it was done, and by whom it was done:
Since 1981, American universities have accepted $13.1 billion from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait (Bard, 2024). Qatar alone contributed nearly $6 billion. Roughly 73% of these contributions are worth approximately $10.7 billion. None of these billions have any publicly stated purpose despite federal disclosure requirements (Bard, 2024). …
Here’s what we do know. Saudi Arabia gave Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center $20 million. The funding was structured to “follow” the center’s director. This gave the Saudi government effective control over who held the position (Middle East Forum, 2020). Qatar Foundation International sponsored K-12 teacher training sessions. They covered travel and expenses for American educators attending workshops on Middle East history (Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, March 2025). At least one donation explicitly funded a Palestinian Studies professorship at Brown. The position went to someone who supports boycotting Israel (Bard, 2024).
That was Doumani. His position didn’t exist until foreign money created it. His influence shaped the curriculum materials that were used in roughly 8,000 schools. Those materials reached approximately one million students annually. Brown ended the Choices Program in 2025. The university cited financial pressures and mounting criticism over the program’s Israel-Palestine materials as reasons for shutting it down.
The pattern repeats everywhere. Foreign governments fund academic positions. Universities fill those positions with scholars who share the donors’ worldviews. Those scholars create curriculum materials. The materials reach thousands of schools nationwide. Teachers trust them because they bear prestigious university names. Parents never question them because they don’t know the funding sources. Students absorb frameworks that were designed by foreign governments to advance foreign interests.
And it works. Research examining the years 2015 to 2020 found something striking. Institutions that accepted Middle Eastern funding experienced 300% more antisemitic incidents than institutions that didn’t accept such funding (Network Contagion Research Institute, 2024). Separate studies reached the same conclusion.
Seeds are dropped, and it spreads and spreads.
More:
The scholars it trained, the frameworks it promoted, the orthodoxy it enforced are now embedded throughout American academia. They’re training the next generation. It’s a self-perpetuating system that grows more extreme with each cycle.
These scholars don’t stay confined to Middle East Studies departments. They spread to Education departments where they train future K-12 teachers. They move into Schools of Social Work. They populate Ethnic Studies programs where they apply Middle East frameworks to American history. The infection metastasizes. Then it flows downstream to every institution these graduates enter.
Much much more at the link, including the influence of China.
We’ve seen the results. The generational aspect of the problem has been especially apparent after 10/7.
The author continues:
The few states that tried to implement reforms discovered they were attempting to drain an ocean with a bucket. The system is too large. Too interconnected. Too self-reinforcing for any incremental reform to work. It requires comprehensive action at the federal level. It requires sustained political will across multiple administrations. Anything less than that will fail.
The author goes on to recommend a comprehensive 10-point plan to reverse the course of this multi-faceted titanic perversion of US education. It’s hard to imagine we’ll muster the political will to do this, but something extremely drastic is necessary – long past necessary.
We need to fight the war, one battle at a time, starting in elementary school. Conservative parents should opt their children out of government schools and homeschool them. I daresay that even highly educated people like Neo and her husband sent their child to government schools.
The people on this website tend to be older and may have resources available to make donations to help fight this all important war. If you do not know about it, look up, qualified charitable distributions from your IRA. Since the government requires you to make minimum distributions, you can make them through QCDs and not pay tax on them.
I contribute to the homeschooling, legal defense association (HSLDA). They provide help to parents to navigate the educational bureaucracy’s roadblocks although those are not very common now. They also provide resources for parents. There are many online education resources like Khan academy. Parents can also take their children on field trips to museums and lectures. Some parents worry about socialization, but there are homeschooling organizations that arrange play sessions.
Parents, who do not want to make the sacrifice for homeschooling can also look for school choice programs in their state. Many conservative states provide tuition assistance. Even in far left states like my California, there are private programs to assist. I recently donated to the Basic fund that provides scholarships to private schools. Parents need to shop carefully for private schools because they draw their teachers from the same far left education schools as government schools.
Young people also realize the craziness of Leftist ideology. That is why Charlie Kirk was so successful. His organization TurningPointUSA lives on. Consider donating to them.
If you were a Cub Scout or Boy Scout in the 1950s, at meetings you faced the American flag, saluted with two fingers to the forehead, and recited the following:
On my honor, I promise to do my best
To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.
We would also recite the Scout Law:
A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent,
And at the start of every day in school, public and parochial schools alike, everyone, student and teachers, in every classroom stood and faced the American flag that was in every classroom, placed their right hands over their hearts, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance — including the “under God” part.
Words to live by, then and now.
Between Muslums and Marxists our Universities are bought and paid to follow their goals.
No wonder What is happening
The boys scouts of America went woke and changed their name to Scouting America. They now admit girls. Despite that, moderate/conservative talk radio hosts Armstrong and Getty sing the praises of the scouts. I think it depends very much on the local scout leaders. At least they retained the America in their name. The organization is obviously transitioning left, but it is a great idea and parents with boys should fight the tilt.
I don’t think “titanic” should be capitalized in the phrase “multi-faceted Titanic perversion”.
It’ll be a surprise to those who started it.
Note that I was referring to the 1950s CSA and BSA (Cub Scouts of America and Boy Scouts of America).
The Scout Oath and Scout Law remain meaningful, notwithstanding what has happened to scouting.
After I aged out of Cub Scouts I elected to forego the BSA, instead becoming very deeply involved in the YMCA — which really and most assuredly was, when I was involved, a Young Men’s Christian Association, and all that the title implies. Although, to be sure, Jews and non-believers were welcome to participate to the fullest in YMCA activities. Non-Christians were not required to participate in specifically Christian activities; by the same token they not expected to make a stink about them. And they didn’t.
It was a good arrangement. There was no friction. Christians respected the Jews, and the Jews respected the Christians. Everyone benefited.
None of the Middle East countries are our “friends”; most are our deadly enemies. We just don’t admit it.
IrishOtter49 3:47: Yep. Into the 60s as well.
LTEC:
Thanks, fixed.
Carter — the gift that keeps on giving.
The Iranian Revolution started a HUGE domino effect, the repercussions of which are still being felt in ways people don’t realize.
The Islamic Revolution took over Iran in February 1979. By there end of the year, in December, Islamacists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Though the Saudi government executed them, the government essentially capitulated to their demands. Because…
The Saudi royalty was nervous about Iran’s mullahocracy and its claims to be the Guardians of Islam. They thought the best way to fight it was to “out Islam” Iran; prove they were truer to Islam. So….
The Saudis provided more funding (thus further radicalizing) Islamist madrassahs, and sending imams abroad who were products of them. One overseas, these imams spread the word of a much more “conservative,” more Wahabi flavor of Islam.(In the 1970s, there were mosques in the US that had family seating. That’s gone now.)
The other thing they did was… Fund and underwrite university education. The Saudis felt they needed to make sure that academia understood what was “true Islam” (which, according to them, was the Wahabi flavor of Saudi Arabia), and that they were the “true” Guardians of Islam; not just of Mecca. Under the previous Qatari ruler, Qatar just went along with Saudi Arabia on everything. I think now, they’re trying to “out Islam” Saudi Arabia… Who had been trying to “out Islam” Iran. Who they wouldn’t have been trying to “out Islam” if Carter hasn’t screwed up on Iran.
yes the al thanis and their retainers have been busy, one of them the black prince, who was the interior minister, was who sheltered khalid sheikh mohammed in their sewer departments, others provided protection for musab al zarquawi, some chalk up this oneupsmanship to a failed Saudi coup in ’96, or just maybe the al thanis just know how to play the game better, they acquired many of the academics that used to sup at the royal court, their citing of Al Udeid as the new base for Centcom, made it unlikely that we would act aggressively against them, as the attempted blockade in 2017 showed,
they went along with the active ops against Libyan and Egypt, which was the notions certain policy makers entertained, which turned out to be counterproductive, the Emirati princes as well as the Sauds, have staked out what passes for moderation, but we discovered after October 7th, that was a flexible pose, Prince Salman to be regarded carefully, because his audience is not very amenable at home,
he comes from an often disfavored tribe, the Ajaman in the Arabian pecking order,
there were other signs the support of the Union of Moslem Scholars, and their chief Quradawi, which urged attacks on coalition forces,
I’ve been noticing this since steve emerson, wrote about this more than 40 years ago, one might say Robert Kaplan wrote the afterward on the matter, in the Arabists, before 9-11, he showed the capture of American political educational and other figures,
for this reason the juhayman rising and the consequences there of, that arose from the windfall of the Yom Kippur war, and the wealth that corrupted many of the royals and middlemen with the West,
In the 80s, the scouting salute was 3 fingers held up or held to your forehead.
Thx for the refresher on the law, irishotter. I used to be the fastest reciter of it.