The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Charles Asher Small: Qatar's influence on campus protests

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

University students across North America have set up encampments to protest Israel's war in Gaza. These demonstrations are well organized and supplied, with tents, signs, banners, meals, and educational workshops/ So how exactly are these demonstrations being funded? One think tank has made it their mission to “follow the money” - so to speak. ISGAP, The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy - has uncovered that Qatar,  which is currently housing the senior leaders of Hamas, is the single largest foreign donor to American universities and is also sending money to Student for Justice in Palestine, the organization supporting pro-Palestinian protests on campus. Qatar has more than $500 billion dollars of assets in the United States. Charles Asher Small, our guest on this Munk Dialogue, is the Executive Director of ISGAP and argues that Qatar - a small country which adheres to the ideology of the Muslim Brothers - is using soft power to influence western society, and especially our youth.      The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 15+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Executive Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Senior Producer: Daniel Kitts Editor: Kieran LynchBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You don't help the poor by making everybody poorer. The media has a frame, and the frame is Israel is the oppressor, and the Palestinians are the oppressed. I shouldn't be forced to acknowledge my privilege unless I desire for that to be part of my interaction with somebody else. What I know to be true and what all of my fellow Gen Z know to be true is that this is the most talented generation yet. With respect to every indicia of disadvantage, there is still a racial higher. And though I am, of course, in Anglo. I'm certainly not a fucking Saxon. Hello, Monk listeners.

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University students across North America have set up encampments to protest Israel's war in Gaza. These demonstrations are well organized and supplied with tense signs, banners, and even professional security at some locations. So how exactly are these demonstrations being funded? One think tank has made it their mission to, quote, follow the money, close quote. The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Anti-Semitism and, policy reveals that Qatar, which currently is housing the senior leadership of Hamas, is the single largest foreign donor to American academia and is also sending money to students for justice in Palestine, the organization supporting many of the pro-Palestinian protests on campuses.

Qatar has more than $500 billion in assets in the United States currently. Charles Asher Small, our guest today on the Monk Dialogues, is executive. director of ISGAP and argues that Qatar, a small country which adheres to the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, is using soft power to influence American society, especially its youth. Charles, welcome to the program. Thanks. I'm really honored to be here. Thanks for having me. Well, we're honored to speak with you. I want to touch on a lot of topics and themes over the course of our conversation, but let's begin with the protests that are happening right now on campuses across

America and here in Canada, what do you believe is that set of ingredients that has made universities the kind of flashpoint for a protest movement against the war in Gaza? But as you said, also, at times, a place where speech is occurring that I think many people outside of the university are kind of struck and surprised by. to the extent that it's openly valorizing and supporting the horrific attacks of October 7th, lauding Hamas. For many people, I think, outside of university, it's hard to understand what this is, where it comes from, and why it seems so fervent and, frankly, out of touch with a lot of mainstream opinion.

So I think for the last several decades, particularly in universities, where the so-called radical left, sort of post-modernism and kind of these sort of intellectual darlings, people like Judith Butler and Edward Said, as sort of been fermenting a perception of Israel and Jews in the most, I'd say, non-complementary way as being understated in our best universities of record in, you know, in the McGill's and the University of Toronto in Canada and the Ivy leagues in the United States and the Oxbridge's in the UK and the Serbon, where the demonization of who Jews are as a people has been given intellectual credibility for the last several decades. And this miseducation combined with the rise of political Islam and the funding of American,

Canadian and British universities by political Islamists, by the Muslim Brotherhood for many decades, is sort of this recipe where, you know, this is a recipe for a perfect storm. So you have young students indoctrinated into this education, and you have groups like SJP, students for justice and Palestine, that have been organizing for decades at North American universities. And we have to understand that SJP comes out of the American, Muslims for Palestinians. AMP is another organization, which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

We have to understand who the Muslim Brotherhood is. And in a nutshell, and I'll be brief, the Muslim Brotherhood started in Egypt about 100 years ago, and it's a fusion of a very narrow, I would even argue, a perversion of the great religion of Islam, fused with European anti-Semitism and Nazism. Joseph Kowadawi, the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood, preached throughout his life that the true believer, the true Muslim,

is obligated to complete the work of Hitler, i.e., to murder Jews around the world. The Muslim Brotherhood has entered into an agreement with the state of Qatar. Qatar has a Bayeah, a Bayeah, and Islam is a spiritual oath. The royal family of Qatar has a spiritual oath to the Muslim Brotherhood, and they follow all of their edicts, fatwas, and rulings. Qatar has been giving tens of billions with a B of dollars to American universities, to Canadian universities, and British universities for decades.

And they are supporting an ideology that calls for not only the murder of Jews, not only for the destruction of the state of Israel, but for the destruction of democracy. So our universities have been taking money from these entities, from the state, and we wonder why, you know, this sort of emergence of anti-Semitism in our universities has sort of exploded in recent years. And it shouldn't be a shock. I think if our universities were taking money from, I don't know, a Nazi Germany or from an apartheid South Africa, and suddenly there were, you know, sent. of eugenics rather than Middle East studies and centers of biology. And instead of SJAP on campus, showing up with COVID masks and Kaffirs, calling for the destruction of Israel from the river to the sea.

Speaking about globalizing the Intifada, from which for those can come from the Middle East, understand that this is a call for violence, for physical violence. And on the issue of Qatar in particular, your own research is indicating that we're talking large-scale investments to use a euphemism in American higher learning think tanks in numbers that are striking. Can you give us a little bit of just a sense of how large this Qatari influence operation is, how these funds are flowing into universities, where they're being used and what your concerns are. Right. So our Institute Isgap has published eight reports since the 7th of October.

One report shows it's called the Networks of Hate, where we've outlined with some of the best experts of Terra financing, the sort of net, the economic financial network of the Qataris. And we've been able to ascertain that they've been, you know, playing with nearly a trillion dollars in assets in which they're using for soft power or influence. They're buying football teams in Europe. They're investing in higher education in North America and the UK. They're spending a lot of money with PR companies and law firms.

And there's sort of infusing money into higher education directly through universities. In Qatar and Dohaar City, they've created education city where there's, There's six American universities that have campuses there. In one of our reports, we uncovered a contract between the Qataris and Texas A&M. We found $1.3 billion that the Qataris gave to Texas A&M. And when we found parts of the contract between Qatar and Texas A&M, we noticed that Texas A&M gave all of the intellectual property rights for 502 research projects to the which is very unusual. Usually universities hold on to their intellectual property rights.

So we found the 502 research projects, of which 58 projects could have dual-use military implications, as well as a dozen projects with nuclear military implications. And we have to remember that Qatar has excellent relations with Hamas, with the Taliban, even al-Qaeda, and the Iranian revolutionary regime. and their neighbors are Iran. So for them to have the intellectual property rights over sensitive research coming out of American universities is alarming to say the least that we're calling on the American government,

A, to ensure there's transparency and to investigate our findings. Hopefully we're wrong, but our research is well substantiated. Such as one example. With Cornell University, we found $10 billion in undocumented money. coming from Qatar just to Cornell. And, you know, our researchers are wonderful, but we're a small research center, you know, for full disclosure. And if we're finding $10 billion, I would assume there's more. So, you know, if a university is receiving such staggering numbers of support from the Muslim

Brotherhood, from the Qatari regime, of course, this is soft power. They're going to have influence in these institutions. You know, with Al Jazeera, for example, which is a part of the Muslim, of the Muslim Brotherhood and a state-owned television station that's operating internationally. They're soft peddling a Muslim Brotherhood worldview. And we feel, especially in the United States, they should be registered as a foreign entity, not just a, you know, a television station, but a foreign entity, an arm of the Qatari regime and the Muslim Brotherhood. So they have all of these influence operations in our society, buying football teams,

and putting, you know, Qatari logos on some of the most prestigious football teams in Europe has an impact of soft power and influence on our culture. Talk to us a little bit more about some of the recent work that you've done to allege that there are links between these student groups that are actively organizing these protests, other groups that have been banned from fundraising on the basis that there is a history of support of these other groups of Hamas, a banned terrorist group in most Western countries. Give us a little bit of an explanation of how there is a potential here to have a concern that some of these student groups are benefiting from funding networks that in the past have been used to support terrorism? Yeah. We uncovered $3 million a year of funding going into SJP from various sources.

And for the first time, we've proven that SJP is taking money from AMP, the American Muslims for Palestinians. It's an offshoot from the Muslim Brotherhood. and for the first time they've admitted to funding SJP and also Jewish Voices for Peace. So Jewish Voices for Peace are deeply connected to SJP, and it's a group of people who are Jewish, who claim to be anti-Zionist and post-Zionist, and have been very close to the SJP,

and it's been very difficult to find out where they've been receiving their money. So for the first time, we can say, we sort of do this, But officially we can say that Jewish Voices for Peace, which is connected to SJP, is literally being funded by the Muslim Brotherhood. What about Qatar's investments beyond academic institutions? Yeah, absolutely. So in our report called the Networks of Hate, we show how they're investing in America. We're focused on the United States, how they're investing in the American economy, in real estate, in PR, in space, is where they can use soft power to further their goals.

In Europe, they're spending a lot of resources purchasing football clubs and other kind of cultural icon institutions to have an influence. There's also, is it Bain TV, television out of Spain, where they also own that, and they're using that in Al Jazeera as a way to sort of influence using soft power, cultural institutions and discourse on society. So by purchasing football teams, for example, and promoting the Palestinian cause in football matches, you're already inculcating and shifting the discourse in society. So they're using soft power effectively to change the discourse

when it comes to Israel, and Israel being the only other with self-determination in the region. critics might say that APAC, the Israel lobby in Washington, similarly uses money to influence policy. What's your response to that? So I'm not an expert on APAC, but I would say that APAC is a lobby organization, and there's other lobby organizations in the United States. That's how the system of government works for better or for worse. And yeah, they're trying to influence Washington and policy on behalf of,

I guess, you know, the Jewish community and the state of Israel, which is how government works in the United States. And there's other lobby organizations. I think what's different here is to fund universities and other cultural institutions with the goal of shifting the discourse or shifting education is something different. I think for foreign entities, for foreign governments,

to start meddling and changing an education system and the values that citizens receive in higher education is something very different. than trying to influence policy and government openly and legally. You mentioned that Qatar has given Cornell University some $10 billion. Do you have information about where this money is going at Cornell? What kind of initiatives is it funding? So we are going, you know, we're trying to go granular.

We know a lot of the money went into Middle East Studies and from Middle Eastern Studies and sort of went into other social sciences and humanities over time. At Cornell, they put a lot of money into medical research, environmental studies. So using education as a form of soft power and influence, I would say. Funding campuses. We also have to understand that Qatar has less than 350,000 citizens. So this tiny country is giving more money to American education, to higher education, to education in Europe and Canada,

they're giving more money than any other country on the planet. So here's a country of 350,000 people giving more money than any country in the planet, and the question is why. And when they give to these kind of campuses, I don't know if this is something you're able to find out in your research.

Does it come with certain stipulations, i.e. you have to hire people of a certain background, or you have to have a certain kind of curriculum teaching specific things. what are the strings attached to the funding? Yeah, so in many cases, no. In some cases, in Qatar, they have to go through students and faculty go through orientation programs

where they learn about Islam and the culture of the country, which is, you know, it's part of the contracts, which is not common. But, you know, I tell my friends and colleagues, we have a small research center at Cambridge University, it costs about half a million dollars a year. And we have postdocs. And we have a great relations with the administration, the faculty. We have a good setup there. But I know that if Cambridge University suddenly said that they're going to put in a

post-Zionist or an anti-Israeli scholar to direct a research center, we would leave. We would take our $500,000 and go somewhere else. And I know that the people at Cambridge, they don't want that to happen. We have a good relations, good for them, good for us. If I came to a university with $10 billion or $1.3 billion, if I have a little bit of influence for half a million dollars a year, can you imagine if I came in with billions of dollars? So the influence is massive for sure.

And soft power is used sometimes. You can use your influence directly and sometimes indirectly. Hi, monk listeners. I wanted to tell you about our upcoming monk debate on anti-Zionism. On June 17th, author and journalist Douglas Murray and UK-based international law expert, Natasha Halsdorf, will debate. Former MSNBC commentator and columnist Median San and Israeli journalist Gideon Levy on stage in Toronto in front of a live audience of 3,000 people. The debate will be streamed, so if you can't make it in person, you can watch it from the comfort of your living room. Find out how to become a monk member

and get your live stream access to the monk debate on anti-Zionism. Visit our website right now, triple-w monkdebates.com. Do you think we should be looking at ways to better understand and potentially ban the funding by other, in this case,

nation states, not simply private individuals or private foundations, but nation states in the form of Qatar, other states in the Gulf region that seem to be providing billions of dollars of support that, as you say, surely on the basis of the scale of that money is having an influence on universities in terms of what types of subjects are taught, what types of departments are funded and staffed. Is it time to kind of maybe bring some of the rigor that were increasingly applying to Chinese and Russian interference in our democracy to states in the Gulf, especially Qatar? I think there should be transparency. I think there should be investigations, royal commissions,

and understanding how this funding by anti-democratic sources, namely Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood has really weakened our democracy. And we can see it being played out on our streets and on our campuses to the point where Canadian citizens do not feel comfortable at times walking out on the street in Canada. I grew up in Montreal. And Montreal and Toronto and other Canadian cities are incredible spaces of social democracy, of literate citizens, of inclusion, of interculturalism, multiculturalism, and what's happening on our streets is antithetical to what it is to be Canadian,

and we cannot tolerate this intolerance. Maybe one just very simple idea would be to ask and maybe require our institutions of higher learning only receive financial support from fellow democracies. Again, it seems bizarre that not only Qatar but China, in particular, we allow theocratic, dictatorial, non-democratic states into the very institutions in our society that are arguably, you know, the incubators of our democracy, they're supposed to be training young people in the habits of thought and mind in the values and ethics of pluralism and tolerance. And we're in a sense allowing these states to pray on those student bodies really unconstrained

by much of anything in the way of state regulation or state oversight of their involvement. Just as we wrap up, Charles, when we think about what could come next, are you optimistic that this entire episode, especially now what we're seeing on campuses, will result in some meaningful changes in reforms? Do you think that this has been an object lesson, possibly, for many of us who had kind of assumed that everything was okay, that anti-Semitism, yes, was real it existed, but it wasn't, you know, a burning problem or challenge facing our society, that campuses were generally doing what they were supposed to do, educate a new generation

of young people, again, in attitudes and ideals that would be constructive to sustaining a pluralistic and democratic society. Do you think this wake-up call pushes us forward, or do you think, unfortunately, that what we're seeing today is really just the symptomology of a decline in institutions, decline in tolerance, a pervasive rise in an anti-Semitic threat in our society? Right. Look, I think in, you know, they say in every crisis, there's an opportunity. So I think there is more awareness today because of the past six or seven months, you know, what happened on October the 7th and the aftermath and the ripple effect throughout the world and including in North America. So I think there's more awareness, which is hopeful. But I think we really need strong leadership in our institutions of higher education, in our governments, in the parliament, in Canada, in the white.

the United States, we really need strong leadership to unequivocally denounce and combat this anti-democratic discourse and culture that we've now, we now find ourselves in. And you know, we're living in a time where, you know, Iran has created this sort of ring of fire around Israel. You know, there's the kinetic war in the Middle East, but there's also this sort of ideological warfare that's going on as well. And we need strong leadership to really, you know, back up and stand for democratic principles. And we need leadership in universities to, you know, to call for investigations of where their funding is coming from.

And what are the implications on this, on our curriculum and our education system? And to redouble our efforts to educate Canadians and citizens and democracy of what it is to live in a democracy. what are our democratic values and not to lose sight of it and to be proud of it and to develop it further. Charles, thank you so much for all of your thoughtful insights, the information that you've shared with us. I think we're all going to kind of think on this and our individual roles, our individual responsibility to combat anti-Semitism, where we see it, whether it's in our workplaces, on college campuses among our social circles. This is something that should not be left to the Jewish community alone. This is a cause and ideal that all of us should lend time, attention, effort to addressing.

So Charles Asher Small, behalf of the Monk Debates community, thank you so much for coming on the program. Thanks. It's a great honor to be with you. Thank you. That wraps up today's dialogue. I want to thank our guest, Charles Asher Small. Certainly gave us a lot to think about. If you have questions or feedback on what you've just heard on this or any of our podcast, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK Debateswithan S.com.

Thank you for lending your time and attention to our efforts to bring back the art of civil and substantive conversation, one dialogue at a time. I'm your host and moderator, right of your grievous. The Monk debates are a project of the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundations. Rudyard Griffiths and Ricky Gerwitz are the producers. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating. Thank you again for listening.