Harvard University, that bastion of privilege with its $53 billion endowment, would like you to believe that it’s a victim, persecuted by the Trump administration. Yes, you can dislike Trump’s methods, but absent federal intervention, Harvard would have continued turning a blind eye to the rampant antisemitism festering on its campus. And the wave of university presidents rushing to defend the Ivy League school? They got the message, too. It’s no longer open season on Jews. Tolerance of antisemitism now has consequences.
Some Jewish organizations, oddly enough, are defending Harvard and other universities targeted by Trump’s crackdown. As history shows, it’s often Jews themselves who step forward to protect the rights of their adversaries. Meanwhile, non-Jewish allies were noticeably absent when it came to defending Jewish students under siege.
Many of the critics aren’t defending Harvard because they believe it has been wronged. They’re using this moment to lash out at Trump and vent over their impotence. While a case can be made that withholding funds from programs unrelated to the antisemitism problem is absurd, if not unjust, one might ask why Harvard, an institution flush with wealth, is sucking on the government teat in the first place. Withholding $9 billion may be draconian, but the university can dip into its reserves and fund whatever it considers necessary.
And Harvard receives a steady stream of funding from Gulf Arabs, starting in 1977 when it received money for a chair in Islamic law. As documented in Arab Funding of American Universities: Donors, Recipients and Impact, Harvard has received more than $258 million since 1981. We know almost nothing about how that money is used. Only 17 donations have information about their purpose—11 are related to financial aid, and the others say only “Designates a principal investigator.”
Much of Harvard’s funding is not in the U.S. Department of Education database, including money for its Dubai program, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and the $20 million from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who advocated for the United States to rethink its support for Israel.
Some of its gifts fell under the $250,000 reporting threshold, such as $150,000 in 2011 from the Palestinian Monetary Authority to establish an annual graduate public service fellowship, supporting a student from the “occupied Palestinian territories” for three years. The Ivy League school acknowledged three unspecified contributions from a giftor(s) in “Palestine” of $275,000 in 2017, $775,000 in 2018, and $525,000 in 2019.
In 1982, Khalid al-Turki made a $2 million contribution to establish a professorship in contemporary Arab Studies at Harvard. While universities, especially elite ones that can afford to ignore donors’ wishes, maintain they do not allow strings to be attached to gifts, there was reportedly an unwritten understanding that the position would go to Walid Khalidi, a professor affiliated with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The university denied that the funder would determine the choice for the position. Still, it did go to Khalidi.
Like many other universities, Harvard happily takes money from the terror-sponsoring government of Qatar (at least $22 million). For example, the Qatar Foundation collaborated with the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School to establish a graduate program in law at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha.
In 2017, Harvard announced that Prince Turki bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was providing an undisclosed amount for the Saudi and Gulf Cooperation Council Security project at the Kennedy School of Government. The Belfer Center also received the prince’s funding for its Project on Saudi and Gulf Cooperation Council Security. Another undisclosed amount comes from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s MiSK Foundation. These ties help whitewash authoritarian regimes while giving them prestige they haven’t earned.
This isn’t new. It was only after an 18-month crusade started by student Rachel Fish in 2003 that Harvard’s Divinity School returned $2.5 million from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan of the United Arab Emirates, whose think tank promoted Holocaust denial and 9/11 conspiracy theories.
There is no direct evidence that Arab funding contributes to antisemitism, but it is problematic nonetheless. As the DoE found during the first Trump administration, foreign sources, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, were “targeting their investments to project soft power, steal sensitive and proprietary research, and spread propaganda.” The report also highlighted the lack of institutional controls to manage the risk “that foreign money buys influence or control over teaching and research.”
Universities deny that foreign gifts influence their policies. Douglas W. Elmendorf, the dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School, for example, acknowledged that his school receives financial support from Saudi Arabia but insisted, “Our principal standards for such work are whether it maintains our tradition of scholarly excellence, whether it can be conducted without donors’ attempting to influence the conclusions of our scholarship, and whether it has positive effects on people in the societies where we are engaged.”
Former English diplomat John Kelly explained how such funding is an effective soft power tool. “Arab oil states are neither simple philanthropists nor disinterested patrons,” he observed. “They expect a return upon their donations to institutions of learning and their subsidies to publishing houses; whether it be in the form of subtle propaganda on behalf of Arab or Islamic causes, or the preferential admission of their nationals, however unqualified … or the publication of the kind of sycophantic flim-flam about themselves and their countries which now clutters sections of the Western press and even respectable periodical literature.”
The handwringing about Trump’s attack on academic freedom ignores how it has corrupted the lofty purposes claimed by the university elitists. Faculty members use this ivory tower invention as a shield to pursue their anti-Israel, often antisemitic, agendas with impunity. Faculty governance has failed to eliminate such academic malpractice, so it is past time for someone else to do the job.
The best example is Middle Eastern Studies, which long ago abandoned any semblance of objective scholarship at most universities, including Harvard. Some departments don’t even recognize Israel as being part of the region, and the field’s professional association voted to boycott Israel, making its persistent whining about academic freedom the height of hypocrisy.
Harvard’s Middle East Center received funding from the Saudi Arabian Oil Company for years. Two of its leaders—one of whom signed anti-Israel letters and the other a member of the militantly anti-Israel Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP)—were removed only after outside scrutiny. FSJP’s faculty cohort is part of a larger group of around 400 Harvard professors who have endorsed antisemitic statements or petitions.
When I searched for “Israel” on Harvard’s website, 27 courses were listed. Several had nothing to do with Israel or were related to ancient Israel or Judaism. Only five were relevant. Members of FSJP taught two courses: “The Settler-Colonial Determinants of Health,” which is obviously framed to demonize Israel, and “Palestine: 1,000 Years,” which discusses the “trajectory of the Palestinian struggle for national liberation.” Derek Penslar, who signed the antisemitic “Elephant in the Room” statement, teaches courses on “Jews in the Modern World” and “Antisemitism, Then and Now.” The only course on politics with Israel in the title is “Jewish Religion and Politics in the 20th Century: Europe, America and Israel,” taught in the Divinity School. Not one undergraduate course in the social sciences focuses on modern-day Israel. Is more evidence of academic bias necessary?
Harvard isn’t alone in its disdain for accountability. Like foreign-policy elites who think only State Department insiders should shape U.S. strategy, universities often feel that they’re above oversight, despite being funded by students, parents and taxpayers. Police resisted supervision, but community oversight bodies are now common. The reasons may differ, but the need is the same for universities.
Harvard is in serious need of reform, and it would not have acted without the administration highlighting its failures and hurting it where it matters most—in its pocketbook. For all its pious talk about the pursuit of knowledge, Harvard, like other universities, cares more about money than the protection and education of its students.