The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law is urging the U.S. Justice Department of Justice to probe Georgetown University, following reporting that the private school in Washington, D.C., had a secret contract with Qatar.
The center states in its letter, which JNS viewed, that Georgetown’s $630,000 agreement with Qatar violates the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA.
The contract requires the university to hold “globalization of Islamophobia” conferences and to consult with a group with ties to the Qatari government on “sessions, themes and speakers,” according to the letter.
“These so-called conferences and events are simply the presentation of speakers deemed acceptable to Qatar to promote Qatar’s point of view in the United States,” the letter states. “Indeed, by running the money through an ostensibly objective institution, it goes to the heart of what the law was originally intended to address—the secret creation of propaganda under the direction of a foreign nation.”
Kenneth Marcus, chairman and CEO of the center, stated that “Qatar has spent untold amounts of money embedding itself in American higher education, and what this contract reveals is exactly how that influence works in practice: a foreign government quietly shaping what gets said and who gets to say it at events held in our nation’s capital.”
“Our foreign agent laws are designed to address situations just like this, and we must ensure accountability in order to protect the interests of students,” he stated.
A Georgetown spokesman told JNS that “the allegations contained in previous reporting and in the letter to the Justice Department cherrypick individual lines from the contract to create a false impression and exclude critical context.”
The university’s contract with Qatar makes clear that the Gulf state’s government cannot direct the school’s “research, scholarship or teaching, or receive the benefits thereof” and that “nothing in this agreement is intended to or should be construed to restrict the academic freedom of the university,” according to the university spokesman.
The Qatari government “shall not bear any responsibility for the activities and programs of the university or for any content or any related work, and exercises no role relating to governance, administration or operation in relation to the work of the university,” the contract states, according to the university.
