EMET Profoundly Thanks Representative Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Representative Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) for the “No Foreign Gifts Act”

For far too long, totalitarian, anti-Western nations have been the largest donors to US schools and universities. According to the latest figures from the Department of Education, $22 billion comes into our nation’s schools from these Mideastern countries, and the largest amount comes from the tiny, wealthy nation of Qatar.

The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), an NGO based out of Rutgers University recently reported that American universities and colleges have received $19 billion from foreign sources that have not been reported and have no reported dates of receipts. A Department of Education (DOE) report dated 6 April 2023 reported total foreign donations of $47 billion. The DOE reported that more than 50 percent of this comes from Middle Eastern countries. The largest donor nation to universities is the gas-enriched nation of Qatar, which has a very strong relationship with the terrorist organization, Hamas.

The top five universities that have benefitted from Qatari donations include Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh), which received $1.4 billion, Cornell which received $1.2 billion, Harvard $894 million, MIT $859 million, and Texas A&M (College Station, Texas) which received just over half a billion dollars. Unfortunately, the list goes on and on.

And many of our younger and more impressionable students in elementary through the 12^th grade have received educational curricula that have been offered, gratis by The Qatar Foundation International, which stealthily hides its anti-American and anti-Israeli biases behind “Arabic instruction.”

This bill amends The Higher Education Act of 1965 to prohibit gifts from foreign nations that support terrorism, including China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, and requires reporting  any donations from countries that support terrorism to the Secretary of State.

Says Sarah Stern, Founder and President of EMET, “For decades now, our American students have been steadily and stealthily indoctrinated by foreign governments who are adversaries of the United States and the state of Israel. This has resulted in what we are now experiencing on many of our university campuses. Malign foreign influences, who support terrorism, should have no place either in our kindergarten through 12^th grade schools or within our universities. EMET would like to express our profound gratitude to Representative Ritchie Torres and Representative Andrew Garbarino for introducing this important piece of legislation.”

EMET is a think tank specializing in the Middle East that promotes incisive analysis and better understanding of the Middle East that that supports the United States and the state of Israel. We regularly meet with US legislators and policymakers.