Qatar covers its tracks: Gulf state spent millions to infiltrate American classrooms

OPINION:

Qatar Foundation International has poured millions of dollars into U.S. K-12 public schools over the past 17 years.

Qatari officials have long claimed that QFI has a “narrow philanthropic mission: to provide grants to schools and teachers engaged in Arabic language instruction.” However, our research over the past seven months reveals that it has been paying for items such as public school teacher salaries and the development of highly politicized curricula in major school districts across the country.

Then, on Monday, the foundation — which is overseen by the ruling Qatari family — announced that it had “concluded its operations” and is now winding down. Why?

Qatar is a U.S. ally, but it has shown its true colors by hosting Hamas leadership for years, funding terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda, and serving as the leading patron of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Qatari royal family, which exercises absolute power over the Gulf emirate, also runs the Qatar Foundation, the parent organization of QFI.

QFI has entered K-12 public schools through multiple avenues. It runs a “grant-to-schools” program that sends money directly to schools, largely for teachers’ salaries. Internal documents from these schools and their districts show that QFI has spent at least $8.8 million since 2009 in 20 K-12 public school districts.

QFI pays for all or part of Arabic language teachers’ salaries in 70% of these districts, including those in major cities such as New York, Chicago, Houston and Washington.

QFI directed more than $65 million across more than 220 educational programs, including an extensive network of teacher-training institutes and workshops that developed curricula for use in social studies and Arabic-language classrooms. These curricula incorporate anti-American materials, anti-Israel propaganda and lessons that cross the line between teaching about Islam and promoting Islamic religious values and practices.

A trio of Arabic cartoons from the Los Angeles Unified School District showcases the problem. One shows Uncle Sam planting a fake terrorist within a city as an excuse to blow it up. Another mocks an Arab for placing flowers on a large golden memorial for the victims of an al Qaeda terrorist attack. A third shows a cameraman with a vest labeled “CNN, FOX, NBC, CBS, and ABC” ignoring dead Muslims.

Lincoln High School in the Portland Public School District in Oregon, where QFI has spent more than $2 million since 2010, reported to QFI that Arabic-language instructors examine “the intersectionality of racial justice and global oppression” in their classroom.

It may seem odd that a high school is promoting an academic theory to appeal to an Islamist regime that outlaws homosexuality, but they share one thing: an eagerness to brand the West and Israel as racist, imperialist oppressors. At the 2025 Lincoln High School Arabic Culture Night, where students thanked the Qatar Foundation, posters displayed a map of Israel labeled “Palestine.” They also depicted “cultural symbols,” such as the key, which represents a desire to claim homes and land inside Israel, and the poppy flower, whose red color symbolizes the blood of Palestinian fighters.

In the QFI-funded Arabic program in Austin, Texas, a textbook teaches recitations from the Quran and the Hadith, a practice akin to teaching students English using passages from the King James Bible. In New Haven, Connecticut, QFI sponsored an Arabic festival that included a table where girls could try on hijabs.

Beyond funding training and salaries, QFI has underwritten the tuition of future Arabic language teachers, offering $25,000 per year. It has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on each “cultural immersion trip” that brings K-12 educators to Qatar, Oman and Jordan.

It offers teachers up to $15,000 in grants for research and professional development. Through these and other efforts, QFI has trained a cadre of professionals capable of carrying forward its curricula and its values.

Lawmakers have begun pushing for transparency in the foreign funding of schools in Georgia and Florida, which is a good start. However, no laws at the state or federal level prohibit foreign influence. State governments should act to ban — or at least restrict and oversee — the flow of foreign funding into K-12 education.

Teacher education programs at public universities should be transparent about what they teach future educators. Foreign influence needs to stop permeating American K-12 education, gaining access to our children and shaping their worldviews for years to come.

• Simone Weichselbaum and Naomi Friedman are research fellows with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ education and national security program.