Qatar leads foreign funding to US universities in 2025
Qatar was the largest foreign source of gifts and contracts to American universities in 2025, the US Department of Education reported Wednesday. Its funding was worth more than $1.1 billion, the report said.
The data was compiled from foreign funding disclosures submitted by American colleges and universities for 2025. Universities receiving federal financial assistance are obligated to disclose foreign-source gifts and contracts with a value of $250,000 or more annually.
In total, there were more than 8,300 transactions worth more than $5.2b. in reportable foreign gifts and contracts, the Education Department reported.
The largest foreign sources of reportable gifts and contracts to American universities were Qatar, the United Kingdom ($633 million), China ($528m.), Switzerland ($451m.), Japan ($374m.), Germany ($292m.), and Saudi Arabia ($285m.).
The top university recipients of those foreign funds were Carnegie Mellon University (nearly $1b.), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (nearly $1b.), Stanford University ($775m.), and Harvard University ($324m.).
Covering the period from 1986 through December 16, 2025, Harvard disclosed that it received more money from counterparties located in countries of concern than any other institution of higher education, totaling more than $610m.
Israel funded the University of California, San Francisco ($13.7m.), Northwestern University ($13.6m.), and the University of Minnesota Twin Cities ($12.7m.), the report said.
The “state of Palestine” provided $7,043,000 to US schools, most of which went to Indiana University of Pennsylvania ($6.4m.) and Brown University ($643,000), the Education Department reported.
Trump administration claims financial disclosures help US security
“Thanks to the Trump Administration’s new accountability portal, the American people have unprecedented visibility into the foreign dollars flowing into our colleges and universities – including funding from countries and entities that are involved in activities that threaten America’s national security,” US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said.
“This marks a new era of transparency for the American people and streamlined compliance for colleges and universities, making it easier than ever for institutions to meet their legal obligations.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, we remain firmly committed to ensuring that universities uphold their legal and ethical obligations to disclose the true origins of their foreign relationships. This transparency is essential not only to preserving the integrity of academic research but also to ensure the security and resilience of our nation,” McMahon said.
The Trump administration has instituted new measures to bring transparency to foreign funding disclosures as required by law. Among them is a new portal that allows American citizens, Congress, and the media to inspect and analyze disclosed foreign funding, including gifts and contracts received from parties designated as entities of concern by the US Department of State, among other federal agencies.
This comes after multiple reports, including by ISGAP in 2019, claimed that US universities were not reporting their financial partnership transactions with Qatar and other foreign parties.
For example, ISGAP found that Yale University had declared only one grant from Qatar since 2012, for $284,668, but it estimated that the school received about $15,925,711 during that time.
Qatar has gained sizable control over Georgetown University, the Middle East Forum (MEF) recently reported. Over the past 20 years, Qatar has given $1b. to Georgetown’s Doha and Washington campuses. The money has sustained both campuses and funded faculty, research initiatives, and endowed chairs on the Washington campus, the report said.
Georgetown’s courses and research also indicate a growing ideological drift toward postcolonial scholarship, anti-Western critiques, and anti-Israel advocacy, with some faculty engaged in political activism related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or anti-Western interventionism, MEF report.
This is particularly relevant given Qatar’s relative hostility to Western countries and its support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas, the report said.
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