No foreign country pours money into American universities like Qatar does—and it isn’t even close. The Persian Gulf state has spent about $6.6 billion since the U.S. government started tracking the numbers in the 1960s. In comparison, China has spent about $4.1 billion.
But what does Qatar get in return for all that money?
Some extraordinary clues surfaced in a court order unsealed last month by the federal judge overseeing an antisemitism lawsuit against Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Yael Canaan, who studied architecture at the prestigious Pittsburgh university, alleges that she faced discrimination and harassment because she is Jewish and of Israeli descent. CMU has received $1 billion from Qatar and operates a campus near its capital, Doha.
