|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Letter to Acting Attorney General Blanche Demands FARA Inquiry After Contract Revealed Georgetown Was Required to Consult Qatar Government on Conference Speakers and Themes at Washington, D.C. Events
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law sent a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Department of Justice’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) Unit calling for an investigation into Georgetown University’s compliance with FARA, following the revelation of a secret contract between Georgetown’s Bridge Initiative and the Qatari government.
As first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, a contract between Georgetown’s Bridge Initiative, a multi-year research project focused on combatting Islamophobia, and Qatar’s foreign ministry includes a clause requiring Georgetown to “consult” with a Qatari government-linked group when selecting speakers and themes for conferences and events held in Washington, D.C. Georgetown signed the $630,000 contract in June 2024 and it was disclosed through documents released by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
The Brandeis Center’s letter posits that Georgetown’s obligations under the contract – consulting with a Qatari government-linked body on speaker selection, accepting Qatari funding, and hosting events at Qatar’s direction – satisfy the legal definition of acting as a foreign agent under FARA. The letter argues that Georgetown’s activities constitute both “political activities” and the work of a “publicity agent” as defined under the statute, and that the university has an obligation to register under FARA that it has failed to fulfill.
The Brandeis Center is calling on the FARA Unit within the Department of Justice to investigate whether certain events held by Georgetown were shaped by a foreign government to advance its own interests.
“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,” said Hon. Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman and CEO of the Brandeis Center and the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education who ran the Office for Civil Rights during two administrations. “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.”
Marcus has been sounding the alarm on Qatari influence in American higher education. Earlier this year, he wrote in the Wall Street Journal about how Qatari funding at Carnegie Mellon University may have compromised the school’s handling of anti-Semitism complaints – one of the first major exposés of how foreign money shapes campus culture and policy.
The Brandeis Center has been at the forefront of efforts to expose foreign government influence on American campuses, recently urging Congress to pass the DETERRENT Act to strengthen foreign funding disclosure requirements.
About The Brandeis Center
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law is an independent, non-partisan, nonprofit corporation established to advance the civil and human rights of the Jewish people and promote justice for all. LDB engages in research, education, and legal advocacy to combat the resurgence of anti-Semitism on college and university campuses, in the workplace, and elsewhere. It also empowers students by training them to understand their legal rights and educates administrators and employers on best practices to combat anti-Semitism. The Brandeis Center is not affiliated with the Massachusetts university, the Kentucky law school, or any of the other institutions that share the name and honor the memory of the late U.S. Supreme Court justice.
