FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern (CAAN)

CAAN Statement on Newly Released Congressional Record Exposing Qatar’s Control of Northwestern University

EVANSTON – October 7, 2025 – On the second anniversary of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern (CAAN) condemns Northwestern University for its continued entanglement with the Government of Qatar, as documented in the newly released U.S. House Education & Workforce Committee Record on Northwestern–Qatar Funding (HHRG-118-ED00-20240523-QFR003-U1), which lays bare the extent of Qatar’s financial and operational control over Northwestern’s Qatar campus (NU-Q) and its affiliated U.S. programs.

Northwestern has received at least $690 million and as much as $737 million from the Government of Qatar and its affiliates to fund its Doha-based NU-Q campus. NU-Q has long partnered with Al Jazeera Media Network, the Qatari state-controlled outlet that U.S. officials have directed to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), underscoring the political and propaganda risks embedded in this relationship. A report published today by the Washington Free Beacon indicates that Qatar is now pressuring Al Jazeera to “scale back anti-Israel rhetoric” in response to mounting scrutiny – further evidence that the regime itself recognizes how toxic its media operations have become.

Further, according to the Qatar Foundation’s own statement, Northwestern receives approximately $70 million per year to operate NU-Q – of which about 10 percent (roughly $7 million) is retained by Northwestern’s Evanston campus. Over the life of the partnership, that amounts to roughly $70 million retained domestically, plus likely an additional $15 million in separate annual payments ($1.5 million payments presumably over a decade since first NU-Q graduating class in 2012) from the Qatar Foundation to fund Northwestern’s U.S.-based “Qatar Support Office” — a total exceeding $80 million in Qatari funds flowing directly to Evanston.

“Two years after Hamas’s barbaric assault on Israel, these revelations confirm that Northwestern University is financially entangled with the same Qatari regime that bankrolls Hamas and shelters its leadership,” said a CAAN spokesperson. “This is not academic partnership — it is foreign capture, funded and directed by one of the world’s principal state sponsors of extremism.”

CAAN calls on:

• Congress to immediately expand its ongoing Title VI investigation to include foreign-influence compliance under Section 117;

• Congressional and executive oversight bodies to consider additional funding freezes or stop-work orders until Northwestern severs its Qatari ties; and

• Northwestern’s Board of Trustees to initiate a structured withdrawal from NU-Q and provide a full public accounting of all foreign contracts and payments. 

CAAN’s ongoing federal civil-rights complaint warns that Qatar’s financial control has compromised Northwestern’s independence and breaching U.S. civil-rights and foreign-funding safeguards.

Two years after October 7, Northwestern should be standing with the victims of terror – not profiting from its state sponsor.