- When you want to get to
the heart of something,
follow the money.
- America's Ivy league schools
under the microscope.
- Elite universities
are selling themselves
and look who's buying.
- These are governments
that are hostile to the United States.
- Both Harvard and Yale
are among the colleges
under investigation for
failing to report hundreds
of millions of dollars in foreign gifts.
- Saudi Arabia gave $20
million to Georgetown
and to Harvard.
- This money should be
utilized to lessen the burden
of tuition on students, but
it's rarely used for that.
- When this amount of money is coming in
from a foreign government,
my first question is why, why?
- It's one of the hidden secrets
about foreign influence in America.
Just about the entire Ivy League
take money from a foreign government.
- And it's gotten to the point now
where the funding has ballooned.
- What organizations like the
Clarion Project have been able
to cover is that there have been
over $12 billion since 2012 worth of funds
from foreign governments that
are flowing into the country.
- The countries that are
donating the most money
to American schools
are countries with terrible
human rights records.
- Since 2012, Qatar donated 2.9 billion,
China, 1.2 billion, Saudi
Arabia, 1.1 billion,
United Arab Emirates, 469
million and Russia, 137 million.
- And that's just the amount
that's been publicly declared.
Most of the money is not
declared by the schools.
- I want to focus on Yale in particular
because it supposedly
filed no reports at all
for any of the gifts that it did get.
- Academic institutions
just aren't fundamentally
and inherently dishonest
when it comes to the money.
- The government's investigating some
of the nation's most prestigious colleges.
- The Department of Education
conducted investigations
of several prominent
American universities.
- They sent a letter to
the Senate subcommittee,
which actually shone a light
on what's actually happening.
- One university had multiple contracts
with the Central Committee
of the Communist Party
of the People's Republic of China.
- That American colleges and universities
have provided unprecedented
levels of access
to foreign governments,
corporations, and persons
without adequate oversight.
- The US Department of Education
say they've uncovered more than $6 billion
in unreported gifts from countries,
including Qatar, China, and Saudi Arabia.
- What strings are attached
to the billions of dollars
that are flowing from foreign governments
to American schools?
And why is this happening in secret?
(solemn music)
- I don't think we all need
to get into our defensive crouches.
You know, we're in a globalized world
and universities have
relationships all over the world.
And I think generally
this is all a good thing,
but there are always questions
that should be asked.
Who is giving this money and why,
and are there strings attached?
- Our academic institutions
are being bought
by foreign interests.
And it'd be one thing if it
were Western governments.
It's another when you
see foreign governments
that are at odds with US
interests buying up influence.
(somber music)
- When you have foreign funding,
obviously it comes with an agenda.
Nobody gives billions of dollars
to set up a chair in Islamic
Studies at a university
without the explicit intention
of influencing the mindset
of the students.
- The strategic goal of a
country who's pouring millions
or billions of dollars
into universities is
to affect US policy in
a number of different.
- They're trying to influence the minds
of the next generation of congressmen,
the next generation of lobbyists,
the next generation of media,
PR professionals, you name it.
- My name is Raheel Raza.
I'm a practicing Muslim,
President of Muslims Facing Tomorrow.
About three years ago,
I gave testimony to the US Congress.
Remove foreign extremist
funding from American campuses.
Why should our educational institutions
be warped with a foreign ideology?
And this is where Western governments
and Westerners sometimes
have difficulty grasping
what the reality is that there
is an agenda that is coming
on the backs of these spectral dollars.
- Concerns are rising
about China's influence
over academic freedom at
American universities.
- China has given almost a billion dollars
to America's higher education system.
- A big part of that funding goes
to run what are called
Confucius Institutes.
(light music)
- Their purposes is to
teach Chinese language
and to put on cultural programming.
- There are 66 Confucius institutes
at American colleges and universities,
and over 540 worldwide.
- But there's been investigations
into whether those Confucius
Institutes are bringing more
than just education courses.
- Tonight, there is concern
about a Chinese propaganda
education program.
- It's called the Confucius
Institute and lawmakers say
that it's run and funded
by the Chinese government.
- They pick the curriculum,
pick guest speakers.
- Critics say that means
China controls the narrative
of the Confucius Institutes
and can shut down opposing viewpoints.
- Confucius Institutes
have been under fire
for years for suppressing free speech
and promoting a slanted perception
of Chinese history among other things.
- They eliminate certain
information from classrooms.
For example, like the
Tienanmen Square massacre
and the Hong Kong protest.
They're changing the way
that our students learn about China.
- This is a foreign country
paying to influence students
on US soil.
- (foreign language)
- And what that means is they have
almost a permanent
footprint in the US system.
- We're also trying to
steal sensitive technology.
(somber music)
- There are open espionage
investigations involving China,
now get this, in all
50 states in high tech,
agriculture and academia.
- The Chinese government
has been very effectively
stealing America's trade
secrets for generations.
- Of the nearly 5,000 active
FBI counterintelligence cases
currently underway across the country,
almost half are all related to China.
- America's world class university system
has become a soft target
in the global espionage war
with China.
- One of the most high
profile cases recently
was that of Professor Charles Lieber.
- The Chairman of Harvard University's
chemistry department
arrested by FBI agents,
charged with lying about
more than a million dollars
in payments from the Chinese government.
- A Chinese medical
students studying at Harvard
is in custody.
- Two Chinese American
professors have been fired
after film--
- UT researcher accused of
concealing his ties to China.
- We're estimating about
$500 billion a year
in economic loss, just
from the country of China.
- With the protests, and
unrest in the Hong Kong,
and with the Uyghur camps.
- Since 2017, up to a
million Muslim Uyghurs
have been placed in what some
call concentration camps.
- You have to ask yourself what kind
of human rights violations
are occurring there
that we might be overlooking.
- We are seeing the biggest internment
probably since the end of World War II.
- Activists say Beijing has done that
to try to eliminate
Islam within its borders.
- China's crackdown on dissidents
is now being described as
the cruelest in decades.
- And so the next time
there's a revolution
and people are massacred
and they hunt down activists
and drag them from their beds
and they turn up in a river
with their hands bound,
you're going to say, well,
that's got nothing to do with me?
Good luck with that.
And maybe if you sleep well at night,
then that's who you are.
- There are some entities
within universities
that are more aggressive
about seeking money
and much less aggressive about
caring where it comes from.
The MIT Media Lab in retrospect
is certainly one of those.
(solemn music)
- Despite the scrutiny,
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
has extended its partnership
with the Russian research
institute, Skoltech,
though that cooperation
has raised US concerns
ever since it was launched.
- We found that MIT received
over $83 million from Russia.
About half of that came
from a Russian official
who has been sanctioned
for his involvement
in Russia's malign
activities around the world.
- Victor Vekselberg is
a Russian billionaire
who is quite close to Vladimir Putin.
- The Russian oligarch was sanctioned
for his part in helping
to "destabilize" Western democracies.
- US intelligence officials fear
the Russians are using Skolkovo
for nefarious purposes.
- Russia, it's well known
that they have a long
standing information operation
to try to influence Americans.
- The world woke up to the reality
of election meddling
when Russia was exposed
for interfering in the 2016 US election.
- There is no serious dispute
that malign foreign actors
like Russia are working to
subvert our democratic processes
and sow chaos in our political system.
- And so when we see the
Russians buying up influence
in our education system, it
does raise a lot of eyebrows.
(somber music)
- Well, a lot of people think
that universities should act
with some moral center.
They should reflect our conscience.
That is specifically
what most universities
do not want to do.
You know, they may have Latin
phrases that talk about,
you know, doing good in
the world and so forth,
but they are huge corporations
and they are loathe to do that.
- The reality is that colleges
in the United States today
like to have flashy campuses,
they like to have big
programs and that cost money.
- US universities are facing new scrutiny
over their close ties to Saudi Arabia.
Earlier this year, Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman
visited both Harvard and MIT
on his first official tour to the US.
- Mohammed bin Salman known
as MBS is the Crown Prince,
but really the de facto ruler
of Saudi Arabia came over
to this country and took a grand tour.
- He's taken meetings
with Tim Cook, Bill Gates,
and has eaten at Starbucks
with Michael Bloomberg.
- And he welcomed as a modern leader
and that was his intent.
- But the truth is MBS is far
from the political reformer
that he's being presented as.
- there's a photo of him shaking hands
with the president of MIT.
In the background of that photo is a man
who is later implicated in
the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
- Jamal Khashoggi,
a pretty prominent
journalist and columnist went
to the Saudi Embassy in
Turkey and he never came out.
- He was inside that Saudi building
and he was murdered.
- A Turkish official
tells the New York Times Saudi agents
had dismembered his body with a bone saw
they brought for the purpose.
- And it was shocking and it was awful.
- The CIA has concluded
with high confidence
that Mohammed bin Salman
helped to orchestrate
the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
- CNN has now obtained hundreds
of text messages showing
the Washington Post
journalist's blunt criticism
of the Saudi Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salmin.
- Saying "He's like a beast
"like pac man, the more victims
he eats, the more he wants."
- Talk like this is dangerous
for those from a country
with one of the world's worst
records for human rights.
- But even before the Khashoggi incident,
the Saudis were and are
involved in a war in Yemen
and are very credibly
accused of war crimes.
- The Saudi campaign of
airstrikes has been catastrophic.
- The man MIT is hosting
has created the worst
humanitarian crisis on earth.
- When bin Salman visited the
United States in the spring,
students were protesting
it and condemning the visit
and condemning the way that
MIT and Harvard greeted him
as a kind of a reformer,
as opposed to the war criminal that he is.
- When he comes to a campus like Harvard
or like MIT, that
provides him with a level
of legitimacy that I don't
think he would otherwise have.
- You know, they want the prestige.
They want the halo effect
from being associated
with these institutions.
(somber music)
- The Saudis are sponsoring
lots of sporting events
in their country.
And you know, this has
been called sports washing.
And it's really in a way the same thing.
It's to say, look, we are a
nation of the civilized world
that does not murder journalists,
does not behead our own dissidents.
And we are, you know, one of
you and because look at this,
we've got this beautiful, you know,
golf tournament going
on, this tennis match.
- The critical thing with
an academic institution
is how does the money
affect the education?
That's really what you're talking about.
- I think in many cases,
the issue with foreign funding is that
what it usually buys is silence.
It would almost be crazy
to assume that a foreign power is going
to keep giving money to a university
that critiques that
foreign power repeatedly.
- No one likes to bite
the hand that feeds them.
Let me give you an example.
- The feud between Canada and Saudi Arabia
reaches a new level.
- The Canadian government had
some pretty mild criticism
of MBS and Saudi Arabia,
and the regime went crazy.
- The Saudi Arabian government announced
effective immediately that
it was ending scholarships
for some 16,000 Saudi
students studying in Canada.
- University charged foreign students
tuition fees four times higher
than their Canadian counterparts.
- Mount Saint Vincent for example
took a $900,000 revenue hit.
- The big thing that did for us
is it exposed just how vulnerable we are.
- That's a message that
Saudi Arabia is sending out,
which is don't criticize.
And I believe that the
universities heard that.
- Institutions can tell themselves
that they're maintaining
a degree of separation
and they're not allowing people
to influence their thinking
or the choices that they make.
But it's really starts to seem like a lie
when you look at the money.
(somber music)
- If you're a parent
and your child is going
to a university, you can't really know
which foreign governments are
at least partially helping
to fund that education.
- We have the foreign
government of Qatar for example.
We know Qatar is the second largest funder
of international terrorism.
They have also spent
billions of dollars trying
to influence American curriculum
specifically at the Duke UNC program
where they are training
K through 12 teachers.
We have been able to discover
that it is a curriculum
provided by theologically
motivated government.
It is not objective.
- The federal government says
a Middle Eastern Studies
program at Duke and UNC
favors Islam while neglecting Christians,
Jews, and other faiths in the region.
- So we filed a Freedom of
Information Act request,
which would detail why
on earth Qatar is trying
to influence the curriculum
of American students.
And so far, UNC has refused to respond.
- You've even seen foreign
countries go to court
to stop Americans from
learning about these donations.
- For example, my alma mater,
Texas A&M receives hundreds
of millions of dollars
from the government of Qatar.
- This caught the attention of an attorney
who was curious about how these
donations were being used.
- We decided we'd ask them
where hundreds of millions
of dollars of foreign funding were going
and what kind of stipulations
were attached to its use.
- They filed a FOIA request
to get this information,
but at the last minute,
Qatar sued the state of Texas
to block release of this contract.
- Texas A&M refuses to divulge,
and they say that this
is a due to the fact
that they have a secretive agreement
and they cannot violate that agreement,
even though this is a state university.
- I was surprised.
How can you argue as a public university
that your sources of funding
and possible influence
are confidential or a business secret?
There should be total transparency.
- It's a very strange thing when you begin
to see foreign countries
from the Middle East
suing the attorney general
of a state in a democracy
for the release of information
that should be public.
(solemn music)
(upbeat music)
- Hi, welcome to NYU Abu Dhabi.
- A lot of Americans probably don't know,
but there are a number of branch campuses
from American universities
in undemocratic countries
around the world.
- In Qatar and the UAE, in
China, Thailand as well.
- There's this expansion happening.
You've got universities.
You've got Duke is in China.
Northwestern is in Qatar,
NYU is in Abu Dhabi,
Yale is in Singapore.
70 more, right?
- Welcome to Northwestern.
- Qatar has what they call Education City.
- Where you can even register
with five other top American universities.
- Qatar is spending billions of dollars
so that American universities
can set up campus in Doha.
- I think it's great
that these universities
offer this type of education,
but we also think that you learn best
from a free and open education.
And the concern here is that universities
are maybe promising something
that they can't deliver.
- You talked about what liberties
and the lack of liberties
that you have in this country.
- When they go into the community,
they must be aware of
the cultural conditions.
They don't criticize the Islamic faith.
They don't criticize the Amir.
And that's just de
rigueur in Arab countries
and the Arab monarchies.
I think that's the reality.
- It's important to note that Abu Dhabi
and the UAE are kingdoms of fear.
These are countries where
dissent is absolutely illegal.
- New York University
Professor Andrew Ross
said he's been barred
from entering the United Arab Emirates
after he criticized the
monarchy's exploitation
of migrant laborers.
- We've discovered a
fairly consistent pattern
of human rights abuses
among the migrant workforce
in the UAE and also in Qatar.
So it was quite clear
that this was the context
for the barring of entry.
- Back in 2018, Georgetown
University in Qatar
canceled a student-led debate
because it provoked a
controversy within the country.
And the debate was focusing
on the depiction of God as a woman
and Qatar has a blasphemy law.
So the question is there,
do they support freedom of expression
or do they want students to
respect the blasphemy law,
because the two are
fundamentally in tension.
And so we actually put GUQ
on our 10 worst list of 2019
because this is something
that we think is important.
You can't promise students
something that isn't,
that you can't actually deliver.
- And here's the central contradiction.
At the university, one of the purposes
of the university is to
promote democratic values.
- Yes, right.
- Well, how is that gonna occur
in a non-democratic regime,
in a non-democratic country?
- Northwestern has a well-known
communication school,
journalism school.
- In 2013, Northwestern
University signed a memo
of understanding with Al Jazeera,
which was intended to
facilitate collaboration
between the two entities.
- We're often involved
with projects here at Al Jazeera
so Northwestern students can
get a true sense of a career
in journalism at a major news network.
- First of all,
let's just note for a minute
that Al Jazeera is owned
and controlled by Qatar.
- Al Jazeera, the Middle East's
most high profile and
widely watched network
is considered by many
to be a propaganda tool
for Islamists and Qatar.
- Al Jazeera's biggest problem
has always been credibility.
It was having a lot of
trouble expanding in America.
- Al Jazeera America
was shuttered in 2016.
- Lots of turmoil centering on charges
of discrimination, racism bias,
and various resulting lawsuits.
- And so Al Jazeera decided
to rebrand itself as AJ Plus.
- AJ Plus is Al Jazeera's opportunity
to tackle a new audience.
- Al Jazeera is one of
the most influential
Islamist propaganda pro
terror outlets in the world.
- Al Jazeera most
recently got into trouble
because they were
promoting Holocaust denial
in their videos.
- (foreign language)
- Most of the people, I bet
you who tune into AJ Plus
don't even realize that it's an entity
of a foreign government
with a very specific purpose and goal
to influence American public opinion.
- Essentially what was happening
was the government of Qatar
and Al Jazeera were hiring
Northwestern University
to have its students build
Al Jazeera's credibility
and improve and expand its operations,
including on American soil.
- Soon I'll be off to Washington DC
for my residency at a news network,
so I'm really excited to
get more hands-on experience
and really put to use
what I've learned so far.
(somber music)
- This is war of ideas.
We have said this all along.
It is not a war of weapons.
It is a war of ideas.
- Besides funding college campuses,
foreign governments fund
think tanks, media outlets,
activist organizations.
College campuses are just
one element of this program.
- Our democracy is for sale.
- Just look at the numbers.
Look at the numbers of
how many institutions,
how much money it is and
how also the trajectory.
Ultimately, if it wasn't successful,
would the government of Saudi
Arabia or the government
of Russia continue to pour
money into that black hole,
just out of the goodness of their hearts?
Nation states, nations don't do that.
- If you look at a map,
what you see is a corrupting influence
of nationwide proportions.
- One way to address the impact of this is
to force the academic
institutions to be accountable
for the decisions that they're making.
- American students have a right to know
who is behind the curriculum,
who is funding the curriculum,
what strings are attached.
- When you go to buy cigarettes
or a health supplement,
there's always those warning labels.
But when you pick a class
or you pick a professor,
those labels aren't there.
Students are flying blind.
- At the end of the day,
they're our children.
They're the future of this nation.
- As a mother and as a mother bear,
I want to safeguard everything
that is so pure and valuable
about the society that we live in
and the values that we have.
I don't want my daughter growing
up without the same choices
and the same freedom that I have had.
(upbeat music)
