Two Senate Republicans wrote to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona on Thursday, raising concerns about federal funding for Middle East studies allegedly provided to anti-Israel professors on college campuses.

The letter, from Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) focused on National Resource Centers and Foreign Language Area Studies grants provided by the Department of Education.

A recent report by a nonprofit group that scrutinizes government spending alleged that $22.1 million of those funds have gone toward Middle East studies programs and, specifically, to professors with strident anti-Israel views.

“The Biden-Harris administration should not channel American taxpayer dollars toward extremist

professors who inculcate their students with hatred of America’s strongest ally — and sole

democracy — in the Middle East,” the senators wrote. “This potential abuse of taxpayer funds is not just wasteful but may run contrary to the intent of the programs and the law.”

According to the report and letter, one grant to Columbia University supported a course taught by Professor Joseph Massad, who praised the Hamas Oct. 7 attack as “a stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance.”

The report also states that a Georgetown University professor, Fida Adely, who is a leader in anti-Israel boycott efforts, has also received federal grant funding.

“When the Department is directing taxpayer funds toward professors who demonize the Jewish state and back organizations with ties to terrorism, it raises questions regarding whether certain academic institutions are complying with the congressional mandates laid out in Title VI,” the senators said. 

The lawmakers asked how the department would rectify the situation, whether it would audit other grant funding recipients and whether it would cut off further funding to institutions “found to be abusing such funding to indoctrinate their students with anti-Israel propaganda.”
Such grant funding for Middle East studies programs could come under scrutiny from the incoming Trump administration’s Department of Education, according to Kenneth Marcus, who served in the Department of Education under the first Trump administration.