A leading Jewish civil rights group is urging Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Act Unit to investigate whether Northwestern University’s longstanding ties to Qatar violate FARA, Jewish Insider has learned.

In a letter sent to Blanche on Wednesday, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law cited $737 million the government-run Qatar Foundation has sent to Northwestern in connection with the school’s Doha campus, arguing the relationship extends beyond ordinary academic activity. 

The Brandeis Center asserts that “officials of Northwestern, acting in their official capacity using university resources, have acted for and on behalf of Qatar.” 

The group points to communications uncovered by the House Committee on Education and Workforce showing Qatar Foundation officials pushing to shape Northwestern’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks — including talking points sent to the dean of Northwestern Qatar, two weeks after the attack, on Qatar’s “diplomatic role and mediation efforts in Palestine/Gaza.” 

Northwestern’s Qatar campus (NU-Q) opened in 2008, and has since faced scrutiny for faculty ties to Hamas. The NU-Q contract states that students, faculty and staff are subject to “applicable laws and regulations of the State of Qatar” including cultural, religious and social customs. 

The contract is set to expire at the end of the 2027–2028 academic year. In an interview published in May with The Daily Northwestern, the university’s student newspaper, then-President Henry Bienen said the NU-Q review process to potentially renew the relationship is “ongoing” and would be left up to the university’s new leadership. Mung Chiang, who assumed the role of university president on July 1, has not publicly stated how he plans to address NU-Q and shape the long-term trajectories of both the Doha and Evanston, Ill., campuses.

“When a foreign government funnels hundreds of millions of dollars into one of America’s most prestigious universities and then seeks to shape the school’s actions and messaging, the public has a right to know the full extent of that relationship,” said Kenneth Marcus, chairman and CEO of the Brandeis Center.

“We are urging the Department of Justice to investigate Northwestern’s relationship with Qatar and determine whether the university has been acting on behalf of a foreign government without the transparency federal law requires. Academic freedom and the civil rights of students, faculty members, and their families should never be beholden to the purse strings of a foreign government, especially one that has so openly sought to spread anti-Semitism and embolden extremism in the United States,” he said.

Qatar is the leading foreign funder of American higher education — as well as a major source of funding in K-12 classrooms. As of July, it had provided some $9 billion to elite universities including Northwestern, Cornell and Georgetown.