(The Center Square) – The U.S. Department of Education awarded millions of taxpayer dollars to professors and programs that are explicitly anti-Israel, according to a new report.
The nonprofit federal spending accountability group, Open The Books, released the analysis, which reported that DOE awarded $283 million in foreign studies grants, with $22.1 million going to support Middle East-focused programs.
“Most of these programs received roughly $1-2 million since 2020,” Open The Books said. “But the top three received well more than $2.5M each – those of Indiana University, Columbia University, and Georgetown University. “Each of them have submitted grant applications that highlight professors with radical anti-Israel ideas, and in one case, a disinterest in their school’s code of conduct.”
Universities around the country have taken fire for antisemitic protests on campus or comments from faculty or administrators in the past year.
The report goes on to include complaints from students against professors who received millions of dollars from the federal government.
“The professor (and, shockingly, many of the students) tend to turn discussion sections into ‘us vs. them’ blame game, where they list the West’s various cultural crimes ad nauseum…” one student said.
Another student complained that a professor “takes a categorically anti-U.S. tack at every possible opportunity, and usually succeeds only at alienating his students,” according to the report.
In one specific instance, Dr. Abdulkader Sinno, associate professor of Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies at Indiana University, was named on an awarded $2.84 million federal grant.
Sinno also acts as faculty advisor for the Palestinian Solidarity Committee, a group that hosted anti-Israel protests after the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel that led to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
“Sinno reserved a room for a PSC speaking event and marked it as an academic event, despite the fact that his department chair had declined to host it,” Open The Books said. “Student organizations follow a different approval process, which triggers more oversight, and Sinno subverted it. The result was security needed to be diverted as the speaker showed up to campus. The professor maintained it was an ‘honest mistake.’ Sinno was suspended for Spring and Summer 2024 semesters as a result – no lecturing – and no advising student groups for a full calendar year.”
Another professor, Dr. Fida Adely, associate professor & director of Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, is on the National Advisory Board of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), a group that fueled anti-Israel protests on campuses nationwide.
From Open The Books:
- FJP backs the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and wants to “dismantle” Israel study abroad programs.
- FJP’s “Back to School 2024” statement criticizes “mechanisms for suppressing speech, criminalizing protest and weaponizing fragility.” They say Israel’s war against Hamas exposes “the depths of settler colonial depravity.”
- FJP works “in close collaboration with” staff from Birzeit University, a hotbed of radicalism in the West Bank. Members of the Hamas-affiliated “Islamic Bloc” have won most seats on its student council over the past two years. Birzeit’s Union of Professors and Employees said 2023 would be remembered as “the year that Palestinians stood boldly in the face of colonial fascism and screamed in defense of their homes, humanity, and lives.”
