A prestigious Jesuit university, which receives millions in funding from the hardline Islamic regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is facing accusations of promoting pro-Hamas propaganda and fomenting antisemitism through its Gaza Lecture Series.

Georgetown University, which has thus far received $934 million from Arab-Muslim sources, is being slammed by Israel for inviting UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese to deliver the October 28 presentation in the series titled “Anatomy of Genocide in Gaza.”

In an August 30 tweet, Israel blasted Georgetown, noting that the UN representative “justified the October 7 massacre and has spread countless antisemitic blood libels against Jews.

“And the cherry on top? This event will be held in October, exactly one year after the most horrific massacre against Jews since the Holocaust,” Israel lamented.

The Jesuit school boasts of campuses in Washington D.C. and Qatar.

Academics Condemn Georgetown’s Antisemitism

Several academics joined Israel in condemning the school, which promotes itself as the “oldest Catholic Jesuit university in the United States,” for the antisemitic stance of its lecture series.

“Look closely at who is invited and what they are speaking about, and then consider whether Georgetown is functioning more as an academic institution or more as an outlet for pro-Hamas/anti-Israel propaganda in this context,” noted David E. Bernstein, law professor at George Mason University and executive director of its Liberty & Law Center.

“Georgetown disgraces itself with this lecture series reflecting a far leftist, Islamist, anti-Zionist, anti-Israel bias that feeds and foments antisemitism,” observed Harvard university-trained historian Dr. Zachary Narrett.

“When we will see ‘less’ Jew and Israel hate!” exclaimed Hayder Alasadi, founder and CEO of the Iraqi-Israeli Association of Peace, in response to Georgetown’s lecture series. “I am Iraqi and proudly stand with my Jewish cousins.”

The Gaza Lecture Series is being cosponsored by Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, named after a member of the Saudi royal family who donated $20 million to Georgetown University in 2005 “to teach about the Islamic world to the United States.”

The gift was the second-largest donation given to the Georgetown at that point.

In its 2020 investigation of universities receiving foreign funding — which included Texas A&M University, Cornell University, Rutgers University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Maryland — the U.S. Department of Education noted, “This donation empowered the Saudi Arabian government to advance a particular narrative about Islamic society to the West via a legitimate Western institution like Georgetown University.”

The report criticized “Prince Alwaleed’s controversial and political past, ranging from anti-Zionism to handsomely rewarding Saudi Arabians who participated in Yemen bombing raids.

“The Center also received criticism for deceptively labeling itself as pluralistic; according to critics, the ‘Christian’ studies portion of the Center was a ‘misnomer’ as there was no Christian representation,” the Department of Education’s investigation concluded.

The Gaza lecture series is also being partly sponsored by Georgetown University Qatar. In 2014, Georgetown received $59.5 million from Qatar to build a campus in the Islamic emirate.

“Blood Money”

“It’s an odd location for a Jesuit school that is supposed to be rooted in Christian values, given Qatar’s support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood,” remarked Mitchell Bard, a foreign-policy analyst and author of 22 books, including the bestseller Death to the Infidels: Radical Islam’s War Against the Jews.

“Consider the irony of a Jesuit university hosting a center funded by someone from a country that discriminates against Christians,” Bard added.

Georgetown currently tops the list of Catholic universities benefiting from Islamic funding and ranks second after Cornell University ($2.1 billion) for the largest gifts received from Arab Muslim donors.

Two-thirds of the funding for Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, which is also sponsoring the Gaza lectures, was contributed by Arab countries. The center’s board of advisors has representatives from Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

The UAE has donated $750,000 to endow a chair in Arab studies and $250,000 to support a visiting professorship of Arab civilization at Georgetown University.

When the Jesuit school received a $750,000 endowment from Libya in 1977, columnist Art Buchwald chastized the university for accepting “blood money from one of the most notorious regimes in the world today,” sarcastically suggesting Georgetown also consider establishing a “Brezhnev Studies Program in Human Rights or an Idi Amin Chair in Genocide.

“I don’t see why the [Palestinian Liberation Organization] has to have a PR organization when Georgetown is doing all their work for them,” Buchwald wrote.

Similarly, after Georgetown received $20 million from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) asked whether the Center has produced any analysis critical of Saudi Arabia “in the fields of human rights, religious freedom, freedom of expression, women’s rights, minority rights, protection for foreign workers, due process and the rule of law.”

While the Jesuit school received $333 million from Qatar between 2011 and 2019, it has also received $100,000 from Sultan Qabus of Oman and $6.5 million from a foundation of Arab businessmen led by Palestinian Christian Arab Hasib Sabbagh.

Financing Hatred of Jews

The U.S. Department of Education had previously warned that “universities receiving Arab funding have faculty who are apologists for radical Islam and vitriolic critics of Israel who support the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.”

A preprint of a paper titled “The Corruption of the American Mind: How Concealed Foreign Funding of U.S. Higher Education Predicts Erosion of Democratic Values and Antisemitic Incidents on Campus,” which has been submitted for peer-review to the journal Frontiers in Social Psychology, demonstrates the link between Islamic funding and hatred of Jews.

“Foreign funding, especially when provided either by member countries of the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation or by authoritarian countries, was associated with elevated levels of campus antisemitism and anti-Zionist incidents,” the researchers found.

“A growing body of literature addresses a possible connection between funding from Islamic authoritarian regimes that hold anti-Israel views, and on-campus antisemitism,” the authors noted, naming Georgetown University as one of the schools influenced by Islamic funding.

Pro-Hamas Bias

Unsurprisingly, Georgetown’s faculty have consistently displayed an anti-Israel and pro-Hamas bias.

Just eight days after the October 7 massacre, Prof. John Esposito, the founding director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, signed a statement warning of “potential genocide” by Israeli forces against Palestinians in Gaza.

He was joined by two dozen members of Georgetown University, including Noureddine Jebnoun from Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, associate professor of philosophy Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, and Sultanate of Oman associate professor Rochelle Davis.

Eleven days after Hamas committed the massacre, more than 70 faculty members from Georgetown signed a statement calling on the university to demand a ceasefire — but remained silent about Hamas, the massacre, and the hostages that were taken that day.

Jesuits Build Mosque

In March 2023, the Catholic university bragged that it had built what it called “the first-of-its-kind mosque” on an American college campus. “The Yarrow Mamout Masjid is the first mosque with ablution stations, a spirituality and formation hall and a halal kitchen on a U.S. college campus,” a press statement from the university trumpeted.

“Georgetown was also the first U.S. university to hire a full-time Muslim chaplain, Imam Yahya Hendi, 24 years ago.”

Earlier, Prof. Jonathan A. Brown, a convert to Islam and director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center, openly defended slavery, concubinage, and nonconsensual sex in a 2017 lecture, citing the Prophet Muhammad’s example, an audio recording of the lecture revealed.

On March 21, he tweeted, “Israeli security forces are lunatics. Israel is insanely racist.”

Founder’s Philosemitism

Ironically, St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus loved the Jewish people with a rare passion.

In his book, The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus, historian Robert Aleksander Maryks explains how Jesuits with Jewish ancestry went from having a leading role in the foundation and development of the Society of Jesus to being prohibited from membership in it in less than 40 years.

Ignatius’s biographer, Pedro de Ribadeneyra (1526–1611) records the Jesuit founder saying that “he would take it as a special grace from our Lord to come from Jewish lineage.”

“Beyond nominal affiliation, Georgetown isn’t a Christian campus,” Georgetown student Elijah Martin, writes on the website of the Institute of Religion and Democracy, “but I am increasingly convinced that it knows it is lost.”

 

Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.