A Year After 10/7: Radical Professors, Programs Were Funded by Federal Grants

Following months of campus upheaval, we examined $283M in foreign studies grants.

Oct 16, 2024

Taxpayers fund universities, both public and private, in numerous ways. You already know about the hundreds of billions worth of research grants that flow their way, often outstripping the money they earn on actual tuition. We’ve reported the preferential tax treatment they receive on their massive endowments! And unfortunately, we help them keep tuitions high as President Biden continues forgiving certain people’s student loans — $168.5 billion and counting!

Agencies and departments across the federal government also spend huge sums of money on grants that are meant to advance our national interests in various ways.

In the case of the Department of Education, that includes — again — funding universities to support the study of foreign countries and regions around the globe.

Our public interest in that? It’s meant to help turn out more professionals in foreign policy, foreign aid and national security roles. These would be young professionals qualified to understand regional geopolitics and represent America’s interests.

Just one little problem….

At some of the best-funded programs — like at Columbia University — radical professors have been touted on their grant applications and have repeated some of the same anti-Israel, anti-Western views we hear from student protestors.

THE BIG NUMBER

Since 2020, the Department of Education has doled out $283 million worth of foreign studies grants, and there are two key types. The first are “National Resource Centers” (NRC) grants — these go directly to departmental programs. The second are called “Foreign Language and Area Studies” (FLAS) grants. Universities can use these to give students fellowships to study these foreign regions and learn less commonly taught languages.

While the grants can go to studies of any part of the world, we are focusing specifically on the Middle East where Hamas committed the October 7 atrocities, the subject of all this campus unrest. Over $22.1 million has been given to support at least a dozen of these programs since 2020.

TOP-FUNDED MIDDLE EAST PROGRAMS

Most of these programs received roughly $1-2 million since 2020. 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.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Former Columbia President Minouche Shafik testifies before Congress, April 2024 (Source: Eyewitness News ABC7/NY).

For weeks and months after October 7, 2023, Columbia made headlines for particularly violent and angry protests, drawing Congressional attention at an April 2024 hearing titled “Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University’s Response to Anti-Semitism.”

Then-president Minouche Shafik fielded questions concerning antisemitism at the university, both during the campus protests and more broadly. She came under intense scrutiny for her reluctance to condemn chants of “from the river to the sea” on campus.

She also indicated she’d disciplined one of her professors when she, in fact, had not. The professor had declared October 7 a victory and was previously touted by Columbia on one of their Department of Education grant applications.

Dr. Joseph Massad, Professor, Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) Department

Published an article calling October 7 attack “a stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance. The attack killed around 1,200 people; Israelis and foreigners.
Columbia used Massad as a selling point on its 2018 grant application: "a significant number of faculty...are strong on contemporary politics, with tremendous geographic range”… “Rashid Khalidi and Paul Chamberlin (History), Timothy Mitchell and Joseph Massad (MESAAS), teach courses that focus on the modern history, gender, political economy, international relations, politics and culture of the region."
A FLAS grant (2022-23) worth $653,632 led at least one student to Massad’s course, “Gender and Sexuality in the Arab World” where he enjoyed learning about “gender and feminist theories.”
Other students were less impressed. The Middle East Forum, a nonprofit that combats radical Islam at American universities and beyond, published student critiques highlighting Massad’s bias against both Israel and the West. The comments claim:
- “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...”
- “I worry about the people who enter the class with little to no knowledge of the topic and form their opinions based on Massad’s lectures and assigned readings...The class is taught unethically, and should be renamed ‘Why Palestinians Hate Israel.’”
- “… he takes a categorically anti-U.S. tack at every possible opportunity, and usually succeeds only at alienating his students.”
In 2002, Massad gave a talk at Columbia called “On Zionism and Jewish Supremacy.”

Massad has taught at Columbia since 1999 and, given that he’s been tenured since 2009, he remains teaching today.

INDIANA UNIVERSITY

Indiana University’s Middle East program is the top grant-receiver ($2.84M) from 2020-2023. The school also dealt with intense student protests, which they ultimately used the police to break up. And like Columbia, they also had a controversial professor in Abdulkader Sinno. And just like at Columbia, his name and resume appear on one of Indiana University’s applications to the Department of Education for foreign studies grants.

Dr. Abdulkader Sinno, Associate Professor, Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies

Served as faculty advisor for the Palestinian Solidarity Committee (PSC), whose members went to a Hillel demonstration on October 9, 2023 and confronted them across police lines, shouting and chanting. They claimed they’d come to support “our brothers and sisters being mass-murdered, tortured, killed and raped in Israel.”
PSC later protested for a ceasefire with signs like “Colonialism, Apartheid, Genecide [sic]” and called Israelis “occupiers.”
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. 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.
Vice Provost Carrie Dochery told Sinno in a letter, “As the result of your conduct during [our] interview, your credibility deficiencies, my concerns regarding your judgment in advising the student organization, your failures to follow relevant policies and procedures…I have serious concerns about the effect your behavior may have on members of the campus community.”
- According to the Indiana Daily Student, she also “referred to instances of ‘threatening’ behavior toward a colleague and ‘a number of bias reports’ filed against Sinno,” but omitted finer details.
After his suspension, Sinno gave a speech at an “alternative” graduation for pro-Palestinian activists in May. He said attendees were part of a “proud tradition” alongside those who “stood against apartheid in South Africa.”
- According to NPR affiliate WFYI, the “ceremony concluded with faculty and students lining up in procession, saying their names and dipping their hands in green, red and black paint, and pressing them against a white sheet.”

Like Massad at Columbia, Sinno is a tenured professor and remains on staff at Indiana University.

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

Georgetown University ranks #3 for these grants from 2020-2023, pulling in $2.64M from the Dept. of Education. Its School of Foreign Service is one of the premier places to study for aspiring State Department officials. Stop us if you’ve heard this before: again, we quickly found a prominent professor with controversial ideas and ties.

Dr. Fida Adely, Associate Professor & Director, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, School of Foreign Service

Serves on the National Advisory Board of Faculty for Justice in Palestine. FJP members “support the cause of Palestinian liberation through education, advocacy and action. FJP “supports and amplifies the work of Students for Justice in Palestine along with other pro-Palestinian student groups and campus unions.”
- FJP backs the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and want 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.”
Adely is part of Anthro Boycott – a collective working to get the American Association of Anthropologists to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
- She co-authored a 2015 blog post arguing the boycott is necessary because calls for “dialogue” only “disguise the real issues of settler-colonialism, oppression and occupation, and act as a kind of marketing tool rebranding the reality of separation and apartheid as a fantasy of ‘coexistence.’”
- In the same piece, she makes now-stereotypical claims that Israel engaged in “ethnic cleansing” and created an “open-air prison” in Gaza.

Adely is featured as a “select faculty expert” on the university’s Middle East and North Africa studies factsheet, and naturally, appears on their grant application, too.

ARE THE FEDS CHECKING?

During the Trump administration, one grant recipient did get some scrutiny and pushback. A joint Duke/UNC program received a letter from the Dept. of Education criticizing it for giving “very little serious instruction preparing individuals to understand the geopolitical challenges to U.S. national security and economic needs, but quite a considerable emphasis on advancing ideological priorities.”

The Feds said the program was missing a balance of perspectives and used taxpayer dollars on irrelevant activities – like a concert series highlighting “Islam, music, and social change” and a conference called “Love and Desire in Modern Iran.”

The schools were to reform the program or lose their funding.

But as we’ve illustrated, programs with top funding have radical professors promoted in their literature and on grant applications. The Department of Education did not respond when asked how or if they scrutinize these applications.

And, we’ve only scratched the surface here — grants studying other areas of the world total $283M just since 2020. Which other professors and ideas are we backing?

Top ten schools receiving foreign language and area studies grants, to study the Middle East, Asia and beyond (2020-2023).

CONCLUSION

By funding schools that teach radical ideologies and practice a far-Left DEI philosophy, controversial professors and administrators are also gaining access to a vast ecosystem of tax dollars, and influence over impressionable young people. These funds can be used to advance their research, build their standing as credentialed academics, gain tenure, and impact international policy discussions.

Meanwhile, our national interest in these grants comes into considerable question. Are we encouraging more professionals who will be credible in these fields and represent U.S. interests, or more folks who are determined to “dismantle” the “settler colonialism” they see all around them?