Top American Ivy League universities including Cornell and Harvard have received over $8 billion in the last 35 years from Arab countries, a report has revealed.
According to a report by the Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, Cornell University received over $1.5 billion from the Middle East.
The report, authored by Dr. Mitchell Bard, was originally released in 2021 and showed how the Ivy League school received 127 gifts totaling $1,513,778,660.
This comes amid pro-Palestinian protests at some top American universities - despite attitudes towards Israel among Arab nations changing dramatically - culminating in the Abraham Accords in 2020.
According to the findings, Arab states have managed to funnel money into institutions in at least 46 states.
Cornell topped the list of these, with over double the amount of money received than the second highest recipient, Georgetown University.
Saudi Arabia has donated over $2 billion, while the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had donations totaling over $1 billion.
Other top universities who accepted the donations include Harvard University, who received $187 million and New York University who received $162 million.
In the report, Bard states: ‘Between 1986 and 2021, colleges and universities received nearly $8.5 billion from Arab sources.
The report also notes that since 1976, governments in the Middle East and individuals have been providing Universities with grants to create centers in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies.
While Johns Hopkins received an undisclosed amount from the UAE to build a hospital that opened in 2012.
The school was then given $50 million by the UAE to create the Sheikh Khalifa Stroke Institute to help stroke patients, with sites in Baltimore and the UAE.
The report also said that Stanford, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Texas all entered agreements with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology worth $25 million.
Bard also states in his report that $3.4 billion has went unreported by Universities in the country.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, at the end of 2021 the value of endowments given to colleges and universities stood at $927 Billion, an increase of 34 percent than the beginning of the year when it stood at $691 Billion.
The New York times said in a previous report that by funding Universities, Saudi Arabia ‘gets access to the brain trust of America’s top academic institutions as it endeavors to modernize its economy.’
The outlet also said: ‘Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, hostile to women’s and LGBTQ rights and without protections for a free press or open expression, but its associations beyond its borders can make it seem almost like an honorary Western nation.’
With the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, top universities have seen widespread protests take place.
Harvard University is currently facing a backlash after 31 of its student societies issued a statement ‘holding the Israeli regime responsible’ for the war.
Subsequent protests have kicked off at the University, with a group of 150 people appearing at Cambridge City Hall with placards and Palestinian flags.
One was seen stamping on a US flag as he slammed the ‘brutal treatment of Palestinians since 1948'.
Israeli supporters then appeared on the scene, having brought an amplifier along and berated the protesters as ‘terrorists’ and ‘cowards’.
Students at the elite school have since had their own future thrown into doubt after a host of blue chip CEOs declared them unemployable.
The CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management said he has been approached by ‘a number of CEOs about the students who had agreed to the statement.
Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, said days later the statement does not speak for the educational institution as a whole or its leadership.
Her comments came after some criticized the Harvard administration for taking too long to denounce the student letter.
At Cornell University, students have been calling on the school’s board to take action against a professor who said the Hamas assault on Israel ‘exhilarated him’.
Russell Rickford is an associate professor of history and, according to his Twitter bio, a ‘Historian of the black radical tradition.’
At a crowd that rallied in support of Palestine, he said: ‘It was exhilarating. It was exhilarating, it was energizing.
‘And if they weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, the shifting of the violence of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated.’
Two students have since come forward and expressed disgust at the remarks made by the professor.
Rickford has not tweeted since June and neither he nor Cornell have responded to requests for comment.
