Picture a university that truly put America first.
What if, the day after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee had not blamed the victims of the assault?
What if the words “Glory to our martyrs,” projected by Students for Justice in Palestine at George Washington University, had instead been replaced by Israeli flags in a show of solidarity?
And what if UNC Chapel Hill protesters had not pulled down the American flag to raise a Palestinian one, while demonstrators near Washington’s Union Station had not burned U.S. flags or sprayed “Hamas is coming” on a national monument?
The movement that excused the killing of Israelis did not stop there. It turned its attention to America’s flag, too.
Perhaps an America-first university would also refuse money from Doha and reject Qatari influence over faculty appointments or course content.
That kind of campus does not exist today. It could, though.
I left a country where education gave way to radicalization. Iran’s Islamic Revolution did not begin in mosques; it began on campuses. Students joined a revolution they thought they could shape, without realizing the clerics would take control and use it to plunge Iran into darkness.
I was six when my family escaped across the desert beneath burlap sacks as Iranian border police fired at us. I came to America without knowing English. This country gave me an education, a medical degree, a career, and a voice. I can never repay that debt. So, yes, I take it personally when American universities seem to produce anything but patriotic Americans.
Three years have passed since Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took 251 people hostage in Gaza. On the anniversary of the attack, Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter held a protest featuring the message, “Glory to the martyrs, resistance until victory.”
In 2023, 34 Harvard student groups declared Israel “entirely responsible” for the massacre before the dead had even been counted. At Cornell, a professor described the attack at a rally as “exhilarating” and “energizing.”
Columbia University Apartheid Divest posted, “Long live the global intifada!” None of these schools considered expelling those responsible.
At the same time, foreign money continues to flow into U.S. universities. Department of Education data show that foreign sources have sent $67.6 billion to American universities since 1986.
Qatar is the largest donor, with $7.7 billion in investments. It is also the Gulf monarchy that has hosted Hamas leaders since 2012. During President Donald Trump’s first term, investigations prompted universities to disclose more than $6.5 billion in previously unreported foreign funds.
A June report from JINSA described how Qatar can use financial influence on American campuses. Qatar frames its investment as support for academic excellence abroad, with funding coming through the Qatar Foundation, a nongovernmental organization rather than directly from the government.
JINSA argued that a country that denies its own citizens civil liberties while funding an American university to advocate for those same rights is not simply supporting human rights. Instead, it said, the country is buying academic prestige and institutional language that can advance its foreign-policy goals.
Now consider what universities could do differently.
Harvard received $4.2 billion in foreign funds between 1986 and 2025. Imagine if it announced that it would no longer take money from countries that support terrorist organizations. Or if Columbia treated praise for terrorism with the same seriousness it gives academic cheating.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned foreign students on visas: “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist.”
The First Amendment protects Americans’ right to express even deeply offensive views. Private universities, however, can decide that praising terrorists has no place in their campus community.
Imagine if universities expected more of their students than they do now. They could help build microchips, strengthen infrastructure, and develop technologies that keep the United States at the forefront. That, to me, is what America first should mean on campus: not just a slogan, but an education that helps produce Americans who are proud of their country.
Universities did that for generations, before some began putting foreign money and fashionable radicalism ahead of the nation that built them. The Shah’s Iran had world-class universities, too.
I saw what happened when they stopped putting education first. I will not stand by and watch it happen to the country that saved my life.
