Foreign rulers should not have a say in what children learn in our nation’s K-12 schools, which is why we should be alarmed by the state of Qatar’s under-the-radar activities in American primary and secondary education.
Public documents from Georgia reveal that Qatar Foundation International (QFI), the Qatari royal family’s charity arm in the United States, is funding multiple education initiatives in the Peach State: K-12 teacher trainings, Arabic textbooks for young students, and student trips to Qatar.
Qatar is already the largest foreign donor to American higher educational institutions, and if the Qatari royals are now spreading their money around in Georgia’s public school operations, parents have a right to know. But right now, there are no federal laws requiring K-12 schools to disclose when they receive foreign funding. By contrast, colleges and universities must disclose any foreign gift above $250,000.
Congress is currently sitting on a proposed law known as the TRACE ACT, which would require that public K-12 schools disclose any donation from a foreign country or a foreign entity of concern. Entities of concern are those subject to the direction of governments in Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Qatar—which is notorious for pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into influence campaigns aimed at the United States—belongs on the list, too.
Documents show that QFI spent at least $281,000 on education in Georgia: It gave at least $79,000 to Amana Academy—a public charter school in Alpharetta that requires its students to take Arabic—and $202,000 to Georgia State University. On top of this, QFI gave scholarships in 2021, for unknown amounts, for eight K–12 students across the state to attend an "immersive Arabic experience" in Atlanta and Detroit, which has a large Arab community.
Amana Academy is a K-8 charter school for residents in the Fulton County school district, which sits outside Atlanta. Records show that QFI provided at least $79,100 in funds to Amana from 2019 through March 2025. In 2023, Amana (the Arab word for "trust") thanked QFI for providing a grant that allowed the school to take 14 students and 3 staffers on a nine-day "cultural tour" of Qatar. On its LinkedIn page, the school boasts that its relationship with QFI is more than a decade old.
From 2021 to 2025, QFI gave five grants to Georgia State University. The money was earmarked to fund staff and training for the Arabic Teachers Council of the South, which hosts K-12 teacher trainings and helps recruit more Arabic teachers. Georgia State had no obligation to report this gift because current federal law only requires colleges and universities to report gifts and contracts from a foreign source that total $250,000 or more in a calendar year.
QFI answers to the most senior royals of Qatar, an absolute monarchy. It is the U.S. branch of the Doha-based Qatar Foundation, whose chairperson is Her Highness Sheika Moza bint Nasser, the mother of the current emir. According to the Qatar Foundation website, QFI is "dedicated to Arabic language and culture education for students and teachers across the world."
Nominally a U.S. ally, Qatar has supported U.S.-designated terror organizations and the Muslim Brotherhood and has extensive ties to Iran. It has been a major Hamas financier, is home to Hamas’s political office, and has allowed top Hamas leaders to reside in the country. The Taliban’s political office is based in its capital, Doha.
When a country has this kind of record, its money should be nowhere near U.S. classrooms. There are already strong indications that QFI is promoting values and content at odds with parents’ preferences.
The Arabic Teachers Council of the South, according to its website, is a community of educators from universities and K-12 schools across southern states. On YouTube, one can see a March 2024 training video from the council and QFI entitled, "Using Films to Explore Social Justice Issues in Arabic Classes." It features teachers sharing tips on how to get "social justice" topics woven into the curriculum, even if parents may disagree.
"I teach at an Episcopal private school where the majority of the population is of a Christian background and some are more on the conservative right side," one teacher says, explaining that when she wants to teach a controversial topic, she gets the green light from the school’s diversity coordinator.
"Let that person be a shield—otherwise you are opening yourself to being attacked by the parents," the teacher says.
The training video also suggests using as a teaching tool the controversial 2005 Palestinian film Paradise Now, which tells the story of two Palestinian friends plotting a suicide bomber attack on Israel and has been criticized for its sympathetic portrayal of terrorists.
QFI helps to spearhead several other teachers’ councils across the country. There are chapters based in New York, Chicago, Southern California, and elsewhere. Qatar’s virulently anti-Israel sentiment has seeped into these councils, which have included teachers who espouse hate and violence against Israel and Jews. QFI funds the councils and encourages Arabic teachers in K-12 classrooms and at the university level to join the groups.
Congressional testimony from my colleague, Dr. Brandy Shufutinsky, highlighted one QFI-funded Arabic teacher at a public high school in Chicago. The teacher, Fadi Abughoush, is a member of the Chicago Arabic Teachers Council who has posted social media content calling slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar a king and showing an image of former president Joe Biden watching Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu eat dead "kosher" children. Abughoush’s Netanyahu post still appeared on his Instagram feed as of publication along with selfies with other QFI-affiliated Arabic teachers and K-12 students. QFI recognized Abughoush with a teacher of excellence award last August.
Parents shouldn’t have to scour the internet to find out which teachers and schools are working with an organization tied to the Qatari royal family, and we should be extraordinarily wary of the Qataris extending their influence into the minds of our children. Lawmakers can and should require transparency.
The TRACE ACT would also require schools to provide parents with copies of teaching materials and teacher training tools obtained using foreign funds. Congress needs to move quickly to pass the TRACE ACT so parents can learn whether foreign actors are shaping what their children are learning in the classroom.
Simone Weichselbaum is a research fellow with FDD’s Education and National Security Program.
