US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, Sept. 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper

US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) has drawn scrutiny over his latest trip to Qatar, where the lawmaker showered the Gulf State with lavish praise while ignoring the country’s litany of human rights abuses and alleged influence over American institutions.

Murphy traveled to Doha and met with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani as well as other senior Qatari officials, holding discussions about the war with Iran and broader regional diplomacy. Murphy has portrayed Qatar as an important US partner and repeatedly argued that diplomacy with Tehran is essential to resolving the region’s conflicts.

Following the trip, Murphy stressed the importance of maintaining Qatari ties to US educational institutions.

“The presence of American universities in Qatar is an important way for the United States to promote US values in the Middle East and create more lasting people-to-people connections. I was glad to visit with Sheikha Hind Al Thani in Doha’s Education City,” he posted on social media on Monday.

The presence of American universities in Qatar is an important way for the United States to promote U.S. values in the Middle East and create more lasting people-to-people connections. I was glad to visit with Sheikha Hind Al Thani in Doha’s Education City https://t.co/xxJjEYQDck

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) October 5, 2026

Murphy’s close engagement with Qatar comes at a time when the country’s role in the Middle East and relationship with the US remains deeply controversial.

Qatar has maintained extensive ties with Hamas, whose leadership has operated from Doha for years. The Gulf state has also cultivated close relations with Iran, even as Tehran supports Hamas, Hezbollah and other armed terrorist groups opposed to Israel and the broader US-led regional order.

According to analysts, Qatar has helped orchestrate and finance a sprawling anti-Israel misinformation campaign throughout the West, fomenting incendiary rage against the Jewish state in Europe, the US, Canada, and Australia.

Qatar is the single largest foreign source of funding to American colleges and universities, according to a public database from the US Department of Education that reveals the scope of overseas influence in US higher education.

In January, when the federal dashboard was launched, it showed shows Qatar had provided $6.6 billion in gifts and contracts to US universities, more than any other foreign government or entity. Of the schools that received Qatari money, Cornell University topped the list with $2.3 billion, followed by Carnegie Mellon University ($1 billion), Texas A&M University ($992.8 million), and Georgetown ($971.1 million).

As of this writing, the dashboard shows Qatar has given just under $9 billion, indicating a massive increase over the past several months.

Many experts have argued that Qatar has used its immense and growing influence on American institutions to push anti-Israel sentiment and undermine Western foreign policy interests.

Last May, the Middle East Forum (MEF) released a report exposing the extent of Qatar’s far-reaching financial ties to American institutions. The findings showed that Qatar had attempted to expand its soft power in the US by spending $33.4 billion on business and real estate projects, over $6 billion on universities, and $72 million on American lobbyists since 2012.

Months later, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) found that Qatar funneled roughly $20 billion into American schools and universities over the past five decades. ISGAP argued in its November 2025 report the money facilitates a conspiracy to embed groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in American academia, civil society, and government agencies. It amounts, ISGAP argued, to a “civilization jihad” strategy.

“Qatar has proved highly adept at compromising individuals and institutions with cold hard cash,” MEF Campus Watch director Winfield Myers said in a statement earlier this year.

Another recent MEF report raised concerns about Northwestern University’s Qatar campus (NU-Q), accusing it of having undermined the school’s mission to foster academic excellence by functioning as a “pipeline” for the next generation of a foreign monarchy’s leadership class.

MEF found that 19 percent of NU-Q graduates carry the surnames of “either the Al-Thani family or other elite Qatari families.” Additionally, graduates from the House of Thani, the country’s royal family, are overrepresented in NU-Q by a factor of five despite being only 2 percent of the population.

The report also said that NU-Q uses its immense wealth, which includes a whopping $700 million in funding from Qatar, to influence the Evanston campus in Illinois, Northwestern’s flagship institution.

Murphy has previously described Qatar as one of America’s most important Gulf partners. At the same time, he has criticized aspects of US military cooperation with Doha, including joining efforts to block American arms sales to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He has also criticized Qatar’s controversial decision to provide US President Donald Trump with a luxury aircraft.

Meanwhile, Murphy has also spent the past three years, following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, positioning himself as one of the US Congress’s fiercest critics of the Jewish state.

Murphy has voted to block arms sales to Israel, saying that Washington’s closest Middle Eastern ally has inflicted a significant degree of suffering on the Palestinian population and that “humanitarian conditions in Gaza have gotten worse, not better.”