Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani speaks after a meeting with the Lebanese president at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Emilie Madi

Last week at the University of Miami, I sat through a political science lesson titled “How Interest Groups & Social Movements Shape Public Opinion.” We covered Black Lives Matter, the NRA, pro-Palestinian campus activism, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

After class, I asked my professor why he chose AIPAC as one of the main examples for us to study. Of all the organizations and institutions that wield influence in American life, why did he choose AIPAC as one example? He said it was “because of the enormous media attention surrounding it,” and because he “wanted to focus on groups that shape public opinion, as AIPAC does.”

That answer has bothered me ever since.

Anyone who follows American politics knows that AIPAC already holds a prominent place in conversation. In the media, journalists cover its spending and political activity, politicians boast about their relationship (or lack thereof) with the organization, and, as I saw, professors use it as a case study.

If my professor’s lesson was really about how institutions and organizations shape public opinion, another kind of influence deserved our attention: Qatar’s financial relationships with American universities.

In 2025 alone, American universities reported more than 8,300 foreign gifts and contracts worth over $5.2 billion, and Qatar was the largest reported national source, accounting for more than $1.1 billion.

Unlike AIPAC-affiliated electoral spending, this money comes from foreign sources and flows into American universities. However, the discussion did not address Qatar’s financial role in American universities.

AIPAC and its affiliated super PAC, United Democracy Project (UDP), operate within the American electoral system and report political spending to the Federal Election Commission. From January 2025 through October 2026, UDP reported approximately $112.8 million in receipts and $53.4 million in independent expenditures.

That spending may be substantial but doesn’t outpace other larger special interest groups. And more importantly, it is publicly reported through an accessible disclosure system.

Qatar’s influence looks different. It runs through universities, investments, research partnerships, and institutional agreements, and unlike electoral spending, that activity isn’t disclosed in a single system.

In March 2026, the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce released nearly 900 pages of agreements involving Georgetown and Northwestern in Qatar. A JINSA analysis explained, “The documents … show how Qatar is trying to obscure its attempts to control US universities, presenting the arrangement as a philanthropic investment in American academic excellence abroad not by the government of Qatar but by the non-governmental Qatar Foundation.”

When financial relationships extend into appointments, governance, admissions, and research, how should we distinguish partnership from influence?

The question is: Why don’t universities scrutinize their own relationships as closely as they teach students to scrutinize everyone else’s? A 2020 US Department of Education report found that federal investigations prompted universities to disclose $6.5 billion in gifts and contracts they had not reported.

Part of why these relationships are treated so differently may come down to the language used to describe them. People often describe political advocacy in terms of money, power, pressure, and influence, but universities frame relationships with foreign governments as partnership, philanthropy, and global education.

What’s striking is how often AIPAC is used as the familiar example when political influence is discussed. Repeated exposure to the same example can shape how individual students understand political power while also reinforcing a broader narrative about which actors are considered especially influential.

That is what made my professor’s presentation especially telling. His slides listed schools as institutions that shape public opinion, and in that sense, the lecture almost proved its own point.

If media attention helps decide what makes it into the classroom, and the classroom reinforces what students see as important, then the lecture can end up reproducing the same cycle it is trying to explain.

My professor told me he chose AIPAC partly because of the attention surrounding it. That answer became more interesting to me than the example itself. If attention helps decide what makes it into the classroom, then attention itself deserves scrutiny. Who gets talked about? Who doesn’t?

My professor set out to teach us how powerful organizations shape public opinion. He succeeded, though perhaps not as he intended. By putting AIPAC under the microscope while leaving Qatar’s billions in university funding out of the conversation, he demonstrated just how much influence educators wield over what students consider worthy of scrutiny.

The lesson wasn’t just about AIPAC; it was about the power of the person standing at the front of the classroom.

Ella Leon is a sophomore at the University of Miami studying Political Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Judaic Studies.