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Foreign funding of U.S. higher education relates to sanctioning of scholars and antisemitism

Topic:

Antisemitism & Antizionism

Principal Investigators:

Michael Bass, Alexander Reid Ross, Ben Wolfson, Joel Finkelstein, Sonia Yanovsky, Danit Finkelstein, Sean T. Stevens, Nathan Honeycutt, Pamela Paresky, Ayal Feinberg, Charles Asher Small, Lee Jussim

Study Date: 

2024

Source:

Frontiers in Social Psychology

Key Findings:

'- Foreign funding overall showed weak/inconsistent links to scholar sanctions, but… - Funding from OIC and authoritarian countries showed strong, consistent associations with: - Higher rates of scholar sanctioning and speaker deplatforming - Increased antisemitic and anti-Zionist incidents on campus (medium–large effects) - More BDS activity, anti-Zionist expression, and harassment of Jewish students - Campuses receiving OIC/authoritarian funding had significantly higher antisemitism scores than unfunded ones. - Campus antisemitism was positively correlated with antisemitic incidents in nearby counties. - Campus targeting of Jewish students predicted national FBI antisemitic hate-crime levels—and vice versa—indicating bidirectional temporal relationships. - Authors emphasize correlations, not causation, but highlight risks to academic freedom and student safety.

Methodology:

The authors combined U.S. Department of Education Section 117 foreign-funding records (2014–2019) with multiple independent datasets—including FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire and deplatforming records, national student surveys of antisemitic and anti-Zionist exposure, ADL and AMCHA campus-incident logs, and FBI hate-crime reports—to test whether foreign funding (especially from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a 57-member intergovernmental body representing Muslim-majority nations) correlates with campus speech sanctions and antisemitism. They used group comparisons, correlation analyses, geospatial linkages between campuses and surrounding counties, and Granger causality tests to assess temporal relationships.
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