Letter from Richard Sherman to Colombia Daily Spectator, April 10, 2025, on its receipt of foreign funding and foreign influence in education

Dear Letter to the Editor:

The Columbia Daily Spectator manifests incredible journalistic naivete to act as if there is not a scintilla of a  basis for the Trump Administration's focus on education to include K-12. ("Trump Threatens All Education, Not Just Universities").

Just last month the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy(ISGAP) released an exhaustive study entitled: " Foreign Influence and Anti-Israel Bias in K-12 Classrooms: An Investigation of Brown's Choices Program", 3/13/25.

"The Report addresses Qatar's influence on K-12 education in the United States through the Choices Program, which is housed at Brown University. The report provides evidence of a substantial collaboration between the Choices Program and QFI( Qatar Foundation International) that seeks to integrate QFI's presence in the Choices Program Workshops for secondary school education and foster direct contact between the educators and a QFI representative whose job it is to influence pedagogical strategy on teaching about the Middle East. ISGAP's investigation has also found that as a result of the Choices Program's ambiguous legal structure, Brown University may be in breach of foreign funding disclosure requirements under federal law." Page 7.

It should be noted that just a few years ago in a separate investigation , ISGAP revealed that from 2015-2020 Columbia University received  $295, 506, 012 million  in undocumented foreign funding from Qatar and other Middle Eastern countries. ("The Corruption of the American Mind. How Concealed Foreign Funding of Higher Educated in the United States Predicts Erosion of Democratic Values and Antisemitic Sentiment on Campus, ISGAP, 2023.)

One does not have to be a genius to understand what the quid pro quo is for all these hundreds of millions of dollars in undocumented Muslim money.

The Columbia Daily Spectator might want to study ISGAP's numerous investigations about foreign influence on K-12 and many other aspects of American education ( see isgap.org ), rather than being naively  blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Richard Sherman,

POB 934853, Margate,

Florida 33093.