EPISODE · Jul 18, 2025 · 1H 7M

Schools for Scandal

from FDD's Foreign Podicy · host FDD

Woke ideology, anti‑Americanism, Islamism and antisemitism have gripped America’s elite campuses. How? Follow the money.Researchers at the Middle East Forum have been doing exactly that, and the result is a new report that's shocking but not surprising. It’s titled: “Beachhead: Georgetown University: How Foreign and Domestic Radical Actors Captured a U.S. University.”Host Cliff May is joined by his FDD colleague Brandy Shufutinsky and report co-authors Asra Q. Nomani and Sam Westrop to discuss the Gulf autocrats and Saudi‑linked SAFA network pouring millions of dollars into Georgetown’s Al‑Waleed Center, warping future diplomats and even infiltrating K‑12 classrooms—and the actions that must be swiftly taken by policymakers to solve it.Sam WestropSam Westrop is an expert on nonviolent Islamist networks and has headed the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch project since March 2017. He previously ran Stand for Peace, a London-based counter-extremism organization that monitored Islamist movements throughout the UK and which guided British policy on terror finance and violent extremism. Combining open-source research with big data coding and scraping, his investigative work in the United States on the financial activities of seven leading Islamist movements active across America has sparked multiple congressional inquiries, generated law enforcement investigations, and effected federal policy changes.Asra NomaniAsra Q. Nomani is an investigative reporter, journalist, private investigator, author, educator, editor and former reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She is founder of the Pearl Project a nonprofit initiative dedicated to doing journalism in the public interest, defending press freedoms and preserving the legacy of a great journalist and friend. Asra is widely recognized for rational commentary, analysis and advocacy work across a diversity of issues and media platforms, including MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, the Washington Post, the New York Times and BBC, among others.Brandy ShufutinskyBrandy Shufutinsky serves as director of FDD’s Program on Education and National Security. Prior to joining FDD, Brandy was director of education and community engagement at the North American Values Institute. Brandy has been published in Newsweek, Jewish Journal, The Jerusalem Post, Sapir, White Rose Magazine, and JNS. She was a 2021 scholar-in-residence at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy Oxford Summer Institute, where she worked to develop curriculum in critical antisemitism studies.