MEMRI translated an article by Emirati analyst Salem Al Ketbi, writing on the Saudi website Elaph, which discusses how Hamas has exploited the university campuses in the United States.
By Rachel Avraham
According to a recent report in MEMRI, “Following the arrest in the U.S. of Mahmoud Khalil, a key figure in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, Emirati political analyst Salem Al-Ketbi warned that American universities and academic institutions have become a strategic platform used by extremist organizations to spread their ideas and even recruit supporters.”
MEMRI continued, “Writing on March 16, 2025 on the Saudi website Elaph, Al-Ketbi stated that this is a broad and troubling phenomenon, whereby extremist and terrorist organizations use U.S. immigration laws to infiltrate American universities and form student cells whose members are eventually likely to receive U.S. citizenship, making it difficult for the U.S. to act against them. Some foreign students, he stressed, come to the U.S. not just to study but also to incite hatred and antisemitism, as part of a broader strategy to foster extremism on campus.”
According to MEMRI, “Behind this strategy are countries, chief of them Iran, which fund terrorist organizations like Hamas while also employing charities and student organizations to recruit support for terrorism and cultivate a new generation of activists who promote extremist ideas without even realizing they are extremist. The extremist organizations, Al-Ketbi added, manipulate the academic discourse to justify their activities and ideology in the guise of humanitarian action. He called on the U.S. universities to reexamine their policy regarding foreign funding and activism by foreign students, and formulate clear guidelines for monitoring activities that transcend the boundaries of free speech and can become means for promoting extremism.”
“On March 8, [2025] the American authorities arrested Syria-born Palestinian Mahmoud Khalil, a student activist and a high-profile mediator in the protests at Columbia University in support of the terrorist Hamas [movement], after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers raided his home,” Al Ketbi wrote. “The arrest came after the U.S. State Department ordered to revoke his student visa because he was a key figure at the sit-ins on the Columbia University campus and in the negotiations between the student protesters and the university authorities. But [Khalil’s] case goes beyond mere student activism: it sheds light on the way extremist organizations use America’s immigration laws to insert their people into American society and build support networks [whose members] may later work to attain [U.S.] citizenship…”
“Mahmoud Khalil was one of the prominent faces of Columbia University’s Apartheid Divest (CUAD) movement that called to boycott companies that support Israel and stop investments in them,” Al Ketbi stressed. “As the tensions surrounding the war in Gaza increased, the demonstrations in which Mahmoud Khalil participated drew harsh criticism from supporters of Israel, who accused him of promoting ‘Hamas’ terrorist propaganda.’ Although his lawyers denied these accusations and no real evidence has been found of ‘financing’ terrorism, his case sparks a debate about a graver issue: the way the American immigration laws are used facilitate the infiltration of terrorist elements and the establishment of cells supporting [terrorism, whose members] will hold American citizenship in the future, making it difficult to pursue them.”
According to Al Ketbi, “”Mahmoud Khalil is not an isolated case. The American universities – which attract students from all over the world – have become a strategic target for extremist organizations, because the student visa programs allow foreign students from various countries, including Palestinians, to attend them. But some of these students don’t come just to study, but also to disseminate extremism and to foment hatred.”
Al Ketbi cites the following: “In 2019, for example, an investigation of the American National Security Agency into a network of foreign students at the University of California revealed that they had used their academic positions to spread the extremist ideas of Al-Qaeda and that there were other cases of this sort, like that of a Pakistani student at New York University who turned the university’s student dorms into centers for recruiting young people to ISIS. These examples demonstrate how the universities can be used to inculcate extremist ideology.”
According to him, “The troubling fact is that these universities are usually incapable of uncovering these instances or coping with them, due to their commitment to the principles of freedom of expression. Moreover, the competition between the world’s universities makes them less conservative in their choice of students, which leaves them open to exploitation by foreign countries and elements. The extremist organizations exploit the concentrations of students and the culture clubs as fronts for disseminating their ideas. For example, groups were formed such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) or Columbia University’s Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which purport to promote humanitarian issues but usually [just] serve as a platform for disseminating discourse that is antisemitic or supportive of terrorism.”
“In 2023 a student group at the University of California, Berkley sparked controversy when it organized a conference on ‘Resistance to the Occupation,’ at which Hamas’ attacks against Israeli civilians [on October 7] were praised,” Al Ketbi noted in his article. “Furthermore, in 2024, the university advertised a course [to be taught during the] 2025 spring semester that described Hamas as ‘a revolutionary resistance force combating settler colonialism’ – although it later deleted the course description. [Also], on two separate occasions the university faced lawsuits alleging antisemitism on campus. In November 2023 the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a nonprofit organization, filed a lawsuit against the university alleging that its authorities turn a blind eye to antisemitism.”
“These methods and conferences indicate that this is not just an academic debate, but is part of a wider strategy to disseminate extremist ideologies on university campuses,” Al Ketbi stressed. “This may seem natural in a country that believes in democracy and freedom of expression. But if we look a little deeper, we find that there is blatant foreign interference in the matter. What’s more, several countries, including Iran but also others, have played a significant role in assisting the [Hamas] movement and in strengthening its presence in the U.S. Iran, which is considered one of Hamas’ biggest financers, along with several other countries, used its financial networks to transfer funds to American charitable associations, [funds] that are later used to support [Hamas]. For instance, in 2012, a U.S. State Department investigation exposed a funding network designed to support Hamas via American charitable associations. This network enabled Hamas to expand its influence within these associations and use Palestinian and other foreign students to spread its ideas.”
According to Al Ketbi, “If the charitable associations and humanitarian organizations are a traditional mechanism that is being used by dubious elements to finance terrorism, then the universities and academic institutions have been turned by the extremist organizations into a strategic platform for disseminating their ideas and recruiting supporters. This exploitation goes beyond financial or logistic assistance; it is aimed at infiltrating young minds and creating a new generation of activists who espouse extremist ideas without realizing [that they are extremist].”
“Furthermore, some rogue states and extremist organizations use the academic discourse to justify their activity by organizing conferences and debates about ‘human rights’ that present extremist ideologies as acceptable and justifiable,” he noted. “This manipulation of the academic discourse makes it difficult to differentiate between legitimate criticism of international policy and incitement to violence.”
Al Ketbi concluded: “”Exploiting universities as platforms for disseminating extremism is certainly nothing new, but [fighting it] has become more complicated due to globalization and freedom of movement. This leads us to wonder whether the American universities will reexamine their policy regarding foreign financing and monitoring political activity by foreign students on campus. Will clear guidelines be formulated for monitoring activities that cross the boundaries of freedom of expression and become tools in the service of extremist ideologies? Universities are not only institutes of learning, but are also a mirror of society and must be kept from falling prey to political or terrorist exploitation.”
