In a congressional hearing in July of last year, a research scholar on antisemitism named Charles Asher Small shared an explosive finding: Funding from the government of Qatar had fueled a 300% spike in antisemitism on university campuses in the United States. Members of Congress responded with rapt interest. “I want everybody to hear this. So universities that took money from Qatar had a 300% increase in antisemitism [compared to] other universities?” said Iowa Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra.9

The statistic about Qatari funding for antisemitism became the highlight of Small’s testimony to Congress. But this precise statistic was never actually recorded in his study.

Small repeated the same claim in a Senate hearing in March of this year. But when contacted for comment about the figure, ISGAP could not point Drop Site to any specific report or finding. One ISGAP study published in 2023 did report that, from 2015-2020, universities that received money from “Middle Eastern” donors had a 300% increase in antisemitic incidents compared to those that do not. But this report is also disputed—and there is no data in it specifically linking Qatari funding to a rise in antisemitic incidents.

Drop Site interviewed over a half-dozen former employees and scholars of ISGAP, many of whom explained that the organization has strayed from the mission of academic study of antisemitism into a hyper-fixation on Qatari funding of U.S. institutions—while ISGAP itself has accepted foreign funding from Israel.