The controversy over Qatar’s gift of an airplane to the Department of Defense strikes me as a teapot tempest–one more sign of how out of ammunition the Democrats are when it comes to serious issues. What concerns me much more than a $400 million airplane is the billions of dollars the government of Qatar has given to American universities in order to influence academia.
I talked about this with Seth Leibsohn on his Phoenix radio show yesterday. The whole interview was fun, you can listen to it here. I told Seth that, if the Qataris are so beyond the pale, I would gladly give back the airplane, if universities will agree to stop taking their billions.
See this from the Free Press:
Bill Ackman made the same point I did:
Why is not OK for the DoD to accept a $400 million plane from Qatar, but it is ok for our elite universities to accept billions from Qatar?
How is one proper and the other not?
Just asking.
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) May 13, 2025
Apparently he took a lot of criticism for that tweet, so he elaborated:
The real significance of the airplane story is that Boeing is now, evidently, unable to build an aircraft–at least, not on any reasonable time scale or anywhere close to budget. That is a big problem. The larger story is foreign, and often malign, influence on our universities.
