I can’t tell you how many smart Jewish philanthropists I’ve spoken with in the past couple of years — CEOs, founders, investors who understand complex systems better than almost anyone — who, when the conversation turns to rising antisemitism in America, almost always default to the same refrain: “Follow the money!”

The instinct isn’t wrong. If you can expose who is bankrolling extremist ideologies — foreign governments, ideological networks, university bureaucracies — then you can choke off the pipeline. Remove the funding and starve the hate, the theory goes.

When you follow that money, you land in the same place again and again: Qatar (with additional support coming from China). Through its sprawling ecosystem of foundations, institutes, media platforms and “education initiatives,” the Muslim Brotherhood state has spent years embedding a worldview into American institutions — one that frames Jews, Israel and even the American project itself as colonial oppressors. 

As a recent report released by Foundation for Defense of Democracies put it, Qatari-backed programming in U.S. schools explicitly aims to promote “social justice lessons, anti-colonial narratives, and Arabic-language instruction rooted in Qatar’s political worldview.” Further exposure of those funding channels is essential. If we press the right buttons, some will eventually be shut down, and that will matter.

But here is the uncomfortable truth: Even if we shut off every Qatari funding pipeline tomorrow, it would not be enough. To sideline antisemitism, we must expand our horizon beyond where the money comes from and start studying how Qatar and other malign actors have achieved such outsize influence — and then learn to do what they do, only better and faster.

My organization, the North American Values Institute (NAVI), recently released a comprehensive white paper, “When the Classroom Turns Hostile,” examining the rise of ideological extremism and antisemitism in K-12 education. Our findings point to something both obvious and alarming: everything that exploded on college campuses after Oct. 7, 2023 — everything that shocked American Jews — has already moved into K-12. Only this time, the number of students impacted is exponentially larger and the stakes far higher.

The intellectual pipeline is now clear: Colleges of education, long dominated by critical social-justice ideologies, have trained several generations of teachers to see the world primarily through frameworks of power hierarchies and settler-colonial narratives. These ideas have migrated from the academy into public schools, shaping curricula, teacher training, professional development and ultimately the moral vocabulary of millions of students. A worldview that casts Jews as privileged “white” beneficiaries of oppressive systems — and Israel as a foreign occupying force — has become normalized classroom content in many school districts.

What Qatar understood long before most American Jewish philanthropists even noticed is that if you invest in the slow burn of ideas and education, patiently and strategically, you can reshape the worldview of an entire generation.

This lesson has been lost upon many in the Jewish world. A few months ago, a prominent Jewish funder said to me, “Who gives a damn what an anthropology professor at UC Santa Cruz teaches?” That question betrays an enormous blind spot. 

Many Jewish funders built their wealth through long-term strategic bets. Many attended America’s top universities and were influenced by the education they received. Yet many of these same people do not understand what the Muslim Brotherhood monarchy of a tiny oil-rich country in the Mideast long ago grasped: teach young people corrosive ideas about the world and themselves, and they will eventually undermine the society they inherit.

The Qataris give a damn about what that anthropology professor teaches. They give a damn about what’s taught in ed schools in Michigan, about what high-school history teachers assign in Minnesota, about what professional-development vendors present to districts in Arizona. They know that the most powerful lever of social change is not a rally or a court case, but an 11th-grade classroom.

Jewish philanthropy, by contrast, has been conditioned to prefer visible, measurable wins — lawsuits, emergency responses, pressure campaigns. These are necessary, but they are inherently short-term. They stop the bleeding but do not alter the bloodstream. They cannot compete with actors who think on a 30-year time horizon.

The NAVI white paper lays out both immediate interventions and longer-term system repairs. Short-term actions — supporting parents and teachers who come forward, funding civil-rights enforcement and intervening when districts adopt discriminatory curricula — are essential. They prevent harm. They buy time.

But if we stop there, we will lose, because the underlying problem is upstream: the intellectual formation of teachers, administrators and curriculum designers. The problem lies in the institutions that train educators, certify them, credential them and equip them with the ideological frameworks that shape everything that follows. 

Stopping the Qatari funding is short-term. The damage has been done. Reversing the damage is long-term. 

Long-term answers require a different philanthropic mindset entirely. They demand investment in teacher-training alternatives; new curricula rooted in civic pluralism rather than identity-based resentment; new academic research centers that challenge ideological monocultures; and new leadership academies that can prepare educators who actually believe in liberal democracy. 

They also require something else Qatar excels at: working across the political spectrum. Qatar funds Republicans and Democrats alike, not because it is bipartisan in spirit, but because it understands the strategic value of operating in every lane of American political life.

Jewish philanthropy must learn this same lesson. The future of American Jewish life will be shaped not by who gives the better speech or files the sharper lawsuit, but by who shapes the moral and intellectual environment of the next generation. Will American children — Jewish and non-Jewish — learn that Jews are full participants in the American story? Or will they learn that Jews are foreign, racialized “others” whose national aspirations are illegitimate?

That question is being decided every day in social studies classes, in teacher prep seminars, and in professional-development slideshows. Qatar knows this. We must know it too.

American Jewish philanthropy today needs to invest in ideas, not only emergencies. It needs to build educational and intellectual infrastructure that lasts, thinking on a 10- to 30-year horizon. It needs to rebuild teacher-training and curriculum pipelines. It needs to engage across the political spectrum, and it needs to fund with the strategic patience our adversaries have mastered.

If we want to make headway in countering antisemitism in K–12, Jewish philanthropy must start investing in the cultural and educational ecosystem with the seriousness the moment demands. The Qataris understood long ago that the classroom is the most powerful institution that shapes the future. It is time for us to understand it — and to fund accordingly.

Josh Weiner is the chief strategy officer for the North American Values Institute (NAVI).