https://www.powerlineblog.com/...n-of-monica-witt.php

Monica Witt, the former U.S. Air Force intelligence specialist accused of espionage for Iran

Witt, who now resides in Iran, out of our reach, is said to have caused significant damage to America. She is suspected, among other things, of revealing the names of double agents run by the United States.

Why did Witt become a traitor? Douglas Wise, former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, rules out a monetary motive.

She wasn’t in it for the money; this wasn’t a fee-for-task thing. At some point, she took an ideological left turn to become aligned with the Persians.

At what point, and why, did Witt take that “ideological left turn”?

This account in the New York Times attributes the shift in part to her time in the military. According to the Times, Witt, who served in Iraq and other Middle East venues, was traumatized by “drone strikes, extrajudicial killings and atrocities against children.”

But the Times also says that Witt’s radicalization “ accelerated while she was in graduate school” at George Washington University , where she gained a master’s degree in its Middle East Studies program. The Times describes that program as an “academic proving ground for aspiring diplomats and researchers near the State Department’s headquarters.”

Muslim-majority nations — plus a handful of private groups associated with them — have given $100 million to George Washington University in the form of gifts and contracts since 2011

it’s not difficult to see why Witt’s anti-American radicalization might accelerate while she was a student in a program heavily subsidized by Islamist regimes.

The Times quotes one of Witt’s fellow GW students as saying that “everyone just kind of sat and watched” as Witt expressed strong feelings against American foreign policy in class. No one, it seems, pushed back with even a limited defense of America.

We’ll probably never know the degree to which George Washington University contributed to Monica Witt’s rabid anti-Americanism. It’s alarming, though, that an institution that shapes the thinking of future U.S. policy makers receives vast amounts of money from Middle East sources with interests quite different from America’s.

And GW isn’t the only such university. The Daily Caller, citing Department of Education data, says that nearly all of the schools empowered to shape understanding of the Middle East among U.S. graduate students receive significant funding from such sources. Georgetown University leads the way with $378,000,000.