Fact-checking claims that George Soros is ‘paying student radicals’ involved in campus protests

Is a billionaire bankrolling student protests at universities across the country?  

"We all knew it but now it’s confirmed … " read one April 26 Facebook post that shared a screengrab of a New York Post headline and linked to a story. The Facebook post also included the New York Post article’s first sentence: "George Soros and his hard-left acolytes are paying agitators who are fueling the explosion of radical anti-Israel protests at colleges across the country."

The Facebook post and a similar one were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Soros, a billionaire, philanthropist and Democratic campaign contributor, is a Jewish Hungarian Holocaust survivor who is often a target of antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Criticism of Soros’ politics or how he spends his wealth is not inherently antisemitic, but "when Soros is used as a symbol for Jewish control, wealth, and power, the criticism may be an updated version of traditional antisemitic tropes," according to the American Jewish Committee, a Jewish advocacy organization headed by former U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla. 

"Unfortunately, the idea that rich Jews use their money for malevolent purposes, including to undermine society, has been a staple of antisemitic myth for centuries," said Aryeh Tuchman, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.  

Data from the social analytics company NewsWhip showed that U.S. Reps. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., and Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, amplified the New York Post story on Facebook. On X, the story was shared April 26 by conservatives including Arizona Republican senate candidate Kari Lake. 

During an April 28 Fox News appearance, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, said, "There’s no question" that organizations funded by Soros helped finance the protests.

(Internet Archive)

We learned that Soros’ grant-making organization, Open Society Foundations, has awarded grants to some groups the New York Post article linked to the demonstrations. But the connections between Soros’ money and specific campus protesters involved several degrees of separation.

Soros’ Open Society Foundations describes itself as providing funding for groups "working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights." In May 2020, some conservatives claimed the organization was "funding" Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis, which we rated False. Soros also has been at the center of false claims that he financially supported the first national Women’s March and organized the Charlottesville, Va., protests and counterprotests in 2017. 

Soros' Open Society Foundations previously donated to the Poynter Institute-owned International Fact-Checking Network. PolitiFact is a Poynter subsidiary.

The New York Post article said Open Society Foundations money was used to pay some student activists. 

Open Society Foundations responded to the article with an April 26 X post, writing that the Post "continues its practice of mixing distortion and unsubstantiated insinuations."

The X post continued, "We have a long history of fighting antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of racism and hate, and have advocated for the rights of Palestinians and Israelis and for peaceful resolution to the conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories." It also said the foundation’s funding is publicly disclosed on its website. 

We contacted the New York Post for comment by email and received no response. 

The New York Post’s April 26 article said three people who were fellows at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a pro-Palestinian advocacy group, which received an Open Society Foundations grant, are involved in the current protests.

However, those three people were fellows in 2023, not this year.

Open Society Foundations’ website says it has awarded grants to the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. The organization, known to the IRS as "Education for Just Peace in the Middle East," received:

• A $300,000 two-year grant in 2018. 

• A $150,000 one-year grant in 2021. 

• A $250,000 two-year grant in 2022.

The Post reported that a program within the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, called Youth Fellows, had three fellows — Nidaa Lafi, Craig Birckhead-Morton and Malak Afaneh — who "have been major figures in the nationwide protest movement." 

Cat Knarr, a US Campaign for Palestinian Rights spokesperson, said Lafi, Birckhead-Morton and Afaneh were fellows in 2023, not 2024. 

Knarr also said that "no one donor specifically funds our fellows program," and most of the grants from Soros’ group, including the current grant that runs through June 2024, have been "for general operating support."

Student protesters gather inside their encampment on the Columbia University campus on April 29, 2024, in New York. (AP)

The New York Post cited other groups that it said have received Open Society Foundations money and are funneling it to smaller groups, such as Jewish Voice for Peace, an advocacy group that describes itself as "U.S. Jews (in) solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle." The Post said that Jewish Voice for Peace received $650,000 from the Tides Foundation, an Open Society Foundations grant awardee, between 2017 and 2022.

However, the Tides Foundation told PolitiFact that Open Source Foundations had not provided funding to Jewish Voice for Peace through the accounts it oversees. 

Open Society Foundations reported that since 2017 it had directly awarded Jewish Voice for Peace grants totaling $875,000 from 2017 to 2022. The 18-month grant awarded in 2022 was "to educate the public about movement building across the United States," according to Open Society Foundations’ website. 

The Post also said Soros had donated $132,000 to the Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation, or WESPAC Foundation, a group the newspaper called "a major funder of anti-Israel groups, including Within Our Lifetime and Students for Justice in Palestine."

Searches of the Open Society Foundations’ online Awarded Grants database  for "Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation," "WESPAC Foundation," "Students for Justice in Palestine," and "Within Our Lifetime" returned no results. 

An Open Society Foundations’ spokesperson told PolitiFact he has never heard of the Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation.

Nada Khader, a WESPAC Foundation spokesperson, said the organization hasn’t received Open Society Foundations funding. Khader said the foundation serves as a fiscal sponsor for, but does not fund, Within Our Lifetime and Students for Justice in Palestine. That means it receives donations for and makes payments on behalf of the groups. 

A Students for Justice in Palestine spokesperson told The Washington Post that the WESPAC Foundation "neither funds nor influences our organization’s political activity but instead extends its legal tax-exempt status to us in order to support our mission."

Representatives at two colleges cited by the New York Post as having paid protesters told PolitiFact it isn’t true.

"We have no information whatsoever that suggests the ANY of (t)he claims you have heard hold true on the Berkeley campus," said Dan Mogulof, a University of California, Berkeley spokesperson, referring to claims that Soros is paying students to protest or that outside backers have funded or organized the protests.

And a spokesperson for Yale’s coalition of student protesters said none of the college’s campus protesters were paid for their organizing work by Soros or any other source.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

RELATED: No, George Soros and his foundations do not pay people to protest