Qatar Foundation Courts Black Universities as Influence Concerns Grow

The Qatar Foundation will offer study abroad programs for three Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the latest move in what the emirate’s critics see as an effort to buy influence over American higher education.At a conference last week on international education and student exchanges, the state-led foundation unveiled new study abroad programs with Hampton University, Xavier University, and Prairie View A&M University, all of which boast majority black student bodies. The partnerships “reflect Qatar Foundation’s commitment to building globally connected learning environments and advancing partnerships that promote inclusion, cultural exchange, and academic excellence,” the president of higher education at the Qatar Foundation, Francisco Marmolejo, stated. Students involved in the exchange will spend a semester at a university inside the foundation’s so-called “Education City,” a sprawling education and research hub at Doha. An executive director for the foundation’s higher education division, Abdulnassir al-Tamimi, said the program aims to give HBCU students and faculty firsthand exposure to Qatar’s “culture, traditions, institutions, and diverse community.” He added that the Qatar Foundation community would also benefit from the “perspectives, histories, and lived experiences that HBCU students bring.” The initiative extends Qatar’s enormous financial footprint on American higher education. The country has contributed more than $8.8 billion to American universities since reporting began in 1986, according to the Education Department’s foreign funding portal, making it the single largest foreign donor to American higher education. The top recipients include Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Georgetown University, each of which has received more than $1 billion in Qatari funding. In many cases, the donations are given to fund joint education institutes or overseas campuses. Such funding flows have stoked concerns that Qatar uses donations to shape university curricula or gain access to sensitive research. A House Committee on Education and Workforce interview in September with Northwestern University’s outgoing president, Michael Schill, illuminated how the Qatar Foundation exercises control over the school’s satellite campus in Doha. Under Northwestern Qatar’s agreement with the foundation, students and faculty are effectively barred from criticizing the Qatari government.The Middle East Forum, in a report on Northwestern’s Qatari campus, warned that the partnership “is not just an academic collaboration, but a strategic effort by Qatar to influence U.S. higher education.” Through financial investment, faculty exchanges, and governance arrangements, Qatar is “shaping both the ideological climate and policy decisions at Northwestern,” the think tank stated. The Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, an American non-profit, issued a statement to the three historically black universities urging caution. Qatar’s “role as a chief sponsor of global terrorism, the de facto headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist apparatus, a primary source of anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda, and one of the largest African slave-holding states per capita,” the group wrote on its Substack, are “just four reasons HBCUs should proceed with extreme caution, if not walk away altogether.”The institute further argued that the partnership follows a decades-old Islamist tactic of targeting propaganda at black Americans to exploit racial tensions and advance a broader agenda, including the spread of anti-Israel sentiment.While hosting the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar also hosts the largest U.S. military installation in the Middle East, the Al Udeid Air Base, and is a major source of foreign investment in the American economy.Among the earliest Arab leaders to link the causes of Palestinians and black Americans was the leader of the Palestinian National Authority, Yasser Arafat. While addressing the United Nations General Assembly in November 1974, he described his mission as a global “struggle” against “colonialism, imperialism, neo-colonialism, and racism in all its forms, including Zionism.”

Qatar Foundation Courts Black Universities as Influence Concerns Grow

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