Texas Regents abandon Qatar's Texas A&M partnership

As partisanship and populism continue to surge across the U.S.A. and around the world, internationalization efforts are seeing new vulnerability to the educational objectives of knowledge diplomacy and capacity building through higher education. One apparent casualty of political intervention is the Texas A&M Board of Regents vote to abandon the 20+ year relationship with Qatar Foundation in offering select engineering programs at Education City in Doha, Qatar.

Discerning the background and reasoning of the Texas A&M decision is muddied by Regents' claims versus reactions from Qatar. A decision of this magnitude likely includes multiple tensions and considerations. Former President Bowen of Texas A&M took issue with the way the decision was made and the rationale for abandoning the partnership in a Dallas Morning News Opinion. He called for an independent investigation of the claims that resulted in the Board decision and public announcement of what is found.

Coverage by the Texas Tribune quoted a statement from Qatar Foundation that "It is deeply disappointing that a globally respected academic institution like Texas A&M University has fallen victim to such a campaign and allowed politics to infiltrate its decision-making process." Predictably, the Texas A&M Regents accused Qatar of misunderstanding its decision and claimed that their 7-to-1 vote was based on "regional instability in the Middle East and a desire to focus on the system's stateside campuses."

Coverage from local/regional media such as the Doha News and Middle East Monitor reveal that Texas A&M's relationship with Qatar was called into question when a report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy raised questions about the partnership soon after the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. The report claimed that Qatar had access to knowledge of weapons and nuclear engineering through Texas A&M's presence, which posed a threat to U.S. national security. ISGAP also asserted that the relationship between Qatar and Texas A&M University was troubling because of Qatar's funding of Hamas and links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Jerusalem Post article about ISGAP's accusations indicated that their report not only went to Texas A&M but also to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Governor Abbot of Texas, and Senator Ted Cruse (R-Texas). Considering the recipients of the report and review of the ISGAP website provides insight on their research and influence priorities. Analysis for the ISGAP report Follow the Money: Qatar Funding of Higher Education started in 2012 and led to a presentation to U.S. DOJ officials in 2019 claiming that Qatar was secretly funding U.S. institutions in order to foment anti-Semitism and anti-democratic ideals. Charles Asher Small, founder and director of ISGAP, published Unreported Foreign Donations to Universities Foment Anti-Semitism as an "Opinion" piece in Newsweek in October of 2020. The opinion references U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Education review but there is no record of action on their parts.

The persistence of ISGAP in attacking Qatar coupled with the lack of response from U.S. governmental agencies may indicate that the previous reports were not found credible or that U.S. interests in maintaining positive relations with Qatar counter-balanced ISGAP's assertions. However, critique of relations with Qatar emerged again during the House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing where Northwestern University's President was called to respond to accusations of passivity in response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations on its campus. Having worked for Qatar Foundation and now watching the political dynamics underway in the U.S., my belief is that the attacks of Qatar are more political than rational. What may have happened is that ISGAP's goal to undermine Qatar's role in negotiating toward a conclusion of the 2023-24 Israel v. Hamas war, including advocacy for a 2-state solution, finally fell on the fertile ground of conservativism and isolationism of Texas and in the U.S. House Committee.

Despite the controversies of Texas A&M withdrawing and Northwestern being challenged regarding its education partnerships in Qatar, Arkansas State University has approved three programs that blend remote and in-person learning to serve students in Qatar. The program is offered through the Qatar Global Studies Institute and officials indicate that it is privately funded rather than through the government of Qatar.

International higher education hubs have been a growing trend for over 20 years and scholar Jane Knight outlines their emergence and benefit to all. Many countries around the world have added branch programs as a way to cultivate better trained workers and citizens. Qatar is a particularly notable example for their commitment to building its higher education infrastructure, which is reflected in the 2023 Qatar Ministry of Education update. 

Inside Higher Education raised the ominous potential that U.S. politicization of higher education in the Texas A&M example could result in other higher education partnerships becoming less attractive. The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing on May 23 included accusations about Qatar's ties to Northwestern University; the assertions were quickly refuted by Qatar Foundation. The Journal International Higher Education of Boston University included Long and Danvers' "Retrenchment or Expansion? The Future of US International Campuses" (p. 23), which used the Texas A&M withdrawal from the Qatar partnership as an example of political intervention that compromised the branch program. My reflections in "Qatar Foundation's Education City: Early capacity building for an education hub" in the International Journal of Education Development identify the conditions and strategies that would help secure long-term education partnerships.

Whether the Texas decision was about unsettling times in the Middle East and wanting to focus on U.S. interests or the result of a U.S. partisan group's intervention, a mutually beneficial educational partnership is now lost. Ripples elsewhere could result in undermining one of the best forms of knowledge diplomacy available to the U.S.