A Middle East Forum report released last week finds that students and staff at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q), which had a yearly enrollment of 473 students in 2023, are restricted from criticizing the government.
In April 2024, following the October 7, 2023, terror attack in Israel, Northwestern University's Deering Meadow in Evanston, Illinois, became the site of an anti-Israel encampment.
NU-Q has its own leadership, but the U.S House Committee on Education and the Workforce has released transcripts from an interview with then-President Michael Schill, who recently resigned following, among other things, the contentious student protests over the Israel-Hamas war.
The Washington Free Beacon says the topic was the university's relationship with Qatar.
"It was revealed during an interview deposition that the university's agreement with Qatar forbids … Northwestern's campus there – staff, students – from effectively criticizing the government because it says they have to follow all the laws of a country," relays Matt Lamb of The College Fix.
It is a crime in Qatar to criticize the government or post things on the internet with which leaders there do not agree. A social media post, for example, previously led to a Northwestern student's arrest.
"Requiring people to follow the laws of a country in itself [is] probably standard legal language," Lamb comments. "When that forbids freedom of speech, that's when it becomes problematic."
In a statement to the Free Beacon, Northwestern says its Qatar campus "has provided international students — over 70% of whom are women — access to an elite, western education and helped further the foreign policy interests of the United States government," but Lamb says this report – and the university's relationship with a heavily Muslim, Arabic country – raises questions about its reaction to antisemitism on campus.
Qatar's government is a semi-constitutional monarchy in which Sharia law is a primary source of legislation. The government has undertaken some reforms, but it faces criticism for restrictions on political freedoms, press censorship, and human rights concerns, particularly regarding migrant workers and women's rights.
In April, President Donald Trump’s administration cut nearly $800 million in funding for research from the school following pressure from Republicans in Congress over antisemitism concerns.
