The fad of big American universities thinking they should have foreign campuses appears to have peaked. One bit of evidence is that Texas A&M is going to shut down its campus in Qatar. The question that Professor Scott Yenor explores in today’s Martin Center article is why.
Yenor writes:
The Qatar Foundation acts like Chinese Confucius Institutes, funneling money to American universities to win approval for its ideological commitments and to exploit U.S. expertise. The Foundation pays American professors, funds research, trains K-12 teachers, and organizes pro-Hamas events on campus without registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. A toxic mix of Qatari money and America’s homegrown DEI industry have long roiled campuses.
The vicious Hamas attack on Israel back in October appears to have caused some serious reconsideration of the connection between Texas A&M and Qatar. Yenor continues, “The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents voted to close its Qatar campus by 2028, ostensibly because of ‘heightened instability in the Middle East’ and the need to refocus efforts on what is good for Texas and the United States. Neither of these reasons passes the sniff test.”
Yenor suggests that the real reason, but one the bigwigs didn’t want to acknowledge, is that “foreign agents are using our supposedly open university system to put their thumbs on the scale of American priorities.”