PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Carnegie Mellon Qatar: School's open!
by Danny P Friday, Sep. 24, 2004 at 7:24 AM
dannyp@indypgh.org

Carnegie Mellon has opened a Campus in Qatar at the request of the Qatari monarch. Are they serving the people of Qatar?

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According to the US State Department report on Qatar:

"The population is approximately 600,000 of whom 150,000 are believed to be citizens... Foreign workers, mostly South Asian and Arab, represent approximately 85 percent of the workforce."

It's worth stressing exactly what this means. In Qatar, it takes at least 20 years to naturalize, or 15 if you're from another Arab country. And, perhaps more importantly, citizenship is not conferred upon people by birth. What this means is there's a large percentage of migrant workers who have come to Qatar and live in Qatar to help with their oil fields, but they are not citizens and their children are not citizens.

If you read the State Department's human rights report for Qatar, you'll find all sorts of things about the foreign workers in Qatar, including that "foreign workers in some cases were employed under circumstances that constituted forced labor."

Now, CMU has opened a Campus in Qatar at the request of the Qatari monarch. Are they serving the people of Qatar?

According to CMU, 60% of the students over at CMU Qatar are Qatari nationals. And that's in a country where 25% of the population are Qatari nationals, and only 15% of the workforce are Qatari nationals. And I would imagine a very sizeable chunk of that 40% hail from other portions of the Arab world, and aren't non-citizen residents of Qatar. Making privileged classes even more overwhelmingly represented at our Qatar campus.

CMU may try to spin the fact that 40% of the students at the University in Qatar aren't nationals as proof of diversity, but we should acknowledge what is happening: Qatari nationals are being *grossly* overrepresented.

But when the foreign workers are working in conditions that resemble forced labor, perhaps it's not a surprise that we're there to primarily teach the wealthy and privileged. The ruling class that supports the monarchy. Not the people.

And we thought private universities were bad here for disproportionately serving the privileged.

I know there aren't many people who feel the way I do about CMU Qatar, but for as long as the US State Department- which is not a lefty organization, by far- tells me things like:

"Citizens expressed many of their views freely and in public... however, the larger non-citizen population did not enjoy the same latitude and did not express itself freely and publicly"

"The Censorship Office... reviewed materials for pornography and material deemed hostile to Islam."

"The law does not provide for the freedom of assembly, and the Government severely limited it in practice."

"The law does not provide for freedom of association, and the Government severely limited it in practice. The Government did not allow political parties or membership in international professional organizations critical of the Government or of any other Arab government."

Then I have my concerns about exporting an education to the ruling classes of Qatar. For one, the experience simply cannot be the same at CMU Qatar: Here, Carnegie Mellon students can join political organizations and be critical of any government we wish. They can engage in healthy debates in our classes about what the State is doing. There, I doubt that can happen. And finally, given how bad things are for the overwhelming majority of the population (those who are not citizens) because of the monarch, my gut instinct is to oppose things that the monarch is requesting- such as building a school.

It surprises me how many people can support sanctions and embargoes against places like Libya, Iraq, and Cuba, yet in they think it's good that Carnegie Mellon is exporting a bastardized version of a Western education to the wealthy of Qatar.

Just another sign of globalization.

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