Beware of Qatar bearing gifts, universities warned

By Julie Hare
Education Editor
Read the article online at the AFR

Australian universities are at risk of foreign interference from the small oil-rich nation of Qatar, which has used its vast wealth and influence as a friend of the West while also building an extensive network of Islamic partners, including the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, a leading international expert says.

The warning from Charles Small, a Canadian intellectual and founder of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, came the day before Israel's deadly attack on the Qatari capital, Doha.

Small said in Melbourne this week that Qatari duplicity in supporting education, finance, science, health, sports, art and culture, communications and development while also supporting Hamas, the Taliban and other militias posed a direct risk to Western democracy.

Higher education institutions were particularly vulnerable to Qatari influence, Small told The Australian Financial Review.

His institute's flagship 2023 research project, Networks of Hate - in collaboration with the US Department of Justice - found that while the Al Thani royal family promoted Qatar as a moderate nation that used its soft power and wealth to invest in and become affiliated with civil society bodies and universities, it had also "embraced and promoted Islamist thinking and activism worldwide for many years".

"We found in the United States over $US100 billion ($150 billion) in undeclared funding of universities and schools [by Qatar], and we are replicating that work in Canada, the UK, South Africa, and we are starting todo some research in Australia," said Small.

In June, Swinburne University announced it would partner with Barzan University College in Doha to be the first Australian institution to offer its qualifications in Qatar.

"Our partnership with BUC is built on a shared mission to empower students with the skills, knowledge and mindset needed for lifelong success," Swinburne vice chancellor Professor Pascale Quester said at the time.

On Wednesday, a spokesman for the university said, "This is a teaching partnership, not a Swinburne campus. The Australian government continues to actively support this partnership, which we are grateful for."

The federal government's University Foreign Interference Taskforce is examining the potential risks of foreign interference when campuses and partnerships are established in other countries.

That comes as the Albanese government has been encouraging universities to set up offshore campuses instead of relying entirely on educating overseas students in Australia.

"International education is not a one-way street. It's not just about students coming to Australia to study. It's also about Australia going to them," Education Minister Jason Clare said last October.

But Small said universities needed to be cautious about what they were buying into, despite the lure of financial gains.

His research found the Qataris gave Cornell University $US8 billion to set up a medical campus in Doha in 2001, with another $US2 billion going to its US campus - all of which was undisclosed to the US government and therefore illegal.

The institute also revealed that Texas A&M University received about $US1.3 billion, which included handing over all intellectual property rights to the Qataris.

"We found 58 [research projects] had dual-use military research implications and 13 had dual-use nuclear military research implications," Small said. "Within a week of our report, that campus closed down."

Other major universities that have been hosted in Doha under the umbrella of the Qatar Foundation's Education City include Georgetown University, Northwestern University, HEC Paris and University College London, which closed its doors in Doha in 2020 after a decade.

"On the one hand, the royal family of Qatar are perceived as allies of the West - the Americans have a military base there [https://www.afr.com/world/middle-east/gulf-expat-bubble-punctured-by-missiles-20250625-p5ma2h], they invest in our cultural institutions," Small said.

"But what people don't understand is that the royal family has a 'bayah' - a spiritual oath to the Muslim Brotherhood. And their strategic goal in terms of antisemitism is to isolate Israel and move it away from the West.

"They want to destroy democratic societies' values and principles, in part by funding higher education."

Tanya Cherny