Carnegie Mellon isn’t being open about its relationship with Qatar
After the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, universities with close ties to Middle Eastern governments have faced heightened scrutiny. In February, Texas A&M University announced it would close its Qatar branch campus after operating in the Gulf State for two decades.
And in December 2023, The Lawfare Project filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Carnegie Mellon University student who alleged that the university’s acceptance of Qatari funds led to a discriminatory environment against Jewish students. The suit hopes to “shed light on the lack of transparency that exists at universities that receive foreign funding.”
My recent investigation into state and federal documents, primarily obtained through public records requests, shows that Carnegie Mellon has failed to be fully transparent to the Pennsylvania state government about the foreign funds it has received from Qatar. And it’s not the only university to fail to do so.
Nearly $700 million
Between 2010 and 2022, Carnegie Mellon did not report nearly $700 million from Qatar to the Pennsylvania Department of Education. The Higher Education Gift Disclosure Act, which has been in effect since 1986, requires all public and private universities in the Commonwealth to disclose foreign gifts valued at $100,000 or more within a year.
For each item a university does not report, the government can impose a 105% civil penalty. In other words, if the law were enforced, Carnegie Mellon could be on the hook to pay the entire $700 million, plus an additional $35 million, to Harrisburg.
Carnegie Mellon is one of the top recipients of Qatari funds in the United States. That’s because it operates a branch campus in Qatar. The Qatar Foundation, a government-run nonprofit, recruited Carnegie Mellon along with several Western universities in an effort to build up the small nation’s workforce.
Starting in 2003, Carnegie Mellon began to offer Qataris education in computer science and technology. Most of the funds Carnegie Mellon receives from Qatar are for operational support for the branch campus. But Carnegie Mellon’s special relationship with Qatar also allows the university to access lucrative research contracts.
Only organizations which conduct operations in Qatar can apply for contracts from the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) — another government- run agency. To receive funding, applicants must demonstrate how their research proposals will support Qatar’s development. These contracts can easily be worth tens of millions of dollars, according to documents I obtained from Texas A&M University in 2022. Carnegie Mellon has benefited from over 110 research projects with Qatar.
Questions about compliance
University spokesperson Peter Kerwin asserted in an email that Carnegie Mellon was in compliance with state law, adding that universities don’t have to disclose “contracts for services.” But Pennsylvania law defines a reportable gift as “any contract, gift, grant, endowment, award, or donation of money or property of any kind, or any combination of these, which in any one fiscal year exceeds $100,000.” Carnegie Mellon’s contract with Qatar to operate its branch campus, and the many research grants its faculty have received from QNRF, fall under this description.
Many universities have had a history of neglecting federal gift disclosure rules. In 2020, the Department of Education found more than $6.5 billion in unreported foreign gifts. In the years since, I found that Texas A&M had not reported at least $100 million from Qatar and Russia. We still don’t know if Carnegie Mellon has reported everything to the federal government, let alone the state.
Pennsylvania is one of the few states to have a comprehensive disclosure requirement for universities that accept foreign funds. In fact, compared with the federal government’s requirements, Pennsylvania’s law has a lower monetary reporting threshold, requires providing the gift’s purpose, and allows the public to view the donor’s identity.
But a law is only as good as it is enforced. And the Pennsylvania Department of Education has done a poor job of keeping track of this information.
When I requested the gift disclosure files, some reports from universities such as Penn State, Temple University and the University of Pittsburgh were missing. I brought these concerns to the public records office, and a few weeks later, I received a seemingly random assortment of new documents. The state official explained that they “reached out to additional universities and received information that had not previously been provided to us.”
A mockery of law
This makes a mockery of a state law with an important public purpose: Pennsylvanians have the right to know how much influence foreign countries wield over our top educational institutions.
State officials must hold Carnegie Mellon accountable for failure to report foreign funds by imposing the civil penalty. Otherwise, it sends a message that the state will turn a blind eye to indiscretions by universities, which encourages them to stop reporting this important information at all.