Texas A&M has announced that it will be shutting down its campus in Doha, Qatar, citing instability in the region. It claims that this decision is also part of the university’s decision to focus all of its efforts on educating students inside the United States. In reality, pressure had been building on the university’s trustees to end ties with a country that has given over $2 billion in aid to Hamas, and hosts many of Hamas’ top leaders, including Khaled Meshaal, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mousa bin Marzouk. There were also worries that the security of nuclear projects being worked on by Texas A&M researchers in Qatar might be compromised. Many Jewish groups, and Christian ones as well, such as Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United For Israel, have hailed the university’s decision. The Qatar Foundation, which has financially supported the Doha campus of Texas A&M, is of course furious. More on this decision can be found here: “Texas A&M potentially compromised US nuclear security, pulls plug on Doha campus,” by Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post, February
The massive Texas A&M University System announced on Thursday that it will pull the plug on its controversial campus in the tiny oil-rich authoritarian state of Qatar because of Middle East volatility, prompting a furious reaction from the Qatar Foundation.
Texas A&M said in a statement that the university’s “Board of Regents decided to reassess the university’s physical presence in Qatar in fall 2023 due to the heightened instability in the Middle East.”
Qatar hosts the leaders of the US-designated terrorist movement Hamas, and the Sunni Islamist regime in Doha is currently in the crosshairs of congressional scrutiny due to its zealous political and financial support for Hamas.
Qatar funneled over $2 billion into the coffers of Hamas over the last decade. Critics argue that Qatar’s funds played a significant role in the Hamas massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel on October 7, including the murders of over 30 Americans.
Fox News Digital reported in January, and the AP reported in 2022 that Qatar’s regime allegedly hired a former American CIA officer, Kevin Chalker, to spy on Senators, including Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, and members of the House of Representatives opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood and its Palestinian offshoot, Hamas….
Qatar has provided Hamas with two billion dollars in the last decade, keeping its rule in Gaza afloat. It has also provided support for Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at many American universities, and through its ownership of the Al Jazeera network, which has expanded worldwide, made itself into a media powerhouse. Al-Jazeera promotes anti-Israel calumnies, pro-Palestinian propaganda and, of course, endless praise for Qatar and its autocratic ruler. Qatar also hires American agents, such as Kevin Chalker, to surveil such “enemies of Qatar” as Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and others in the House opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood and its Gaza branch, Hamas, that Qatar so ardently supports.
According to a post on X, the Qatar Foundation said the university’s decision to shutter the campus “has been influenced by a disinformation campaign aimed at harming the interests of QF.”
Qatar doesn’t see its support of Hamas as a problem. It claims the closing of the Texas A&M campus is due to a “disinformation campaign” which must come — it need not be spelled out — from the perfidious Israelis, and their American Jewish allies, who spread lies and calumny about such a trustworthy friend of the United States, the Muslim Arab state as Qatar.
The Board of Regents of Texas A&M Chairman, Bill Mahomes, said it “decided that the core mission of Texas A&M should be advanced primarily within Texas and the United States. He added, “By the middle of the 21st century, the university will not necessarily need a campus infrastructure….
The Board of Regents seeks to give the impression that its closure of the Qatar campus is part of a wide-ranging decision to concentrate all of the university’s efforts “in Texas and the United States.” But it has not announced that any of its other campuses in other countries will be shut down. Clearly Qatar presents a unique problem.
According to ISGAP’s research, “Qatar has acquired full ownership of more than 500 research projects at Texas A&M, some of which are in highly sensitive fields such as nuclear science, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, biotech robotics, and weapons development.”…
Because of its financial support of Texas A&M scientists at the Doha campus, Qatar has managed to acquire all the rights to the fruits of their research — some 500 projects in all. Some of them are in fields such as “nuclear science, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, biotech robotics, and weapons development.” The university has now been jolted into action to end that collaboration. Though the Doha campus will not be completely closed until 2028, the university will presumably at once shut down all of its current research projects on such sensitive subjects conducted in Qatar.
The Texas television outlet KBTX3 reported on Thursday, “Concerns about the A&M campus in Qatar bubbled to the surface after reports from several outlets, including The Post, referenced [sic] a letter from the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP).”
Texas A&M President Mark Welsh flatly denied to KBTX’s Rusty Surette that Qatar secured highly sensitive national security information, declaring the allegations to be “insanity” and “irresponsible.”…
Texas A&M President Mark Welsh is in effect dismissing the worries of the his own Board of Regents, that there is a national security threat when Qatar, an ardent supporter of Hamas, is allowed to acquire ownership rights to the research on sensitive subjects — such as nuclear engineering and cybersecurity — being carried out by Texas A&M scientists at the Qatar campus.
Bexarkat says
Why is there no ice water in Qatar? The chemist with the formula was executed for violating Sharia.
In Texas, there’s something known as an “Aggie joke.” This is simply a poor attempt at a humorous take-off on one I heard years ago.
Spiro says
30 pieces of silver
Texas A&M awash in PC even at the expense of their own country and Christian heritage
Golem2 says
USA out of Qatar.
somehistory says
I would never have guessed that the school would have a campus in that scum-ruled nation in the first place. After all, it is **Texas** A&M.
Money talks.
And, of course, the mozlum ghouls are angry The “Don’t Mess with Texas” matters not to mozlums.
Someone thought better and decided being in bed with ghouls is a bad idea. Good for them. Whoever put the campus in that country, should have been fired before it could happen. but money talks, really loud.
Hoi Polloi says
Apart from all these issues, I’m always amazed at the intentional blindness expected of US citizens regarding Islam’s teaching and practices with regard to women, blacks, children, and slavery. Those issues should be enough to be clear to all that it’s a serious affront to US principles of freedom and equality to be in league in any form with these egregious human rights violators.
somehistory says
When a I was a little kid, my father had me walk with him behind the plow. We had a mule to pull it and that mule wore blinders so he couldn’t look at the things growing beside the field we wanted plowed. The animal could only see in the direction his head turned. straight ahead; and we kept his head turned toward the dirt right in front of us. The mule could see the dirt at his feet and the sky above. He was blind to everything else. He could hear us call to him, and feel the leads if we pulled on one or the other.
A whole lot of people are like that mule. They see and hear and feel what others want them to see and hear and feel.
Some may sense there are things growing about which they know little or nothing, but they don’t break away and find out for sure.
Hoi Polloi says
All too true.
somehistory says
Thank you, HP.
I just received this email
“Understanding Islam: Theory vs Practice”
“The gulf between understanding Islam in theory and in practice is wide and telling. Based on the findings of a recent study, what Western peoples think of Islam when relying on secondhand information from the powers-that-be (the media, the political “elite,” etc.) is vastly different from what they think of Islam after personally experiencing it. According to the report,”
His example is Greece.
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2024/02/15/understanding-islam-theory-vs-practice/
GE says
Therein lies the rub—until people experience Islam, they have no idea of what it can be like. Greeks understand it, although I think a lot of them have forgotten their history.
Armenians understand it very well, to this very day. I blame the EU and Germany for the Islamic mess in Greece.
But there is still a lot of ignorance out there. I know people who say they have never heard of sharia.
somehistory says
Yes, GE. and a lot of the learning by experience leaves the learned one dead.
James Lincoln says
somehistory says,
“Some may sense there are things growing about which they know little or nothing, but they don’t break away and find out for sure.”
Yes.
It takes time and effort to find the truth.
And the truth about islam is very, very unsettling – to say the least.
somehistory says
Nothing worthwhile comes easy, James. But the Truth is worth the effort. Even when we find out the wolf is at the door, hungry, and able to blow our house down, it’s better to know it.
Glenn Beck’s Wednesday special was about ten ways biden has shown he is a dictator. Much of it was “unsettling”…but it’s better to know than be swallowed up by the next ways his gang has been planning.
islam is very ugly, and some of the knowing about it makes me sick. But, I don’t want to be surprised by the actions of the very ugly.
James Lincoln says
Fully agree, somehistory.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Why can’t they be honest about their reason? Qatar is many things, but it’s not unstable: the al Thanis have a strong grip on power, as does every sheikh in the region. Let Texas A&M or others have their campuses in other countries like Emirates, Oman or even Saudi Arabia, all of which have been quietly moderating, unlike Qatar, Kuwait or Yemen