Court Rules that Carnegie Mellon University Can Be Held Accountable for Taking Qatar Money to Permit Antisemitic Hatred on Campus

From the Wall Street Journal: a student is suing Carnegie Mellon University. She says that she was harassed by antisemitic Muslims, but was discouraged from filing a complaint.

She is suing on the theory that Carnegie Mellon discriminated against her because they were paid $1 billion by Qatar to permit antisemitic attacks on campus.

A judge refused to dismiss this complaint and says that a "reasonable jury" may well find that Carnegie Mellon allowed the brutalization of its Jewish students due to the Qatar bribe. So the case goes forward.

Eitan Fischberger @EFischberger

Newly unsealed federal court orders point to massive Qatari funding shaping Carnegie Mellon's behavior and enabling antisemitism on campus:

🔸 A federal judge said a reasonable juror could conclude that CMU's reliance on over $1 billion from Qatar motivated the university to accommodate donor expectations

🔸 Qatari entities helped fund the salary of CMU's DEI and Title IX coordinator, and the university was required to consult with the Qatar Foundation before hiring her

🔸 Multiple DEI officials involved in handling antisemitism complaints had work ties to Qatar, including trips, funding, or employment connected to the Doha campus

🔸 The court explicitly warned that Qatar and its affiliates could be a source of antisemitic influence on university policy and complaint handling

🔸 Similar contracts at CMU and Northwestern University require faculty and students to respect Qatari law, which criminalizes criticism of the Qatari government

🔸 Department of Education data shows Qatar is the single largest foreign funder of US universities by far, outpacing China and Saudi Arabia

Academic freedom and student civil rights should not be contingent on appeasing foreign autocracies. Congress needs to take this problem seriously, fast.

Steve McGuire @sfmcguire79

To summarize: Carnegie Mellon took over $1 billion from Qatar and gave the Qatar Foundation a say in the hiring of their VP of DEI, and now the school is being sued by a Jewish student who says the VP of DEI discouraged her from filing a formal antisemitism complaint...yikes.

posted by Ace at 01:22 PM

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