Emails Show Qatar Coordinated Messaging About October 7th Attacks With American Universities in Doha

Emails Show Qatar Coordinated Messaging About October 7th Attacks With American Universities in Doha

This is despicable. The emails were shared with the House Committee on Education.

NEW:

Emails released by the House Education Committee show that Qatar pressed American universities with satellite campuses in Doha to coordinate their messaging with the regime in the days following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

University officials were instructed to “be… pic.twitter.com/dv1QkzFVe3

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) March 18, 2026

From the Washington Free Beacon:

‘Information Sharing and No Surprises’: Qatar Demanded American Schools in Doha ‘Be Aligned’ in Wake of Oct 7, Emails Show

In the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack, the Hamas-friendly regime in Qatar demanded that American universities operating campuses in Doha “be aligned and in touch” when it came to their official communications, emails released by the House Education Committee show. On the same day, the dean of Northwestern University’s campus in Qatar (NU-Q) refused to sign on to a statement from his colleagues in the United States criticizing an NU-Q professor who downplayed the attack.

The emails are part of a report released Tuesday by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, “How Campuses Became Hotbeds: The Rise of Radical Antisemitism on College Campuses.” The messages show that, on Oct. 17, 2023, the government-controlled Qatar Foundation held a call with representatives of American universities in Doha to discuss “how it is going” in the wake of the attack, according to a readout of the call sent from NU-Q associate dean James Shaw to campus dean Marwan Michael Kraidy. A Qatar Foundation official, President of Higher Education Francisco Marmolejo, requested “information sharing and no surprises,” Shaw wrote.

“Also each PU’s [partner university’s] Comms Team to be aligned and in touch with QF,” Shaw continued, relaying the Qatar Foundation’s demands. He went on to express “slight concern”—not about NU-Q’s alignment with the terrorist-friendly regime in Qatar, but rather that the school “navigated the first 10 days of this crisis with minimal comms support due to absence.”

The pressure from Doha appears to have had an effect on NU-Q’s leaders.

Just hours after the Qatar Foundation call, Kraidy, the NU-Q dean, refused to sign on to a statement Northwestern issued criticizing NU-Q professor Khaled Al-Hroub. In an Oct. 16, 2023, interview with an NPR affiliate in Boston, Al-Hroub said that he had not seen “any kind of credible media reporting” that Hamas terrorists had killed Israeli civilians in their beds or raped Israeli women. When Fox News contacted Northwestern for comment on the interview, the school drafted a statement condemning “Al-Hroub’s attempt to minimize or misrepresent the horrific killing of Israeli civilians by Hamas on Oct. 7.” Kraidy disapproved of that statement, according to emails included in the House report.

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