Campus Watch
Accountability for Middle East Studies
Foreign money shapes what American universities teach about the Middle East. Campus Watch, directed by Winfield Myers, puts that money on the public record. Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requires universities to disclose foreign gifts and contracts of $250,000 or more. Most of what the public knows about Gulf money on campus exists because someone did that disclosure work. Campus Watch does the disclosure work.
Middle East studies trains the analysts, journalists, and diplomats who will make the next generation’s policy. Whoever funds the field shapes it. Qatar understood that before Washington did.
Qatar’s money still sits on American campuses. We keep counting it, naming it, and putting it on the record, university by university, filing by filing. Disclosure is the deterrent: money that must be named is money that thinks twice.