Several American universities have increased their presence in the Middle East in recent decades, opening campuses that now serve thousands of students from the region and around the world. Now, as war in Iran expands throughout the Mideast, those campuses are canceling classes or moving them online.
U.S. schools with a presence in the region include Georgetown, New York University, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, Virginia Commonwealth, Texas A&M and Weill Cornell Medical College, the medical school of Cornell University. Many of the students attending these campuses are from the Middle East.
Members of N.Y.U.’s Abu Dhabi campus, in the United Arab Emirates, have been sheltering in place since Saturday. Classes were canceled on Monday and were scheduled to resume remotely on Tuesday, in accordance with guidance issued by the UAE Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.
“As a global university, we are always on alert and our teams constantly plan and prepare for emergencies,” Wiley Norvell, N.Y.U.’s senior vice president for university relations and public affairs, said in a statement. N.Y.U.’s Abu Dhabi campus, which opened in 2010, has about 2,200 students from more than 100 countries. Mr. Norvell said everyone on campus remained safe.
Georgetown said its campus in Qatar would operate remotely on Tuesday — a status it said administrators expected to maintain “at least through the end of this week.”
Decisions about the campus, Georgetown said, would be made each day, “guided by official updates and the evolving situation.”
Georgetown’s interim president, Robert M. Groves, also said that a business school program that had been scheduled to begin Sunday in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, had been suspended and that university officials were working to evacuate students.
Classes at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Doha, the Qatari capital, have moved online, according to a school spokesman. Classes were canceled on Sunday, and the school will operate remotely through at least the end of the week.
At Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, campus facilities had also closed temporarily. “Our campus leadership in Doha has taken all appropriate steps following guidance from the Government of Qatar, including an immediate transition to remote learning and remote work,” university administrators said in a statement.
A spokesman for Northwestern University, which has a presence in Qatar, said its campus there would function remotely all week.
Classes at Texas A&M University at Qatar will be conducted remotely at least through the end of this week, the university said on its website. The Texas A&M system Board of Regents voted two years ago to wind down its operation in Qatar, and close it by 2028.
In a statement from February 2024 announcing the closure, the Board of Regents said it decided to reassess the university’s presence in Qatar because of “the heightened instability in the Middle East.”
A spokesman for Carnegie Mellon said that its students, faculty, and staff in Doha were sheltering in place. “Campus operations and classes will remain remote until further notice, and we are in regular communication with our external international security experts, the U.S. Embassy, and other governmental entities on necessary precautions and next steps,” the spokesman said.
Mark Arsenault covers higher education for The Times.
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