Going Once, Going Twice, Sold to Qatar

Here's what's on the auction block: a Kenan-Flagler Business School diploma bearing the name of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Our only bidder is the Qatar Foundation, a group headed by Her Highness Sheikha Mouz Bint Nasser Al-Misnad, the second of three wives of the ruling emir of Qatar. The foundation approached UNC one year ago with the idea of creating a satellite campus of the business school in the small emirate's capital of Doha.

The bidding begins at an undisclosed price. But Qatar's timing couldn't be more perfect, given that Chancellor James Moeser just launched a $1 billion campaign to fill the University's coffers. Provost Robert Shelton told The News & Observer, "Maybe they can meet our campaign goal with one check."

Going once ...

Cornell University has already received $750 million to run a satellite campus of its medical school in Qatar. Cornell also received an undisclosed amount for managing the program. All of the sudden, UNC administration is gung-ho about Qatar -- while most students can't even pronounce the country's name.

Going twice ...

Qatar wants to modernize. In 1998, the country approached the University of Virginia about creating an undergraduate campus in Qatar. After two years, UVa. declined, citing problems with accreditation.

Going three times ...

That's where we come in. Qatar has offered an undisclosed sum to UNC to develop an undergraduate business program intended for native Qataris. On the bright side, it will include women. This is significant, considering that Qatar lies in the middle of a culture that denies women basic liberties. But in Qatar, the women can actually drive cars.

Our university will grant Qataris the same degree we receive here in Chapel Hill, but our fellow Qatarheels won't even have to set foot on American soil, let alone in North Carolina.

Current students, meanwhile, might not even have access to the Qatari campus. As Moeser said in a Wednesday meeting with the Chancellor's Advisory Committee, "It's not for UNC students." Some of the finest faculty that we wait semesters to take classes from and who are paid with our tax dollars and tuition money might be temporarily unavailable -- vacationing in Qatar.

Qatar has a population of 700,000, roughly the same as Wake County, although it's smaller than the state of Connecticut.

That's where the similarities to America end. Qatar is an autocratic regime run by the vast al-Thani family. The country's rulers have promised to hold free elections for the first time since 1970, but that hasn't taken place yet. While we call our home the land of the free, critics of the Qatar regime are jailed, citizens have limited civil liberties, and there is no freedom of assembly.

The little Gulf state also lives in a rough neighborhood. Plopping an American school espousing Western ideals in bin Laden's backyard sounds like a bright idea. UNC has two options here: We can bail on the program because the risks of terrorism outweigh the goals. Or, the University can proceed with this venture in the middle of America's War on Terror and attempt to instill some Western values into the people of Qatar.

Whatever the school decides, students will have no voice in the decision. That is ethically inexcusable. No student representative has been allowed to go on the two posh trips the Sheikha has arranged to woo faculty into endorsing the program. Heck, there's not even a Web site on the UNC page that says a thing about it. A complete mystery, considering that the last time administration missed a chance to create a Web site was 1991.

Perhaps it's because students have learned that money (Nike) is more important than integrity (Wachovia), safety (Aramark) and most of all students (IBM). Students have been intentionally left out of the Qatar program discussion because we follow our gut instincts, not our checkbooks.

... Sold.

Rachel Hockfield thinks it would have been easier to just sell the University off brick-by-brick. Send all bids to rachel@email.unc.edu.