The Northwestern Chronicle - Winter 2014

In Doha, a “Climate of Fear”

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight - it’s the size of the fight in the dog”

By: Charles RolletEditor-in-Chief

Press releases, snazzy conferences, and slick videos all tell one story about Northwestern in Qatar: that of a successful branch campus which, despite some initial hurdles, is flour-ishing. As Provost Dan Linzer said at a pro-motional event in Norris last October, NU-Q has “transitioned from a start-up to a thriv-ing school, wrestling with the same kinds of issues schools here wrestle with.”

But behind the finely-tailored PR lies a harsher reality for its employees, according to many current and former staffers. They say a recent period of restructuring has reinforced a “climate of fear” which leaves many fearful for their job security, with many afraid to speak out because they are scared their job contracts will not be renewed. Alle-gations of discrimination have rocked NU-Q internally as well; according to many, one employee was let go for being LGBTQ, and at least one more has filed a formal discrimi-nation complaint. And while NU-Q’s restruc-turing has created a new drive to produce re-search, this may rest on shakier ground than appears at first glance - THE CHRONICLE found that politically sensitive surveys were directly censored by the Qatari government.

In an exclusive report based on interviews with over fifteen current and former employ-

ees, THE CHRONICLE has detailed this climate of fear. (Almost all workers interviewed spoke on con-dition of strict anonymity.) It’s a long story of power struggles, faculty politics, culture shock, and vast sums of money. And it’s been happening right under Northwestern’s nose, unreported until now.

A Rocky StartBefore NU-Q’s current problems with its employ-ees can be explored, it must be understood just how quickly an entirely new Northwestern campus was set up from scratch.

In late 2007, Northwestern in Evanston agreed to have a Qatar branch, and by the next fall, a fully-func-tioning, degree-granting American campus was brought to existence. Of course, fully-functioning is one way of putting it; creating such a totally new insti-tution led to a host of what Northwestern calls “start-up problems,” many of which continue to this day.

A couple examples: pests plagued student dorms; NU-Q’s registration system, Oracle, bugged because it operated under a US time zone; and for its first graduating class, NU-Q had to re-order new diplomas which made no mention of Qatar (students wanted diplomas identical to those issued in Evanston.)

All these issues are unsurprising considering the massive task NU-Q’s first workers faced before them. For many regular staff (faculty had it easier), the work environment was extremely high pressure.

One former staffer said many student affairs workers, for example, worked “incessantly” for 70-hour weeks, almost living in their place of work.

Another mentioned getting 5AM emails from colleagues: “I get people who I know are get-ting up 2 and 3 hours before getting to work just to get all the administrative [work] that they need to do before they get to campus,” the staffer said. “I do know the burnout is a bigger contributor to the staff turnover than anywhere else.”

The high turnover in some departments worsened the problem of workplace stress, as the workers who stayed at NU-Q were con-stantly under the orders of new supervisors.

WINTER 2014 nuchronicle.com

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An investigation into Northwestern in Qatar’s troubled work environment

News 3Editor-in-Chief

Charles Rollet

Arts and EntertainmentJanice Janeczko

NewsMegan Spengler

FeaturesAnthony Settipani

OpinionAlex Entz

SportsSage Schroeder

Staff writersJordan Minor,Varun Kumar, Margaret Flynn, Abigail Jen-kins, DJ Oh, Maria Beltran,Samuel Kahn, Tim Reilly,

Annalise Frank,Dane Stier

Interested in joining The Chronicle? Simply email [email protected] with which section(s)

you’d like to contribute to and any past journalism experience you have (it’s

fine if you have none.)

2014 Staff

By: Megan SpenglerNews editor

I met Isabella Copeland my first year at Northwestern, when we were in the same freshman seminar: “Art vs. Philosophy” (or something of the sort). Philosophy has never been my strong point; I spent most of the class daydreaming and doodling in my note-book while Isabella was driving the discus-sion with thought-provoking philosophical questions.

So it’s no surprise to me she is now president of WiPhi, or Women in Philosophy.

I recently sat down with Isabella at Farm-house Evanston to hear about her recent rise to philosophy-fame, and to find out what really goes on in WiPhi meetings.

“I’ve been a philosophy major since we took that freshman seminar, so WiPhi was pre-sented to me just through the department,”

Copeland explained to me. “There was a different president every year, and last year one of the fabulous presidents graduated and asked if I would be interested in taking over.”

WiPhi has only been around since 2011, so don’t feel too bad if you haven’t heard much about it. Copeland’s main task this year is to make this club a larger presence on campus, and make its members proud of their com-mitment to philosophy.

“It shouldn’t be thought of as a nerdy group. We’re women with interests and critical thinking skills, and it’s really just a place to foster a female voice. It’s important for females to get together and just encourage each other and remind each other that we’re actually super smart, and that our arguments matter,” said Copeland.

When I imagine a philosophy club meeting, I picture everyone sitting around a dimly-lit room in large leather armchairs debating philosophical ideals, possibly in British ac-cents. But WiPhi isn’t nearly as intimidating. They meet twice a month and give members the chance to talk about Northwestern-spe-cific problems as well as hypothetical situa-tions in need of a philosophical answer.

“It’s not totally structured, but I think I like it better that way. You come in, feel out the vibe. If everyone is super tired, we just chill, eat our pizza, relax and be women in philoso-phy. But if we’re feeling feisty, let’s go into it, let’s destroy something.”

When in need for something to “destroy,” Copeland mentioned that she often uses “The Ethicist,” Chuck Klosterman’s ethical advice column in the New York Times, as a base for discussion.

“He has random people write in about their moral dilemmas, and he offers a solution. Sometimes it’s spot on, but when he presents

an argument that’s sort of shaky, that’s when we have the best times. It’s like ‘What?? How could you say that?! That doesn’t make any sense! What would Kant say??’”

I had to ask if boys ever came to the meet-ings, or if they were even allowed. Copeland made sure to point out that WiPhi is very non-exclusive. Yes, their name only says “women,” but guys are always welcome (even though none have attended yet).

“I get a lot of guys who say, ‘This is ridicu-lous! You can’t exclude men, that’s not philo-sophical!’ And it’s a huge thing that is misun-derstood about the group. It’s really not an exclusionist group, it’s just women in phi-losophy, it’s a minority group period. At the end of the day, that’s just how numbers fall,” said Copeland. “It’s an all-female initiative, and it’s not about the exclusion of males, it’s about supporting a female presence in a male-dominated field like philosophy.”

For the philosophy-challenged like myself, the philosophy department will soon be offering a mini-lecture series open to anyone, taught by different professors on their area of interest or expertise. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a working knowledge of existentialism?

Make sure to watch out for WiPhi’s greatest claim to fame, which is happening at the end of this quarter: The Gertrude Bussey Lecture.

“Gertrude Bussey was the first male or fe-male to graduate with a philosophy degree from Northwestern, but she was a woman! So that’s great. We have a lecture every year in her honor, where we bring in a philoso-pher just to give a lecture and have dinner with students.”

This year, the featured speaker is Dr. Julie Driver, and the lecture will take place on March 6 at 5PM in University Hall Room 121.

Meet the President of NU’s First Group for Women in PhilosophyA “Climate of Fear”(cont.)

“[It’s] just the pure exhaustion of having to tell people how to do things over and over again, because you’re pretty well aware, you don’t get attached to people because they may or may not be here in six months,” said the previously-quot-ed staffer.

But on top of the intense workload and disorgan-isation, employees had the added stress of oper-ating in a completely different culture than the US with little to no training about the region.At times, these cultural differences clashed and directly affected certain peoples’ jobs.

Former NU-Q workers cited the case of one female employee who, at an academic fair, men-tioned street harassment by Qatari men as one of the “minuses” of living in Doha (she had been the subject of such harassment herself.) But she was overheard by a Qatari who took offense over what he saw as a gross generalization about lo-cals; after he wrote a letter, she was fired.

Such incidents of cultural misunderstandings made non-faculty employees nervous about their jobs, which could be over “the moment you piss off a Qatari with a little wasta,” (the local term for “connections,”) said one staffer. And one’s entire life in Qatar depends on a visa sponsorship from NU-Q – without a job, workers effectively have to leave the country. This environment of intense work, disorganisation, and culture shock took a psychological toll for many. “I had people in my office crying all the time. Bawling on a reg-ular basis,” the previously-quoted staffer said.

The workplace at NU-Q, however, was made bet-ter by some factors. For one, employees are paid significantly more in the Middle East than in the US – it’s not for nothing they’re nicknamed “mercenaries” in the country.

But it wasn’t all about the money; many said

they genuinely enjoyed living in Qatar and expe-riencing its unique culture. And some did enjoy working there. “I think overall it was a great place to work,” said one employee who left in 2011. “Now I think that the student and academic experience in NU-Q is incredibly enriching. The downside to that is aside from complete material freedom, there is a little bit of intellectual con-straints that happen.”

It also helped that NU-Q’s first Dean, John Margolis, was generally regarded as a kindly and transparent person who was personally close to many students and faculty.

But despite Margolis’ geniality, many start-up problems remained at NU-Q, and the school retained a low profile. It was far from a research powerhouse Northwestern in Evanston could boast about, and its schools, which taught com-munications and journalism, lacked unity. Ex-panding programming and scholarship at such a new institution was not a priority for Margo-lis, who “didn’t really care about research” but focused more on teaching, according to faculty members interviewed by THE CHRONICLE.

When Margolis retired in 2011, it was time for NU-Q to get a new Dean, and the choice made was of a more corporate flavour: Everette E. Dennis, who remains NU-Q’s “Dean and CEO” to this day. Little did NU-Q’s employees know, but Dennis’ rule heralded the beginning of a new period of restructuring at NU-Q which has bitter-ly divided the workplace ever since.

Clearing the House

Dennis was, unlike Margolis, a prominent name in journalism and communications education - and a zealous reformer.

(Article continues on page 8.)

Proof of Isabella’s love for philoso-phy: kissing the grave of Sartre and de Beauvoir in a Parisian cemetery.

WINTER 2014 NUCHRONICLE.COM @NUCHRONICLEWINTER 2014 NUCHRONICLE.COM @NUCHRONICLE

Investigative 2

News 3Editor-in-Chief

Charles Rollet


NewsMegan Spengler


OpinionAlex Entz







2014 Staff































Clearing the House





Investigative 2 News 3Editor-in-Chief

Charles Rollet


NewsMegan Spengler


OpinionAlex Entz







2014 Staff































Clearing the House





Investigative 2

Features 5WINTER 2014 NUCHRONICLE.COM @NUCHRONICLE


Two distinct sisters, united in music

By: Maria BeltranStaff writer

Steven Harper, litigator of30 years and adjunct professor at Northwestern University Law, isn’t a fan of law school. Well, just not all of it. Harper is a prominent advocate of elim-inating the third year of law school.

Harper has written four books, writesthe award-winning blog “The Belly of the Beast”, and teaches what he calls ‘10 weeks of reality therapy’ for under-grads in the legal studies semi-nar: a course called “American Lawyers: Demystifying the Profession.”

“There has been a recent discon-nect between expectation and reality,” Harper remarked. “Stu-dents need to know what’s going on in the profession.” As an outgrowth of the under-graduate course he teaches, Harper wrote “The Lawyer Bubble – A Profession in Crisis,” where he recounts the wrong ap-proaches he believes law schools have taken in creating an over-supply of lawyers and high em-

ployee unhappiness.

“These are the problems that can be seen, but no one wants to talk about them,” Harper said.

Despite President Obama’s recent endorsement of elim-inating a year of law school, Harper thinks the third year won’t disappear anytime soon. Harper explained the first year is about teaching prospective attorneys to think like lawyers and the second covering basic legal areas, with the most relevant train-ing occurring outside the classroom under practicing attorneys. Even though many prospective lawyers develop specialties, these don’t result from taking courses during the third year of law school.

“If it’s really not essential, then why should there be a third year and why should 85% of students come out of law school with hundreds of thousands in debt?” Harper asks. For him, law schools are run as businesses, maximiz-ing short-term profits.

“Defenders of a third year of law school will always be deans and law professors,” Harper said. “Deans will always dislike the idea because of cut revenues.”

In addition, he said US News Rankings have created perverse incentives: the more a school spends on students, the higher its ranking. According to Harper, the US News Rankings have caused a “vicious circle of stupidity in terms of the way both students and deans are responding, devel-oped by someone who isn’t even a lawyer or holds any sort of legal degree.”

“Undergrad students now sac-rifice independent judgment in favor of flawed rankings,” Harp-er added.

Like many for-profit universi-ties, law schools seem to only see students as dollar bills.

“Law schools’ high tuitions will persist, student debt will grow, and job prospects will remain bleak,” Harper wrote in his article “Obama’s Good, and Hopeless, Idea for Law Schools.” He believes that the continuing law school model requires maxi-mizing revenue and filling class-room seats, regardless of student employment prospects at grad-uation--at graduation only half will find jobs requiring a JD.

So what does the future hold for the law profession? Harper seems optimistic.

“As long as people make an in-formed decision about entering law school, schools will continue to attract great people who will do things with a law degree. I think in the long range it’ll sort itself out.”

Inside “The Belly of the Beast:” why one prof wants to cut law school by a third

By: Anthony SettipaniFeatures editor

Take a moment and think about the difference between two of Mozart’s most famous pieces; for example, “Eine Kleine Nacht-musik” versus The Magic Flute’s “Queen of the Night.” There is a great deal of difference between the two pieces, even though many might find themselves at a complete loss to describe exactly what.

So, at first, is the case with twins Bryce and Maris O’Tierney, two sisters who are both heavily in-volved in music at Northwestern. They come from the same place, pursue similar goals, and in passing you might even confuse one for the other.. But beneath the similarities are two vibrant and highly driven personalities, one strumming, and one fid-dling.

“I’m someone who’s three ma-jors: vocal performance, art his-tory, and political science,” said Maris. “And the reason for that is when something inspires me, I dig into that.”

If you think she sounds busy enough, she also left out classi-cally-trained guitarist and active singer-songwriter.

Her sister is no slouch either. On track to finish her dual degree program, Bryce majors in both violin performance and creative writing all while sustaining a variety of other endeavors.

The poetry editor for Prompt Lit-erary Magazine, Bryce also puts words to music in her own style of songwriting. This combination comes naturally, since the words feel to her like an extension of the music already going through her head. She even goes so far as to write out her drafts on musi-cal manuscript paper.

“When I’m working on a poem it feels like a familiar environ-ment,” she said, “because I’ve thought through it already on the violin. It’s more translation than anything else.”

“What constantly amazes me about Bryce is the way she trans-lates her musicianship to col-laborations beyond music,” said Maris.

Currently in the thick of a cho-reographed music and dance project with Danceworks, Bryce

agreed that she works best when working with others.

“This year I just started taking some classes in the dance department,” she said, explaining how it was her violin that first got her involved with the project.

“I always have my fiddle on my back,” she said. “It’s just always with me. So I had it on my back and the instructor said, ‘Well, why don’t you play for us?’ And that’s how it got the ball rolling for this collaboration now.”

In terms of what lies beyond college, both sisters have an eye to return to their summer destinations—Maris for research and Bryce for graduate school—and both are in the final rounds of selection for the Fulbright grants that would help bring those goals to life.

“If that falls through I could see myself staying in Chicago, and even

doing more collaborative work with dance,” Bryce said, add-ing that she could see herself “working for the dance de-partment here and playing for classes.”

“Artistically I like Chicago a lot,” said Maris. “It feels really good that there’s music that I’d love to share with people and that there’re people that want to listen to it and want to support it.”

She mentioned an interest in starting a band with her twin and a few others who share their goals and dedication.

“If it turned into a record deal that would obviously be amaz-ing,” she added, but it’s the travel and collaboration that really gets her excited about this idea.

Both sisters gave the impres-sion that while the location is important, and the recognition is nice, the music itself gener-ates the real force that keeps them going.

“I don’t think about backup plans,” said Maris, “but music is like the continuous thread that after I graduate I’m going to keep booking gigs and keep pushing for that until some-thing really sparks.”

“There’s nothing that helps me stay grounded like music will.”

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Two distinct sisters, united in music

By: Maria BeltranStaff writer

Steven Harper, litigator of30 years and adjunct professor at Northwestern University Law, isn’t a fan of law school. Well, just not all of it. Harper is a prominent advocate of elim-inating the third year of law school.

Harper has written four books, writesthe award-winning blog “The Belly of the Beast”, and teaches what he calls ‘10 weeks of reality therapy’ for under-grads in the legal studies semi-nar: a course called “American Lawyers: Demystifying the Profession.”

“There has been a recent discon-nect between expectation and reality,” Harper remarked. “Stu-dents need to know what’s going on in the profession.” As an outgrowth of the under-graduate course he teaches, Harper wrote “The Lawyer Bubble – A Profession in Crisis,” where he recounts the wrong ap-proaches he believes law schools have taken in creating an over-supply of lawyers and high em-

ployee unhappiness.

“These are the problems that can be seen, but no one wants to talk about them,” Harper said.

Despite President Obama’s recent endorsement of elim-inating a year of law school, Harper thinks the third year won’t disappear anytime soon. Harper explained the first year is about teaching prospective attorneys to think like lawyers and the second covering basic legal areas, with the most relevant train-ing occurring outside the classroom under practicing attorneys. Even though many prospective lawyers develop specialties, these don’t result from taking courses during the third year of law school.

“If it’s really not essential, then why should there be a third year and why should 85% of students come out of law school with hundreds of thousands in debt?” Harper asks. For him, law schools are run as businesses, maximiz-ing short-term profits.

“Defenders of a third year of law school will always be deans and law professors,” Harper said. “Deans will always dislike the idea because of cut revenues.”

In addition, he said US News Rankings have created perverse incentives: the more a school spends on students, the higher its ranking. According to Harper, the US News Rankings have caused a “vicious circle of stupidity in terms of the way both students and deans are responding, devel-oped by someone who isn’t even a lawyer or holds any sort of legal degree.”

“Undergrad students now sac-rifice independent judgment in favor of flawed rankings,” Harp-er added.

Like many for-profit universi-ties, law schools seem to only see students as dollar bills.

“Law schools’ high tuitions will persist, student debt will grow, and job prospects will remain bleak,” Harper wrote in his article “Obama’s Good, and Hopeless, Idea for Law Schools.” He believes that the continuing law school model requires maxi-mizing revenue and filling class-room seats, regardless of student employment prospects at grad-uation--at graduation only half will find jobs requiring a JD.

So what does the future hold for the law profession? Harper seems optimistic.

“As long as people make an in-formed decision about entering law school, schools will continue to attract great people who will do things with a law degree. I think in the long range it’ll sort itself out.”

Inside “The Belly of the Beast:” why one prof wants to cut law school by a third

By: Anthony SettipaniFeatures editor

Take a moment and think about the difference between two of Mozart’s most famous pieces; for example, “Eine Kleine Nacht-musik” versus The Magic Flute’s “Queen of the Night.” There is a great deal of difference between the two pieces, even though many might find themselves at a complete loss to describe exactly what.

So, at first, is the case with twins Bryce and Maris O’Tierney, two sisters who are both heavily in-volved in music at Northwestern. They come from the same place, pursue similar goals, and in passing you might even confuse one for the other.. But beneath the similarities are two vibrant and highly driven personalities, one strumming, and one fid-dling.

“I’m someone who’s three ma-jors: vocal performance, art his-tory, and political science,” said Maris. “And the reason for that is when something inspires me, I dig into that.”

If you think she sounds busy enough, she also left out classi-cally-trained guitarist and active singer-songwriter.

Her sister is no slouch either. On track to finish her dual degree program, Bryce majors in both violin performance and creative writing all while sustaining a variety of other endeavors.

The poetry editor for Prompt Lit-erary Magazine, Bryce also puts words to music in her own style of songwriting. This combination comes naturally, since the words feel to her like an extension of the music already going through her head. She even goes so far as to write out her drafts on musi-cal manuscript paper.

“When I’m working on a poem it feels like a familiar environ-ment,” she said, “because I’ve thought through it already on the violin. It’s more translation than anything else.”

“What constantly amazes me about Bryce is the way she trans-lates her musicianship to col-laborations beyond music,” said Maris.

Currently in the thick of a cho-reographed music and dance project with Danceworks, Bryce

agreed that she works best when working with others.

“This year I just started taking some classes in the dance department,” she said, explaining how it was her violin that first got her involved with the project.

“I always have my fiddle on my back,” she said. “It’s just always with me. So I had it on my back and the instructor said, ‘Well, why don’t you play for us?’ And that’s how it got the ball rolling for this collaboration now.”

In terms of what lies beyond college, both sisters have an eye to return to their summer destinations—Maris for research and Bryce for graduate school—and both are in the final rounds of selection for the Fulbright grants that would help bring those goals to life.

“If that falls through I could see myself staying in Chicago, and even

doing more collaborative work with dance,” Bryce said, add-ing that she could see herself “working for the dance de-partment here and playing for classes.”

“Artistically I like Chicago a lot,” said Maris. “It feels really good that there’s music that I’d love to share with people and that there’re people that want to listen to it and want to support it.”

She mentioned an interest in starting a band with her twin and a few others who share their goals and dedication.

“If it turned into a record deal that would obviously be amaz-ing,” she added, but it’s the travel and collaboration that really gets her excited about this idea.

Both sisters gave the impres-sion that while the location is important, and the recognition is nice, the music itself gener-ates the real force that keeps them going.

“I don’t think about backup plans,” said Maris, “but music is like the continuous thread that after I graduate I’m going to keep booking gigs and keep pushing for that until some-thing really sparks.”

“There’s nothing that helps me stay grounded like music will.”

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Opinion 6

By: Alex EntzOpinion editor

It’s good to see Northwestern football on the front page of ESPN.com again. When it last happened, in October, it was because our ‘Cats were ranked 16th headed into a Homecoming match against an unbeaten, top-five-ranked Ohio State team.

The second front-page appear-ance was, of course, due to their recent efforts to unionize.

For the uninformed: the ‘Cats quarterback this past year, Kain Colter, handed in a petition with the National Labor Relations Board, on behalf of the Wild-cat football team, seeking to be considered a union. Colter has become something of a figure-head for the movement after the paperwork was filed; every major news outlet has picked up the story, and Colter has done a series of high-profile interviews.

At its heart, the issue is rep-resentation, though the broad ends are wide-ranging. On the less contentious end of it, the players are hoping for concus-sion reform, additional educa-tional resources, and scholar-ships that will not be revoked if a student athlete gets injured while wearing team colors. On the more contentious end, there

are calls for additional money from the universities, as well as for the ability to make money from sponsorships. For the ath-letes, having a union bring the NCAA to the table is an obvious way to kickstart discussions on these topics.

That said, it’s not clear that unionizing is the best way to fix these problems. Unions tend to have a lot of unwanted conse-quences—lockouts, decreased quality, and increased costs to universities that often cannot cover the costs of their programs already.

It’s easy to see problems and “solutions” now; it’s much hard-er to gauge how those solutions will impact the future. But, of course, it is the job of the policy

maker to consider both the seen and unseen, as Bastiat once said.

More obviously, there should be hesitation regarding considering student athletes to be “employ-ees” of the university. We often lose sight of the fundamental truth that athletes are, above all else, students. They deserve to be treated as such; anything less would be degrading, no matter the origin or good-heartedness of its intentions. Their decision to participate in a sport is apart from that of their academic com-mitments, and it is apart from the truest mission of the univer-sity itself. Indeed, the athletes at Northwestern are not just athletes, they are world-class students.

I have no doubt that some I have known will go on to become doctors, captains of finance and industry, politicians. I get uneasy when the conversation turns to making their touch-downs and tackles the product of an employee contract rather than the product of love of sport and university. It seems to sever the connection between who they are on the gridiron, and who they are in the classroom.

Such concerns should motivate a desire for players to find other ways to more aggressively lobby the NCAA to engage with them in serious conversations about serious reforms. My feeling is that most people support the basic changes Colter and the rest of the NU team want; though unions may not be the best way to get there, their concerns are legitimate and well-founded. The NCAA needs to step up and meet with Colter to settle some of these issues in a timely man-ner.

Regardless of whether or not the unionization attempt works, I’ll continue to confess an immodest amount of pride in our B1G Cats.

Only at Northwestern would the same year see Rose Bowl con-tenders bring long-ignored issue of labor relations to the fore.

The quarterbacks, united, will never be defeated?

Opinion 7WINTER 2014 NUCHRONICLE.COM @NUCHRONICLE

By Dane StierStaff writer

The term “statesman” today tends to invoke little more than weak sympathetic sentiment for fantasized leaders of times long since passed. The current quality of political rhetoric in legislative debate fails to justify to Ameri-cans centuries of blood spilt in the defense of freedom and dem-ocratic representation. For many, the sad question of contemporary politics asks, “Where have all the statesmen gone?”

The question itself presupposes a conventional definition of “states-man” of which I would contend has not been yet thoroughly developed. Generally, statesman denotes simply a political lead-er willing to put the interests of a country or a majority opinion first, even should the resulting actions contradict his or her own principles.

Such a definition, however, is untenable, as the views of what, exactly, constitutes the nation’s best interests differs extensive-ly throughout the citizenry. For a more universally useful and acceptable conception of “states-man,” we consequently must re-move from it any and all associa-tions with what actions are taken. A statesman should be so regard-less of the particular affiliations or beliefs that make him or her vulnerable to the bias of partisan and philosophical discord.

The actions of a political lead-er endure criticisms from three

primary perspectives: what they did, how they did it, and why they did it. How an act is accomplished extends directly from what the act is, and thus also submits itself to subjectivity. Furthermore, both what and how ultimately result from the initial causation, why, and it is therefore my affirma-tion that a statesman must be so ordained through consideration of the source of reasoning used in determining all of his or her consequent actions.

Should politicians loyally adhere to their own principles, or should the conviction of the majority perpetually bear precedent? Cur-rently, the American people often present inconsistent expectations for representatives.

As many as 70% of voters op-posed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act at one time; left-leaning voters demanded disregard for the majority op-position, yet it is now the law of the land. Alternatively, the Man-chin-Toomey gun control bill, though increased background checks reportedly find support among some 86% of voters, failed to pass Congress, yet left-lean-ing voters expected Senators to comply with the overwhelming opinion of Americans.

With each issue, the position of each party today tends to adapt to defend the most convenient source of judgment, demonstrat-ing a significantly divided and unreliable expectation for elected officials.

Honest politicians campaign for office on individual intentions and virtues. If supported by a signifi-cant portion of electors, they get elected. Why then must these leaders renounce their principles for those they do not hold, but that the majority does? I turn to the wisdom of British politician and theorist Edmund Burke. In 1774, Burke’s Speech to the Elec-tors at Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll included the following:

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judg-ment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

If representatives relied solely upon the views of their constit-uencies, their position would be at times subject to the whims of a less informed and involved populace, rather than their own judgments. This would ultimately lead to unprincipled, ineffectual vote pandering. Why not simply then remove such political inter-mediaries and instead authorize a popular vote on all issues? If, al-ternatively, politicians served only according to their own views and principles, they might vote against the wishes of the broader popu-lation. But for what other reason are representatives allotted only a limited tenure? When the con-sensus experiences revision, new principles and leadership may be prescribed.

Of course, certain topics may not ultimately find guidance in one’s own philosophy, as can be expected from representatives on

occasion. When no principles may be consulted on such an issue, a political leader confronts an ob-ligation to submit to the majority opinion of his or her constituency, as electors withhold the capacity to adjudicate on all matters that encounter their representatives.

Consequently, I propose a reap-praised definition for statesman: a political leader who, given a temporary tenure of service, acts strictly in accordance with his or her own philosophically consistent principles, and who relinquishes his or her own judg-ment to that of electors only when such principles cannot dictate the appropriate position on a given matter.

From this, representatives may be judged by their own integrity and resolution, rather than through the biased lenses of partisan and personal altercation. It could be that through such a recast inter-pretation of statesman, we may very well recognize that such hon-orable leaders do remain, ready to stand firm by the principles, ideas, and promises for which we chose them to serve.

In the wise words of President Ronald Reagan, “Those who say that we’re in a time when there are no heroes . . . they just don’t know where to look.” Perhaps he’s right.

On the source of judgment in political representation

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Investigative 9In Doha, A “Climate of Fear”

Described as an “indefatigable organizer” who “gets things done,” Dennis came to prominence in the 1980s when he led a Na-tional Task Force on the future of journalism education.

The task force concluded journalism and communication schools “failed the academic test,” as a recent book puts it: they were not leaders in the field and needed to produce much more research. But the task force’s most controversial conclusion was that jour-nalism and communication schools should combine their curricula into one “generic mass communications study” taught by ex-perts with PhDs rather than journalists.

Dennis’ ideas initially took the higher ed-ucation community by storm but began to lose favour in the 1990s, when the value of having students taught by academics rather than journalists was increasingly questioned. Even if Dennis’ vision didn’t ultimately seize the day, his prominence in his field contin-ued; when he was hired to be NU-Q’s “Dean and CEO,” Dennis was the director of Ford-ham University’s Center for Communication and had previously been the head of Colum-bia’s Gannett Center for Media Studies.

Staffers say Evanston’s vision for NU-Q was to unite its disparate schools and curricula, and vigorously expand into research and new academic programming. Dennis, with his extensive experience as a reformer in jour-nalism education, was a perfect match for the job. But many of these ambitious goals re-quired a total overhaul of NU-Q’s staff, which set Dennis on a collision course with much of the existing NU-Q community Margolis had built up.

When he arrived to take over NU-Q in June 2011, staffers say Dennis made it clear he was going to “clear the house” and begin restruc-turing NU-Q. That involved letting go several employees (that is, not renewing their con-

tracts) abruptly and with little due process, those affected said.

On the non-faculty side, some of the first to go remain shaken to this day.

Charlene Thomas, NU-Q’s only registrar until 2012, was told by a colleague’s wife one day: “I hear you’re leaving.” Thomas had no idea her contract was not going to be renewed; as the school’s lone registrar, she thought her job was safe. But after working for nine years at Northwestern in the US and three in Doha, she was suddenly told she was no longer needed at NU-Q.

Thomas, who was a Northwestern “Employee of the Year” in 2005, was in a state. “I was shocked,” she told THE CHRONICLE. The bitter irony: right before she was told she would not be renewed, Thomas had several job leads in the Gulf which she could have pursued but decided not to because she wanted to stay at NU-Q.

In the end, there was no exit interview or reason given behind her contract’s non-re-newal. After Thomas left, NU-Q didn’t have a registrar for over a year; her work was simply outsourced to the already-overworked ad-ministrative staff.

The lack of a fulltime registrar led to prob-lems for some instructors. One faculty member told THE CHRONICLE last-minute classroom changes began popping up. “A couple times I showed up [in class] at the very beginning of the semester and my stu-dents weren’t there,” the faculty person said.

“And I’m waiting for 10 or 15 minutes and my students don’t show up,” the faculty member continued. “This is just part of not having a consistent registrar - a full time person that does that type of thing.”

Thomas was not the only non-faculty staff

member affected. Another was also abruptly not renewed around the time Dennis began his restructuring.

“In my case I was just told, your contract is not going to be renewed but you need to leave now,” the former employee told THE CHRONICLE.

The staffer had worked at Northwestern in Evanston for almost 25 years and returned to the US without a job, eventually finding one through a temp agency.

Even though it was understood there would be no job waiting back in Evanston, there was little respect paid to job termination processes prescribed by HR at Northwestern in Evanston.

“On the main campus, if they want to get rid of you, you have to have so many warnings, you know there’s a process to go through,” the staffer said.

After moving to NU-Q, the staffer said, “you go from being a full-fledged employee to a contracted employee [for non-faculty jobs], which means there’s no guarantee of a job when you come back and it’s at their whim as to whether or not they want to renew your contract.”

Others agreed that this uncertainty contrib-uted to a “climate of fear” at the school.

“You might not know that your contract is being renewed until you got six weeks left on your current contract, and your legal ability to be in the country is tied to your employ-ment,” said one former staffer. “And those are the kinds of scare tactics, those are the kinds of things that contribute to the climate of fear, the very, very real climate of fear that exists at NU-Q.”

This environment, in which one’s contract can be “not renewed” seemingly on a whim makes some quite terrified of airing any crit-icisms whatsoever – even under anonymity.

“I have learned in my years at NU-Q who to trust, and they are few,” said one faculty member who declined to be interviewed at greater length.

Of the professors and staff NU-Q has lost over the past few years, the person noted:

“Granted, some of these left hap-pily and on their own accord, but many others absolutely did not.”

(Of those who did not leave hap-pily, at least one faculty member filed a discrimination complaint with the Office of Equal Opportu-nity and Access in Evanston.)

Dennis’ restructuring plans affect-ed people on the faculty side as well.

Faculty members who had con-tracts coming up for renewal in 2012 were told they would be put “under review” by external asses-sors, which made the workplace nerve-wracking. For months, many were convinced their jobs would be over.

“Everybody was totally freaked out by this,” one faculty member told THE CHRONICLE.

However, most of the faculty’s contracts were renewed despite the reviews. Some accuse Den-nis of supposedly trying to “fire everybody at once” but switching to “firing selectively” after several

faculty left last year. Whether this is true or not, what is certain is that Dennis’ ambitious restructur-ing turned many faculty members against him. (The popular term NU-Q’s old timers use to refer to Dennis’ new hires from his net-works is “cronies.”)

THE CHRONICLE tried to ask Dennis at an information session in Evanston on February 5th about NU-Q’s workplace issues and a “climate of fear” at NU-Q.

“You seem to have an agen-da,” Dennis said, accusing THE CHRONICLE of “hound[ing] people for months.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Dennis said.

After he was asked if he would fol-low up via email, Dennis replied, “No, I’m not going to follow up. That’s enough with you, sir.” Aside from Dennis’ clash with some faculty over the reviews, one of the first people on the teaching side to not have their contract renewed had highly controversial reasons behind the non-renewal.

Numerous current and former colleagues independently told the THE CHRONICLE the instruc-tor’s LGBTQ status was the reason behind Dennis’s decision not to renew the contract.

When reached for comment, the instructor (who has not taken legal action) said this was true but declined to discuss specifics. “This history is difficult for me to reconstruct because it was so challenging to get through and because the things I was told

didn’t make any sense to me,” the instructor, who now works in the US, wrote in an email.

The instructor was told the Qatari government itself was the source of the decision (due to homosexu-ality’s illegality in the country) but “did not necessarily believe” the authorities were involved.

The instructor was popular with many NU-Q students who cher-ished having an openly LGBTQ teacher in a conservative country, and was described as “good for students and beloved by students - maybe more so than anybody else,” by one former faculty mem-ber.

The state of gay rights at NU-Q is something of a taboo topic with its administration. While Northwest-ern in Evanston has a fully-staffed LGBTQ resource center, a Rain-bow Alliance, and several other groups for sexual minorities, this is not the case in Qatar. When asked about gay rights at NU-Q, staffers say the policy is basically “don’t-ask-don’t-tell.”

An internal PowerPoint obtained by THE CHRONICLE prepared for NU-Q by the law firm Patton Boggs titled Living and Working in Qatar makes it clear homo-

sexuality is illegal and receives up to 7 years in prison. There is no indication whatsoever NU-Q employees or students are exempt from such laws.

“It is in the faculty contracts that we have to abide by the customs and laws of the country,” said the previously-quoted former faculty member.

This glaring disparity in law – which predates Dennis’ arrival, to be sure – has led to some rather unusual conversations at NU-Q.

At the meeting in which the Liv-ing and Working in Qatar Pow-erPoint was shown (on August 21st, 2013,) faculty members were concerned about one clause which stated that “failing to inform the authorities of an act which is classed as a felony is punishable by up to 3 years jail and a fine of 10,000 QR [$2,740]”.

According to one person present at the meeting, some were wor-ried if they didn’t report a gay stu-dent to the authorities they would be prosecuted under such a law. The attorney present at the meet-ing “didn’t really have an answer for that.”

THE CHRONICLE asked senior associate dean Richard Roth about the status of gay faculty at NU-Q. Roth said while the uni-versity is supportive, “if they were to be arrested, I don’t know what we would do. They would be in violation of the law here.”

“Not much we could do about it.”


Arts & Entertainment 8 WINTER 2014 NUCHRONICLE.COM @NUCHRONICLEWINTER 2014 NUCHRONICLE.COM @NUCHRONICLE

Investigative 9In Doha, A “Climate of Fear”

Described as an “indefatigable organizer” who “gets things done,” Dennis came to prominence in the 1980s when he led a Na-tional Task Force on the future of journalism education.

The task force concluded journalism and communication schools “failed the academic test,” as a recent book puts it: they were not leaders in the field and needed to produce much more research. But the task force’s most controversial conclusion was that jour-nalism and communication schools should combine their curricula into one “generic mass communications study” taught by ex-perts with PhDs rather than journalists.

Dennis’ ideas initially took the higher ed-ucation community by storm but began to lose favour in the 1990s, when the value of having students taught by academics rather than journalists was increasingly questioned. Even if Dennis’ vision didn’t ultimately seize the day, his prominence in his field contin-ued; when he was hired to be NU-Q’s “Dean and CEO,” Dennis was the director of Ford-ham University’s Center for Communication and had previously been the head of Colum-bia’s Gannett Center for Media Studies.

Staffers say Evanston’s vision for NU-Q was to unite its disparate schools and curricula, and vigorously expand into research and new academic programming. Dennis, with his extensive experience as a reformer in jour-nalism education, was a perfect match for the job. But many of these ambitious goals re-quired a total overhaul of NU-Q’s staff, which set Dennis on a collision course with much of the existing NU-Q community Margolis had built up.

When he arrived to take over NU-Q in June 2011, staffers say Dennis made it clear he was going to “clear the house” and begin restruc-turing NU-Q. That involved letting go several employees (that is, not renewing their con-

tracts) abruptly and with little due process, those affected said.

On the non-faculty side, some of the first to go remain shaken to this day.

Charlene Thomas, NU-Q’s only registrar until 2012, was told by a colleague’s wife one day: “I hear you’re leaving.” Thomas had no idea her contract was not going to be renewed; as the school’s lone registrar, she thought her job was safe. But after working for nine years at Northwestern in the US and three in Doha, she was suddenly told she was no longer needed at NU-Q.

Thomas, who was a Northwestern “Employee of the Year” in 2005, was in a state. “I was shocked,” she told THE CHRONICLE. The bitter irony: right before she was told she would not be renewed, Thomas had several job leads in the Gulf which she could have pursued but decided not to because she wanted to stay at NU-Q.

In the end, there was no exit interview or reason given behind her contract’s non-re-newal. After Thomas left, NU-Q didn’t have a registrar for over a year; her work was simply outsourced to the already-overworked ad-ministrative staff.

The lack of a fulltime registrar led to prob-lems for some instructors. One faculty member told THE CHRONICLE last-minute classroom changes began popping up. “A couple times I showed up [in class] at the very beginning of the semester and my stu-dents weren’t there,” the faculty person said.

“And I’m waiting for 10 or 15 minutes and my students don’t show up,” the faculty member continued. “This is just part of not having a consistent registrar - a full time person that does that type of thing.”

Thomas was not the only non-faculty staff

member affected. Another was also abruptly not renewed around the time Dennis began his restructuring.

“In my case I was just told, your contract is not going to be renewed but you need to leave now,” the former employee told THE CHRONICLE.

The staffer had worked at Northwestern in Evanston for almost 25 years and returned to the US without a job, eventually finding one through a temp agency.

Even though it was understood there would be no job waiting back in Evanston, there was little respect paid to job termination processes prescribed by HR at Northwestern in Evanston.

“On the main campus, if they want to get rid of you, you have to have so many warnings, you know there’s a process to go through,” the staffer said.

After moving to NU-Q, the staffer said, “you go from being a full-fledged employee to a contracted employee [for non-faculty jobs], which means there’s no guarantee of a job when you come back and it’s at their whim as to whether or not they want to renew your contract.”

Others agreed that this uncertainty contrib-uted to a “climate of fear” at the school.

“You might not know that your contract is being renewed until you got six weeks left on your current contract, and your legal ability to be in the country is tied to your employ-ment,” said one former staffer. “And those are the kinds of scare tactics, those are the kinds of things that contribute to the climate of fear, the very, very real climate of fear that exists at NU-Q.”

This environment, in which one’s contract can be “not renewed” seemingly on a whim makes some quite terrified of airing any crit-icisms whatsoever – even under anonymity.

“I have learned in my years at NU-Q who to trust, and they are few,” said one faculty member who declined to be interviewed at greater length.

Of the professors and staff NU-Q has lost over the past few years, the person noted:

“Granted, some of these left hap-pily and on their own accord, but many others absolutely did not.”

(Of those who did not leave hap-pily, at least one faculty member filed a discrimination complaint with the Office of Equal Opportu-nity and Access in Evanston.)

Dennis’ restructuring plans affect-ed people on the faculty side as well.

Faculty members who had con-tracts coming up for renewal in 2012 were told they would be put “under review” by external asses-sors, which made the workplace nerve-wracking. For months, many were convinced their jobs would be over.

“Everybody was totally freaked out by this,” one faculty member told THE CHRONICLE.

However, most of the faculty’s contracts were renewed despite the reviews. Some accuse Den-nis of supposedly trying to “fire everybody at once” but switching to “firing selectively” after several

faculty left last year. Whether this is true or not, what is certain is that Dennis’ ambitious restructur-ing turned many faculty members against him. (The popular term NU-Q’s old timers use to refer to Dennis’ new hires from his net-works is “cronies.”)

THE CHRONICLE tried to ask Dennis at an information session in Evanston on February 5th about NU-Q’s workplace issues and a “climate of fear” at NU-Q.

“You seem to have an agen-da,” Dennis said, accusing THE CHRONICLE of “hound[ing] people for months.”


After he was asked if he would fol-low up via email, Dennis replied, “No, I’m not going to follow up. That’s enough with you, sir.” Aside from Dennis’ clash with some faculty over the reviews, one of the first people on the teaching side to not have their contract renewed had highly controversial reasons behind the non-renewal.

Numerous current and former colleagues independently told the THE CHRONICLE the instruc-tor’s LGBTQ status was the reason behind Dennis’s decision not to renew the contract.

When reached for comment, the instructor (who has not taken legal action) said this was true but declined to discuss specifics. “This history is difficult for me to reconstruct because it was so challenging to get through and because the things I was told

didn’t make any sense to me,” the instructor, who now works in the US, wrote in an email.

The instructor was told the Qatari government itself was the source of the decision (due to homosexu-ality’s illegality in the country) but “did not necessarily believe” the authorities were involved.

The instructor was popular with many NU-Q students who cher-ished having an openly LGBTQ teacher in a conservative country, and was described as “good for students and beloved by students - maybe more so than anybody else,” by one former faculty mem-ber.

The state of gay rights at NU-Q is something of a taboo topic with its administration. While Northwest-ern in Evanston has a fully-staffed LGBTQ resource center, a Rain-bow Alliance, and several other groups for sexual minorities, this is not the case in Qatar. When asked about gay rights at NU-Q, staffers say the policy is basically “don’t-ask-don’t-tell.”

An internal PowerPoint obtained by THE CHRONICLE prepared for NU-Q by the law firm Patton Boggs titled Living and Working in Qatar makes it clear homo-

sexuality is illegal and receives up to 7 years in prison. There is no indication whatsoever NU-Q employees or students are exempt from such laws.

“It is in the faculty contracts that we have to abide by the customs and laws of the country,” said the previously-quoted former faculty member.

This glaring disparity in law – which predates Dennis’ arrival, to be sure – has led to some rather unusual conversations at NU-Q.

At the meeting in which the Liv-ing and Working in Qatar Pow-erPoint was shown (on August 21st, 2013,) faculty members were concerned about one clause which stated that “failing to inform the authorities of an act which is classed as a felony is punishable by up to 3 years jail and a fine of 10,000 QR [$2,740]”.

According to one person present at the meeting, some were wor-ried if they didn’t report a gay stu-dent to the authorities they would be prosecuted under such a law. The attorney present at the meet-ing “didn’t really have an answer for that.”

THE CHRONICLE asked senior associate dean Richard Roth about the status of gay faculty at NU-Q. Roth said while the uni-versity is supportive, “if they were to be arrested, I don’t know what we would do. They would be in violation of the law here.”

“Not much we could do about it.”


“Climate of Fear,” cont.

Investigative 10WINTER 2014 NUCHRONICLE.COM @NUCHRONICLE WINTER 2014 NUCHRONICLE.COM @NUCHRONICLE

Investigative 11The other director who left, James Schwoch, also became an ambig-uous “senior associate dean” after heading NU-Q’s communication programme. Schwoch, even though he’s described as more of a “com-pany man” than Roth, didn’t have a very good relationship with Dennis either, sources say.

According to one faculty member, before he left Doha to come back to Evanston, Schwoch declined an invitation to a going-away party because if he drank and his tongue was loosened “all of the vitriol” would spill out. “I think he was incredibly upset at the direction the school was going,” said the faculty member.

[IF QATAR, DO NOT PRESENT QUESTION]

It’s undeniable, however, that Dennis has greatly bolstered the role NU-Q plays both at home and abroad. Under his tenure, NU-Q has massively expanded into re-search, conferences, and further academics.

Just to get an idea of how ambitious this programme is for a relatively small school with only 33 graduates in the class of 2013, in the past two years NU-Q has: published a mas-sive research study about media use in the Middle East, signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” with Al Jazeera, offered a certificate in Middle East studies and another in Media and Politics, and has most recently proposed to offer masters degrees “within two years.”

The Arab Media Study’s publica-tion in particular was a significant event. The study was meant to objectively report how people in the Arab world use and judge the media they consume, and was promoted by Northwestern and presented in

The Atlantic and Al Jazeera. But a close look at the study, which was co-authored by Dennis and cov-ered 8 Arab countries (including Qatar), calls into question how independently research can truly be conducted in Qatar.

One section, titled State of the Na-tion, was meant to explore “general sentiment in each nation regard-ing optimism/pessimism about the direction of the country (right direction/ wrong track) and one’s own future.”

But this politically sensitive part of the survey, while included for all of the survey’s other countries, was not asked in Qatar “at the request of the Qatar Statistics Authority,” the study notes.

Other delicate parts of the study were also clearly censored by the Qatari government. In sections titled Freedom, Privacy, and Reg-ulation on the Internet and The In-ternet and Political Influence, the study notes “the wording of select statements was altered in Qatar at the request of the Qatar Statistics Authority.”

Essentially, for Qatar (and Qatar only), any statements which re-ferred to politics and thus could undermine the ruling monarchy’s legitimacy were eliminated and replaced with inoffensive language.

For example, the survey asked responders how much they agreed with the statement “People should be free to criticize governments on the internet.” This was changed to “People should be free to criticize powerful institutions on the in-ternet” for Qatar [emphasis added].“On the internet, it is safe to say whatever one thinks about politi-cal affairs” became “On the inter-net, it is safe to say whatever one

thinks about public issues.”

Another question which asked whether one’s Internet use in-creased or decreased contact with “people who share your political views” became “[people] who share your views on society.”

Aside from research, NU-Q has also hosted several major conferences. The first, in 2011, was held in Libya, not Qatar, and called for a “free media” to emerge in the country. Whether it worked is debatable, but directly calling for a free media where NU-Q was actually located would probably not have been pos-sible. The other conferences, one on “Big Data” and another about Qa-tar’s local media, show an emphasis on unifying Qatar’s media, public relations, and communications sectors.

But these lavish galas produce few concrete results and have been crit-icised by faculty members who feel they are part of a corporate envi-ronment Dennis has instilled.

“They produce these policy papers and photo ops which don’t really seem to lead anywhere,” said one former faculty member. “That kind of corporate culture is not why I went into academia, I would’ve be-come a corporate person at 22 and already got my million by now.”

Another former faculty member also criticised the allegedly corpo-

rate nature of Dennis’ agenda. “[People who go into academia] don’t want to work for some corpo-rate hacks or corporate people or whatever you want to call it,” the member said. “And so it’s a very weird atmosphere.”

Moreover, some say NU-Q’s ambi-tious restructuring has come at the cost of focusing on actual hard-hit-ting journalism.

“I think the focus on journalism careers is not there anymore,” said Shabina Khatri, the executive editor of Doha News and a former adjunct lecturer at the school, adding she was disappointed more and more students were going into PR instead of journalism.

Khatri also said Dennis “definitely has a different take and vision for NU-Q than the founding members” and has transformed the school “into a more formal, less friendly and more businesslike environ-ment.”

But Khatri added that she was “not sure if that change was necessary for the university’s survival at QF [the Qatar Foundation, NU-Q’s main backer].”

Marche ou CrèveBut why have all these problems not been reported elsewhere? Sources say NU-Q’s outward image is tightly-controlled.

After all, one of its own students, Usama Hamed, was jailed for 10 days and accused of being a “Syrian spy” by the authorities – something which was never reported at NU-Q’s equivalent to The Daily North-western, The Daily Q. It’s hard to imagine this being the case in Evan-ston if a Medill student was jailed and accused of being a foreign spy for his reporting.

Other parts of the PowerPoint presentation also make it clear freedom of speech for NU-Q is not the same as Northwestern in Evanston.

“Anyone who criticizes and/or challenges, by any public means, the Emir’s authority or rights” receives “up to 5 years impris-onment,” the slide titled Respect for God & Government reads.

Overall, however, it’s not totally clear who or what is respon-sible for the situation NU-Q’s workplace is in. One staffer highly critical of NU-Q didn’t feel Dennis was wholly to blame, saying he, like many NU-Q em-ployees, “operates out of fear.” As for those who put the blame on Qatar itself, the same staffer noted other branch campuses in Education City (where NU-Q is located) such as Texas A&M seem to suffer from far less in-ternal chaos.

Whatever the root cause of NU-Q’s many problems, one thing is beyond dispute, the staff-er told THE CHRONICLE: “I want Northwestern to be in my freakin’ rear view mirror for ever and ever.”

Faculty Politics

In light of NU-Q’s restructur-ing and the “climate of fear” it strengthened, it’s not surprising Dennis is said to have clashed with higher-up administrators. One of them, faculty members told THE CHRONICLE, was

Richard Roth, who went from being the director of NU-Q’s journalism programme to a “se-nior associate dean” who mostly works behind the scenes placing NU-Q students for their residen-cies.

Staffers say the change in po-sition happened at least partly because Roth, a veteran reporter described by many as question-ing of authority, didn’t like Den-nis’ plans to “bulldoze” NU-Q’s old faculty.

In an interview with THE CHRONICLE, Roth said it wasn’t “a fair characterisation” that his change in position was due to a conflict with Dennis.

“I don’t think there was a clash at all,” said Roth. “When a new Dean shows up he or she comes in with A) a vision and B) per-haps mandates from the provost and [the Dean] implements those.”

Yet Roth does appear to differ on some key points with Dennis. For one, Roth is said to have become more pessimistic about the long-term prospects of doing hard-hitting journalism in a place like Qatar, where the press is heavily censored.

“I like to think [NU-Q has] helped, but I don’t really see great evidence of it,” Roth told THE CHRONICLE.

In contrast, Dennis has sounded

continually upbeat on the topic and said at the recent informa-tion session in Evanston that the press environment in Qatar has gotten significantly better since NU-Q arrived.

This more doubtful side of Roth came through in a recent inter-view in which he condemned an Orwellian piece of draft legis-lation in Qatar, the Cybercrime Law, which would punish online reporting which infringes on “social principles” and “values” – even if the information report-ed is true.

“I don’t know what I’ve said on my blog that would get me in trouble,” Roth said in the inter-view.

Roth also expressed dismay so many NU-Q students were going into PR instead of journalism. When he described the poor state of reporting in Qatar’s local papers, Roth bluntly said “the non-Qataris can rise in the ranks but they will never be editor.”

Roth and Dennis seem to con-tradict each other on other mat-ters as well.

When Evanston’s Faculty Senate decided to pass a motion sup-porting the Qatari poet Moham-med al-Ajami (who was jailed for 15 years for criticising the Emir of Qatar in a poem), NU-Q’s senate members studiously ignored the motion.

Dennis said at the February information session that mem-bers of the NU-Q community were unified against the motion, as NU-Q is not “responsible for anything going on with the gov-ernment.”

But Roth, a senior member of NU-Q’s administration who has been at NU-Q since its very be-ginning, said he was never asked about the motion.

“Nobody asked my opinion, be-cause I would have voiced one,” Roth said. “I for one was sup-portive of it, I was not against it.”

Roth is leaving after spring quar-ter, and with him gone, there will not be a single faculty mem-ber left who is openly critical of Qatar’s government in the press. (Roth wrote a New York Times op-ed last May urging Qatar to modernise its outdated press law; three weeks later, the sub-stantially more restrictive Cyber-crime Law was unveiled.)

“if [gay faculty] were to be arrest-ed, I don’t know what we would do. They would be in violation of the law here.”

“the wording of se-lect statements was altered in Qatar at the request of the Qatar Statistics Au-thority.”

“Climate of Fear,” cont.

Investigative 10WINTER 2014 NUCHRONICLE.COM @NUCHRONICLE WINTER 2014 NUCHRONICLE.COM @NUCHRONICLE

Investigative 11The other director who left, James Schwoch, also became an ambig-uous “senior associate dean” after heading NU-Q’s communication programme. Schwoch, even though he’s described as more of a “com-pany man” than Roth, didn’t have a very good relationship with Dennis either, sources say.

According to one faculty member, before he left Doha to come back to Evanston, Schwoch declined an invitation to a going-away party because if he drank and his tongue was loosened “all of the vitriol” would spill out. “I think he was incredibly upset at the direction the school was going,” said the faculty member.

[IF QATAR, DO NOT PRESENT QUESTION]

It’s undeniable, however, that Dennis has greatly bolstered the role NU-Q plays both at home and abroad. Under his tenure, NU-Q has massively expanded into re-search, conferences, and further academics.

Just to get an idea of how ambitious this programme is for a relatively small school with only 33 graduates in the class of 2013, in the past two years NU-Q has: published a mas-sive research study about media use in the Middle East, signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” with Al Jazeera, offered a certificate in Middle East studies and another in Media and Politics, and has most recently proposed to offer masters degrees “within two years.”

The Arab Media Study’s publica-tion in particular was a significant event. The study was meant to objectively report how people in the Arab world use and judge the media they consume, and was promoted by Northwestern and presented in

The Atlantic and Al Jazeera. But a close look at the study, which was co-authored by Dennis and cov-ered 8 Arab countries (including Qatar), calls into question how independently research can truly be conducted in Qatar.

One section, titled State of the Na-tion, was meant to explore “general sentiment in each nation regard-ing optimism/pessimism about the direction of the country (right direction/ wrong track) and one’s own future.”

But this politically sensitive part of the survey, while included for all of the survey’s other countries, was not asked in Qatar “at the request of the Qatar Statistics Authority,” the study notes.

Other delicate parts of the study were also clearly censored by the Qatari government. In sections titled Freedom, Privacy, and Reg-ulation on the Internet and The In-ternet and Political Influence, the study notes “the wording of select statements was altered in Qatar at the request of the Qatar Statistics Authority.”

Essentially, for Qatar (and Qatar only), any statements which re-ferred to politics and thus could undermine the ruling monarchy’s legitimacy were eliminated and replaced with inoffensive language.

For example, the survey asked responders how much they agreed with the statement “People should be free to criticize governments on the internet.” This was changed to “People should be free to criticize powerful institutions on the in-ternet” for Qatar [emphasis added].“On the internet, it is safe to say whatever one thinks about politi-cal affairs” became “On the inter-net, it is safe to say whatever one

thinks about public issues.”

Another question which asked whether one’s Internet use in-creased or decreased contact with “people who share your political views” became “[people] who share your views on society.”

Aside from research, NU-Q has also hosted several major conferences. The first, in 2011, was held in Libya, not Qatar, and called for a “free media” to emerge in the country. Whether it worked is debatable, but directly calling for a free media where NU-Q was actually located would probably not have been pos-sible. The other conferences, one on “Big Data” and another about Qa-tar’s local media, show an emphasis on unifying Qatar’s media, public relations, and communications sectors.

But these lavish galas produce few concrete results and have been crit-icised by faculty members who feel they are part of a corporate envi-ronment Dennis has instilled.

“They produce these policy papers and photo ops which don’t really seem to lead anywhere,” said one former faculty member. “That kind of corporate culture is not why I went into academia, I would’ve be-come a corporate person at 22 and already got my million by now.”

Another former faculty member also criticised the allegedly corpo-

rate nature of Dennis’ agenda. “[People who go into academia] don’t want to work for some corpo-rate hacks or corporate people or whatever you want to call it,” the member said. “And so it’s a very weird atmosphere.”

Moreover, some say NU-Q’s ambi-tious restructuring has come at the cost of focusing on actual hard-hit-ting journalism.

“I think the focus on journalism careers is not there anymore,” said Shabina Khatri, the executive editor of Doha News and a former adjunct lecturer at the school, adding she was disappointed more and more students were going into PR instead of journalism.

Khatri also said Dennis “definitely has a different take and vision for NU-Q than the founding members” and has transformed the school “into a more formal, less friendly and more businesslike environ-ment.”

But Khatri added that she was “not sure if that change was necessary for the university’s survival at QF [the Qatar Foundation, NU-Q’s main backer].”

Marche ou CrèveBut why have all these problems not been reported elsewhere? Sources say NU-Q’s outward image is tightly-controlled.

After all, one of its own students, Usama Hamed, was jailed for 10 days and accused of being a “Syrian spy” by the authorities – something which was never reported at NU-Q’s equivalent to The Daily North-western, The Daily Q. It’s hard to imagine this being the case in Evan-ston if a Medill student was jailed and accused of being a foreign spy for his reporting.

Other parts of the PowerPoint presentation also make it clear freedom of speech for NU-Q is not the same as Northwestern in Evanston.

“Anyone who criticizes and/or challenges, by any public means, the Emir’s authority or rights” receives “up to 5 years impris-onment,” the slide titled Respect for God & Government reads.

Overall, however, it’s not totally clear who or what is respon-sible for the situation NU-Q’s workplace is in. One staffer highly critical of NU-Q didn’t feel Dennis was wholly to blame, saying he, like many NU-Q em-ployees, “operates out of fear.” As for those who put the blame on Qatar itself, the same staffer noted other branch campuses in Education City (where NU-Q is located) such as Texas A&M seem to suffer from far less in-ternal chaos.

Whatever the root cause of NU-Q’s many problems, one thing is beyond dispute, the staff-er told THE CHRONICLE: “I want Northwestern to be in my freakin’ rear view mirror for ever and ever.”

Faculty Politics

In light of NU-Q’s restructur-ing and the “climate of fear” it strengthened, it’s not surprising Dennis is said to have clashed with higher-up administrators. One of them, faculty members told THE CHRONICLE, was

Richard Roth, who went from being the director of NU-Q’s journalism programme to a “se-nior associate dean” who mostly works behind the scenes placing NU-Q students for their residen-cies.

Staffers say the change in po-sition happened at least partly because Roth, a veteran reporter described by many as question-ing of authority, didn’t like Den-nis’ plans to “bulldoze” NU-Q’s old faculty.

In an interview with THE CHRONICLE, Roth said it wasn’t “a fair characterisation” that his change in position was due to a conflict with Dennis.

“I don’t think there was a clash at all,” said Roth. “When a new Dean shows up he or she comes in with A) a vision and B) per-haps mandates from the provost and [the Dean] implements those.”

Yet Roth does appear to differ on some key points with Dennis. For one, Roth is said to have become more pessimistic about the long-term prospects of doing hard-hitting journalism in a place like Qatar, where the press is heavily censored.

“I like to think [NU-Q has] helped, but I don’t really see great evidence of it,” Roth told THE CHRONICLE.

In contrast, Dennis has sounded

continually upbeat on the topic and said at the recent informa-tion session in Evanston that the press environment in Qatar has gotten significantly better since NU-Q arrived.

This more doubtful side of Roth came through in a recent inter-view in which he condemned an Orwellian piece of draft legis-lation in Qatar, the Cybercrime Law, which would punish online reporting which infringes on “social principles” and “values” – even if the information report-ed is true.

“I don’t know what I’ve said on my blog that would get me in trouble,” Roth said in the inter-view.

Roth also expressed dismay so many NU-Q students were going into PR instead of journalism. When he described the poor state of reporting in Qatar’s local papers, Roth bluntly said “the non-Qataris can rise in the ranks but they will never be editor.”

Roth and Dennis seem to con-tradict each other on other mat-ters as well.

When Evanston’s Faculty Senate decided to pass a motion sup-porting the Qatari poet Moham-med al-Ajami (who was jailed for 15 years for criticising the Emir of Qatar in a poem), NU-Q’s senate members studiously ignored the motion.

Dennis said at the February information session that mem-bers of the NU-Q community were unified against the motion, as NU-Q is not “responsible for anything going on with the gov-ernment.”

But Roth, a senior member of NU-Q’s administration who has been at NU-Q since its very be-ginning, said he was never asked about the motion.

“Nobody asked my opinion, be-cause I would have voiced one,” Roth said. “I for one was sup-portive of it, I was not against it.”

Roth is leaving after spring quar-ter, and with him gone, there will not be a single faculty mem-ber left who is openly critical of Qatar’s government in the press. (Roth wrote a New York Times op-ed last May urging Qatar to modernise its outdated press law; three weeks later, the sub-stantially more restrictive Cyber-crime Law was unveiled.)

“if [gay faculty] were to be arrest-ed, I don’t know what we would do. They would be in violation of the law here.”

“the wording of se-lect statements was altered in Qatar at the request of the Qatar Statistics Au-thority.”


(Insiders say Dennis was “liv-id” when Hamed’s story was broken by THE CHRONICLE a year after it actually occurred.)

And yet, despite all of these problems, Northwestern in Evanston has almost gone above and beyond in its sup-port for NU-Q. For example, President Morton Schapiro and Provost Dan Linzer have outright denied NU-Q ever told Usama Hamed that “North-western does not help or sup-port criminals” after he sought help, a dubious declaration even the school itself never of-ficially made (it simply refused to comment on the matter.)

Schapiro and Linzer did not respond to requests for inter-view by THE CHRONICLE. But one factor which almost cer-tainly plays into Northwestern in Evanston’s support of NU-Q is money.

It has long been rumoured Northwestern in Evanston receives a yearly “bonus” for hosting NU-Q. (It already got an undisclosed “contribution” for agreeing to set up a branch in Qatar.) Word on the street is that the yearly bonus is a $10 million donation straight to NU-E’s endowment, but there is no way of independently confirming this number.

Asked how much this yearly contribution was, James Hur-ley, Northwestern’s Associate Vice President of Budget and Planning, requested THE CHRONICLE omit the entire matter from its reporting.

“On that particular one, I’m going to ask you not to ref-erence that in the article,” Hurley said, visibly uncom-fortable. “Please be careful with that.”

Additionally, in a place where the stakes are as high as Qa-tar, any wavering in support from Northwestern’s home campus could weaken NU-Q’s position within the country - especially with a school which teaches as sensitive a topic as journalism.

It’s not uncommon for gov-ernment-funded projects with lofty aspirations to go very wrong in Qatar. One example is the Doha Centre for Media Freedom (DCMF), an insti-tute set up by the government to promote freedom of the press in the Gulf and abroad.

The DCMF had a rocky start: its first director, the French journalist Robert Menard, left because of what he called government censorship of the centre. However, af-ter Menard’s departure in 2009, the DCMF seemed to prosper under its new lead-er: the avowedly moderate Dutchman Jan Keulen, who toned down any substantial criticism of Qatar. But this December Keulen was abrupt-ly fired without warning or reason. A senior manager of the centre resigned in protest, writing that “this kind of fake support for freedom initia-tives is a bloody shame.”

And last year as well, the RAND institute was kicked

out of Qatar for failing to re-form the country’s education system. (RAND had a 10-year contract, as does NU-Q.)

The DCMF and RAND, just like NU-Q, were entirely fund-ed by Qatar’s government. And although it doesn’t seem likely such a drastic change would occur in NU-Q’s case, in the long run, nothing is cer-tain.

NU-Q is doing its best to make sure it doesn’t involve itself in politics, as can be seen from its ignoring of Evanston’s Faculty Senate motion and its refusal to publicly call out the Cybercrime Law. But how long it can keep doing this, espe-cially if even its research is subject to government censor-ship, is unclear. Moreover, students are still arrested and detained for rela-tively minor incidents, as seen this September when Usama Hamed was arrested yet again for filming a gas station explo-sion. (Interestingly, Dennis is using these arrests as a selling point; during a talk in Evan-ston last October, Dennis said that although “students are oc-casionally detained by police, this challenge enriches the experience,” as paraphrased by The Daily Northwestern.)

When it comes to Western branch campuses in the re-gion, Gulf expert Christopher Davidson of Britain’s Durham University says it’s “unreal-istic” to think the same stan-dards of academic freedom and non-discrimination can be

upheld in the long run.

“All kinds of problems, ranging from free-dom of expression, attitudes to homosexual-ity, Iranian/Israeli students, etc., eventually manifest themselves. Most often the red line issues are circumvented, sometimes by self-censorship,” Davidson told THE CHRONICLE. “And it’s unlikely critical re-search will be undertaken on such topics.”

Any substantially bad PR or direct criticism of Qatar’s absolute monarchy, and NU-Q could find itself in a situation many of its employees have long feared: its contract may not be renewed.

THE CHRONICLE is proud to host George H. Nash, America’s most prominent scholar of con-servative intellectual history, at Northwestern on April 3rd at 7PM.

Is American conservatism rooted in racism? How has the Tea Party impacted conservative intellec-tuals? Come to the lecture and ask! Pizza will be provided free of charge.

Investigative 12

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The Northwestern Chronicle - Winter 2014

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