Correction appended
Palm trees and highs above eighty degrees in November are pipe dreams for Evanstonians. But in less than a year, a few new full-time Northwestern students will be studying nine time zones away from lake-shore winds.
Next fall Medill and the School of Communication will open a branch campus in Education City, an academic enclave outside Qatar’s capital, Doha. The roughly 40 initial students — mostly Qataris — will enroll in Northwestern’s first undergraduate program outside Evanston. They will meet the same admission requirements and will receive the same degrees as their counterparts here, but they will do so 7,000 miles away from the Arch.
Qatar juts out like a tiny wart on the southeastern side of Saudi Arabia. It’s less than one-tenth the size of Illinois and has about one-third the population of Chicago. Its natural resources happen to be oil and natural gas, so its leaders happen to be very rich. The head of state, Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani is worth about a billion dollars.
The emir employed some of this wealth to create the Qatar Foundation in 1995 to encourage students to reach their potential in the name of national improvement. The nonprofit organization, managed by the emir’s wife, funds Education City and will pay the tuition of Qataris attending the Northwestern program. It also already hosts five other American universities: Virginia Commonwealth, Cornell, Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon and Georgetown.
Art of the State, State-of-the-Art
Medill freshman Hannah Fraser-Chanpong, who spent her last two years of high school in Qatar, says that Education City’s planners pride themselves on being the “best of the best.”
The architect of the Mito Tower and the Barcelona Olympics main sports hall designed the campus. The plans include the world’s first residence halls that will be U.S. Green Building Council Platinum Certified, according to the Qatar Foundation’s director of housing and residence life, Kevin Konecny. One environmental feature of the building is that it will recycle graywater (wastewater) from sinks and showers to water plants.
The Education City bubble
While Northwestern students rule the roost in Evanston, in Education City NU will share learning and living spaces with the other universities. Northwestern will mainly teach journalism and communications courses. However, communications majors with a passion for international relations can take a course at Georgetown’s renowned School of Foreign Service. For Medill students to fulfill their degree requirements, they’ll have to register for courses with the other schools.
Not your average frat scene
That American college staple — alcohol — is not allowed in Education City, Konecny says. (Islam forbids alcohol.) An equivalent to a community assistant supervises students in dormitories, although Medill Associate Dean Richard Roth said that most NU students will live at home.
“This is a culture that is very much about family,” he said. “I don’t expect the library to be open after five o’clock.”
Alcohol is available in restaurants and hotels in Doha, but “it’s not part of their cultural context,” Konecny said.
Islam certainly remains a visible part of that context. The Muslim call to prayer reverberates among the buildings five times a day. Most Qataris wear national dress: a long white shirt and a headdress for men, and a black headscarf and dress combination for women.
Gender roles and public intimacy also play a quieter role in Qatar than they do in the U.S. “Males and females are separated,” Roth said. “You won’t see them walking hand-in-hand. In fact it’s frowned upon.” The British Embassy warns that Qatar bans homosexual behavior and that all public displays of affection can provoke arrest.
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Fraser-Chanpong says she never felt uncomfortable as a foreigner. Women aren’t looked down upon for avoiding more conservative dress, she said.
Qatar’s cosmopolitan nature might be the source of this egalitarianism. Qataris comprise only about a quarter of the population. Indians and Pakistanis make up 36 percent of the population, according to the latest CIA data.
American comforts also seem welcome. Thanks to satellite television, students can watch NU alumni such as Stephen Colbert and Zach Braff, according to Susan Dun, the assistant dean for advising and student affairs at the School of Communication. Burger King and McDonald’s deliver to students, says Konecny.
Roth said he went to a Doha mall about the size of two city blocks. In the center there’s an ice rink. A moat runs through the whole mall, and gondoliers take people around.
There were thousands of people there, he said, but the atmosphere was surprisingly calm. He didn’t hear the noise and bustle he was accustomed to in American malls.
People there “walk quietly,” he said.
Correction – November 26, 2007: The original version of this article incorrectly attributed the description of the emir’s image in public to Kevin Konecny. The sentence now correctly attributes the description to Robert Baxter, a Qatar Foundation spokesman. North by Northwestern regrets the error.