Georgetown U’s Qatar Campus to Host Hamas Member for Talk on ‘Reimagining Palestine’

‘Liberal arts schools face particular challenges in settings where freedom of thought and association is restricted.’

By Corey Walker, The Algemeiner

The Qatar campus of Georgetown University has invited a senior member of the Hamas terrorist organization to a campus conference, according to reports.

Georgetown University in Qatar will host the “Reimagining Palestine” conference from Sept. 20-22. The event will “engage scholars, experts, and the public in timely and relevant dialogues on globally significant issues,” according to a description of the gathering.

“Some of the world’s leading academics and practitioners will gather for a thought-provoking exploration of such pressing, forward-looking questions as the future of Gaza and how to make it livable again, to pathways toward a viable Palestinian political future, and the regional implications of the current moment,” the university’s website reads. “This conference aims to advance academic discourse on Palestine, meaningfully engaging participants in dialogue that challenges the status quo, and envisions new possibilities for justice and peace.”

Wadah Khanfar is set to speak at the conference. According to the Raya Media Network, a Palestinian outlet, Khanfar “was active in the Hamas movement and was one of its most prominent leaders in the movement’s office in Sudan.”

“Wadah Khanfar is considered one of the senior political leaders of the Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas],” the Raya Media Network previously reported. “He held the position of head of Hamas’s Political Office for [South and North Africa] in the South African city of Johannesburg, where he operated under the name ‘The African Middle East Center for Studies and Research.’”

Mohamed Fahmy, a former bureau chief for the Qatar-based news network Al Jazeera, in 2015 wrote that Khanfar was “described on the Muslim Brotherhood’s own website in 2007 as having been ‘one of the most prominent leaders in the Hamas Office in Sudan.’”

Khanfar also gave an eulogy for prominent Muslim Brotherhood leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi after his death in 2022. Members of Hamas were reportedly present for the funeral service as well.

Georgetown University in Qatar also hosted Khanfar in March of this year for a conference titled “On Palestine.” Mehdi Hasan, a progressive journalist and prominent critic of Israel, interviewed Khanfar.

In the months following Oct. 7, the campus has hosted a variety of seemingly anti-Israel events. In February, the school hosted pro-Palestinian historian Tareq Baconi for an event titled “Israel’s War on Palestinians: Gaza as Epicenter.” That same month, the university hosted Daniel Brumberg, an associate professor in government at the university’s US campus, for a lecture titled “Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood and Iran’s Axis of Resistance Narrative.” Al-Aqsa Flood is Hamas’s name for its Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, where the Palestinian terrorist group massacred 1,200 people and kidnapped at least 250 hostages.

The presence of American universities in Qatar has long been controversial, with critics pointing out that the Qatari government has helped fund Hamas. Qatar also hosts several high-ranking Hamas leaders, who often live in luxury outside of Gaza. Some critics argue that the Islamic country severely curtails academic freedom of American universities.

“Liberal arts schools face particular challenges in settings where freedom of thought and association is restricted,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute, wrote in 2015. “With the reassertion of authoritarian control after the Arab Spring, branch campuses may struggle to balance the surge of interest in the region against local (and funder) sensitivities.”

Alongside Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon University, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Northwestern University operate campuses in the Middle Eastern country. Texas A&M announced plans to shutter its Qatar campus in February.

Georgetown’s main campus in Washington, DC has been rocked by anti-Israel protests in the months following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Students have accused the Jewish state of committing a “genocide” and “apartheid” and even rallied across campus to demand the university cut all financial ties to Israel.