"Authoritarians in the Academy": Satellite Campuses and the Perils of Local Law

There are many ways that universities interact with the wider world, whether by coordinating study abroad programs or welcoming students from dozens of countries onto their campuses. But one of the most complex ties universities form is in their satellite campuses, in which they put down roots in other nations, usually in close coordination with local government officials.

These campuses have created the potential for a monumental clash between American-style academic freedom commitments and restrictive foreign legal systems. In some cases, that potential has borne out. When put to the test by local authorities, universities' promises to import their speech commitments overseas have been found wanting.

In a just-released Aug. 5 interview with Northwestern's outgoing president Michael Schill, the House Committee on Education and Workforce asked Schill about Northwestern's campus in Qatar. His answers cut directly to the heart of the disconnect between how universities both commit to abiding by local law and also offering the same speech protections as their home campuses.

Q Does Northwestern Qatar operate in accordance with all Qatari laws?

A I believe it has to.

Q This includes Qatari censorship laws, correct?

A I don't—so I—I don't know the answer to that as a legal matter. I believe that we have Qatar, the university—NU-Q has the same academic freedom and free speech that our domestic campus has in the United States, that we have in Evanston.

Schill also said he had "no idea" whether Qatari officials would allow Northwestern community members to criticize the government.

In today's guest post for my book Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech, I share an excerpt detailing how we already know Northwestern's values clash with local law—and who wins out:

Excerpt:

In Education City, an academic initiative spearheaded and infused with billions of dollars by the state-linked Qatar Foundation, a group of universities started setting up shop around the early 2000s. In the years since American institutions expanded into Qatar, critics have challenged the wisdom of deepening educational ties in a country with immense wealth, but deeply impoverished political and civil rights. Do the financial benefits of expansion into the Gulf states outweigh the associated limits on free expression?

These concerns have been justified numerous times. A 2020 incident, where a campus event clashed with legal and social attitudes about homosexuality in the country, offers useful insight into these tensions. That February, NU-Q was set to host an event on media revolutions in the Middle East, with Lebanese indie rock band Mashrou' Leila, whose lead singer is gay, taking part. In Qatar, sexual activity among same-sex individuals was then, and still is, punishable with prison time. News of the event had provoked cancellation demands on social media, with complaints that NU-Q was denigrating local law and culture.

The demands were met. Northwestern's director of media relations asserted that both the campus and the band mutually agreed to cancel the event "out of abundance of caution due to several factors, including safety concerns for the band and our community." Instead, the event was scheduled to take place at Northwestern's home base in Illinois. It was troubling that, as Northwestern alleged, safety concerns necessitated the event's cancellation, but at least the university sought an alternate venue for the event to continue. A change of venue is better than a total cancellation. End of story, right?

Not according to the Qatar Foundation, a campus partner and Education City leader, which released a statement completely undercutting Northwestern's claims about its decision-making. "We place the utmost importance on the safety of our community and currently do not have any safety or security concerns," a spokesperson told media. "We also place the very highest value on academic freedom and the open exchange of knowledge, ideas and points of view in the context of Qatari laws as well as the country's cultural and social customs. This particular event was canceled due to the fact that it patently did not correlate with this context."

So, rather than undefined security threats, the Qatar Foundation made clear why Mashrou' Leila was unwelcome at NU-Q: Qatar's laws and social customs. In 2022, Northwestern's claims were challenged yet again—this time by Craig LaMay, who was dean of the Qatar campus at the time of the Mashrou' Leila cancellation. LaMay asserted that the Qatar Foundation directly ordered him to shut down the event because of the lead singer's sexuality.

It is now difficult to avoid the conclusion that Northwestern not only canceled an event because of a participant's identity, but then openly lied about why the event was canceled, and that its state-affiliated partner in Qatar ordered the cancellation.

At the time, I wrote that this incident flew in the face of NU-Q's promise to protect the "freedom to communicate, assemble and peaceably demonstrate" and the "freedom to join organizations, to speak freely, and to exercise one's civil rights as long as the student does not claim to represent the institution." It was quite clear that there were unwritten limits to that freedom.

Those limits did not escape the notice of Northwestern's faculty. In 2021, the faculty senate passed a resolution to its handbook's academic freedom policy, one that had been in the making even before the dustup the year prior. The new policy, applicable to all Northwestern campuses, abandoned the phrase "to the extent that applicable laws allow," replacing it with: "While academic freedom essentially coexists with established legal frameworks, on rare occasion the two may be in conflict."

While researching for this book in 2022, I found that in the two years since the incident, NU-Q's previous student rights commitment, now only accessible via internet archive tools, had changed. New policies were posted and appeared, to my eyes, weaker. Now the policies stated that "students will be free from censorship in the publication and dissemination of their views as long as these are not represented as the views of Northwestern University and do not violate any University policies" and have "freedom of research, of legitimate classroom discussion, and of the advocacy of alternative opinions to those presented in the classroom." The new promises on student rights emphasize the freedom for "legitimate" classroom discussion over the freedom to assemble and demonstrate. These may look like subtle changes, but they suggest where American and branch campuses diverge on important speech protections: What a student could write in an exam paper or suggest in a class discussion might not be as freely stated in the public quad. Negotiated protections on paper only go so far.

[Excerpted from Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech by Sarah McLaughlin. Copyright 2025. Published with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press.]

Check back in tomorrow, when I will take a closer look at the sudden shift in Hong Kong's higher education, the rapid censorship brought on by the passage of the national security law in the city, and what it meant for global freedom more broadly.

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