The Gulf Is Right Here, Why Aren’t We Talking About It?

When I was on the main campus in the Fall Semester of 2023, the Qatari ambassador to the U.S. addressed my class on Iran and the Gulf Arab states. He even allowed our class to use the Qatari Embassy’s personal box at Capital One Arena to watch the Washington Wizards play the Dallas Mavericks. This event was infinitely valuable to aspiring diplomats and policymakers, particularly those interested in understanding the politics of the Gulf and its relations to the world, from the Middle East and beyond (and seeing Luka Doncic score 26 points live was also very cool).

Back in Doha, this kind of engagement rarely happens. It’s a strange irony. Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) is an international relations-oriented university in Qatar, an important power broker in the region that has cleverly utilized soft power to attain its own interests and have its voice heard on the region’s most important issues. Nevertheless, students at the campus rarely, if ever, hear from them.

Instead, the university has allocated considerable resources toward hotel-based events like the Hiwaraat conference series on topics like “AI Uprising” and “Gender in Foreign Policy.” These are not necessarily irrelevant discussions, but they are topics that could just as easily be discussed in Berlin orBoston as they could in Doha. They often amount to performative gatherings where celebrity speakers deliver packaged speeches, and students are left to the sidelines, able to network, perhaps, but largely excluded from meaningful academic dialogue or knowledge production.

Meanwhile, major conferences like the Gulf Studies Symposium and the Gulf Research Meeting continue to be held abroad, the former bizarrely on the main campus despite the university having an entire campus in the Gulf. In fact, many of our own faculty travel all the way to D.C. to talk about the Gulf in a city thousands of miles away, far removed from the region’s pulse. Obviously, such conferences are not gatherings of scholars who love studying the area but are hubs for these scholars to meet policymakers and lobbyists to gain influence and connections in the halls of global power. Nevertheless, for an institution where many of its faculty members (and its Dean) talk about the importance and rising power of the global south, this belief seems to wither away as soon as these opportunities abroad arise. 

That a student could spend four years at GU-Q without taking a single class focused on Gulf politics or even basic instruction on the Qatari political system is not just a possibility—it is the reality of most of our students and alumni. Even the courses that do cover these subjects are usually taught by non-Gulf academics, with Gulf officials and practitioners absent from the classroom in most cases (unless they are occasionally invited to give a guest lecture).

Even more humorous is that GU-Q’s Government minor requires students to study U.S. Political Systems without requiring students to study the politics of the region they live in and will likely work in, with no guarantee that they will ever work in the United States.

If students are going to live and study in Qatar, it is not an unfair ask of the university to leave its students with a concrete understanding of its host nation’s political institutions and regional diplomacy, alongside an understanding of the Gulf Cooperation Council and its internal dynamics. While it is understandable that high-level figures like the Qatari Prime Minister might go on Tucker Carlson’s podcast to engage American audiences, it is worth asking: why is that platform more attractive than engaging Qatar’s own academic institutions? Shouldn’t a university like GU-Q be the first stop for any official wanting to connect with the next generation of policymakers and diplomats?

Even within GU-Q’s core curriculum, the engagement with the region is superficial at best. Classes like Comparative Political Systems, International Relations, and Political and Social Thought often pass over the Gulf entirely. Electives that do cover Gulf politics are typically attended by Qatari students, while many international students remain disengaged, sometimes graduating with almost no political exposure to the region in which they have lived and studied.

This is not due to censorship. It is due to a deeper misplacement of priorities. GU-Q seems more concerned with the optics of elite internationalization, hosting events in grand venues with impressive names, than with fostering a locally grounded, student-centered academic culture. In many ways, the institution forgets the “Q” in its name.

It does not have to be this way. GU-Q could lead in making the Gulf the intellectual center of Gulf Studies. It could rotate or co-host the Gulf Studies Symposium in Doha. It could institute a regular Gulf speaker series featuring Qatari and GCC diplomats and policymakers. It could invite students to co-organize and moderate events directly engaging with the region’s pressing political issues. In doing so, the university would fulfill two key objectives; realizing its geographic potential and providing greater academic value to its classes and programs. If we are going to study the Gulf, let us do it in the Gulf.