From the NY Times: The Middle East campuses of American universities are expecting — or perhaps just hoping — to be open for classes as usual for the coming semester, even as the United States’ conflict with Iran poses new risks in the region. Some American schools have long run programs in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The war, however, meant that students spent much of the spring semester enduring shutdowns, evacuations, online courses and other emergency measures. But the unraveling of the cease-fire between Washington and Tehran is not yet curbing universities’ ambitions to teach as they ordinarily would in the Middle East.
...For American universities, campuses in wealthy Persian Gulf states can offer new revenue and welcome clout. Those perks, though, come with sporadic political headaches at home, reputational perils and regional safety concerns. After a strike on a physics building at a university in Tehran, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps warned in March that “American universities in the West Asia region are legitimate targets for us.” By then, American schools had begun closing campuses and turning to remote classes. But the relative lull of recent months left many administrators encouraged and publicly optimistic that the campuses would be able to run normally as students return for another semester...
Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/us/middle-east-campuses-american-universities.html.
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