great news!!TommyBrady said:
Was just agreed upon at Regents Meeting. Will Wind down operations. Good move
LMCane said:great news!!TommyBrady said:
Was just agreed upon at Regents Meeting. Will Wind down operations. Good move
Move it to Tel Aviv.
I hope for your sake and your career, the meeting and vote is in open session.TommyBrady said:
Source is I'm at the meeting and they just voted
Yikes. I'll have to check with our family friend on the board to verify. If true, wonder how many other US schools will leave as well.TommyBrady said:
Source is I'm at the meeting and they just voted
Please elaborate. Didn't go over well with whom?TommyBrady said:
We tried that already. Didn't go over well.
Even public universities have parts of Board meetings in closed executive sessions.MouthBQ98 said:
I'd guess it was public considering it is a public university.
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/08/texas-am-qatar-campus/TxAgLaw03RW said:
Any press release or source for this?
Quote:
The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents voted Thursday to end its contract with the foundation that funds the system flagship's branch campus in Qatar, effectively ending the 20-year-old program.
The vote to end the contract with the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, which is run by the Qatar government, means the school will start winding down the Doha campus over the next four years before officially closing its doors.
I never knew that.TommyBrady said:
We tried that already. Didn't go over well.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/08/27/what-happened-texas-ams-plan-open-branch-campus-nazarethQuote:
. . .
Mr. Perry will join Texas A&M leaders and Israeli officials in Jerusalem on Wednesday to announce the creation of Texas A&M Peace University, a branch campus of the sixth largest university in the United States. It will be built in Nazareth, known as the Arab capital of Israel.
. . .
The university said that students and teachers at the campus in Israel would include Arabs and Jews, as well as international students and faculty, and that graduates would receive an Aggie Ring, the same one worn by graduates of the main campus in College Station, Tex.
. . .
Texas A&M, a public university, is prohibited by state law from investing public dollars in international branches. Financing will come from private donors in Texas and around the world.
. . .
Evangelical Christians, with whom Mr. Perry has long identified, have been active supporters of Israel, but the main Texas player in the branch campus effort is a Roman Catholic John Sharp, the chancellor of the Texas A&M University System and a longtime supporter of Israeli and Jewish causes.
. . .
When Mr. Sharp began exploring the idea, he sought the help of John C. Hagee, an evangelical pastor in San Antonio whose sermons are broadcast around the world and who has helped raise tens of millions of dollars for projects in Israel and for Jewish settlements in the West Bank. In March 2012, Pastor Hagee told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel about Mr. Sharp's plans and helped connect Mr. Sharp and other Texas A&M officials with Israeli leaders.
. . .
Officials said the campus would offer undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree programs, with instruction in English. A potential site in Nazareth has been identified, but no financing has been obtained yet. They said fund-raising efforts would begin within weeks, but declined to offer a fund-raising goal.
. . .
Though the Texans came to them with the idea of opening the campus, Israeli leaders, including President Shimon Peres, were the ones who wanted the new university to improve access to higher education for Arabs in Israel, and to foster peace between Jews and Arabs. "There's no significant academic presence in Arab towns and cities in Israel," Mr. Trajtenberg said. "It will have a symbolic impact beyond the academic impact."
. . .
I imagine the evangelicals weren't terribly excited when the branch plans morphed into educating Israel's Muslims, so the private funding wasn't forthcoming, along with the other issues cited in the article. No such problem with the Qatar branch since Qatar funded it.Quote:
In the fall of 2013, Texas A&M University announced its plan to build a branch campus -- a "peace campus" -- in the predominantly Arab city of Nazareth in northern Israel. Then Texas Governor (and current Republican presidential contender) Rick Perry and Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp led the Aggie delegation to Israel, where they announced their intention to build a comprehensive campus in Nazareth during a signing ceremony in the residence of Israel's then president, Shimon Peres.
. . .
Without a single deep-pocketed funder -- as in the case of A&M's branch campus in Qatar, bankrolled by the Qatar Foundation -- Texas A&M needed to raise many millions of dollars. Further, it needed Israel to amend its restrictive laws on foreign branch campuses, which date to the mid-2000s, so that an A&M branch could be eligible for accreditation as an Israeli university and its degrees recognized for government employment purposes.
Plans for the campus stagnated. "To some degree it's a chicken and an egg problem," said Michael Benedik, Texas A&M's vice provost. "Why would we be getting a major gift to open a campus when we don't have legal permission to even do it?"
About a year after the A&M announcement, the University of Haifa, a major research university in the north of Israel, stepped in and agreed to provide academic sponsorship to A&M's would-be partner in Nazareth -- the Nazareth Academic Institute (NAI), a small, financially strapped entity that has served Arab students, most of them women, since its establishment in 2002.
. . .
However, shortly after the agreement [between NAI and Hafia] was signed, Israel's Council for Higher Education withdrew NAI's accreditation entirely. The institute's authority to operate as a degree-granting entity expired Jan. 1, 2015. A total of 114 students who were enrolled in NAI's two programs, chemistry and communication, have transferred to other institutions to earn their degrees.
. . .
Unless jwoodmd is on the board or is an attorney representing the university, it seems unlikely that he/she would be party to a closed session.jwoodmd said:Even public universities have parts of Board meetings in closed executive sessions.MouthBQ98 said:
I'd guess it was public considering it is a public university.
🔴BREAKING: The Board of Regents of the Texas A&M University System voted Thursday to begin a multi-year process to shut down the flagship’s campus in the Middle East nation of Qatar.
— 🚨 Rusty Surette 🚨 (@KBTXRusty) February 8, 2024
Rapier108 said:🔴BREAKING: The Board of Regents of the Texas A&M University System voted Thursday to begin a multi-year process to shut down the flagship’s campus in the Middle East nation of Qatar.
— 🚨 Rusty Surette 🚨 (@KBTXRusty) February 8, 2024
Correct, although the funding for the campus is provided by The Qatar Foundation.Mongolian Christmas said:Rapier108 said:🔴BREAKING: The Board of Regents of the Texas A&M University System voted Thursday to begin a multi-year process to shut down the flagship’s campus in the Middle East nation of Qatar.
— 🚨 Rusty Surette 🚨 (@KBTXRusty) February 8, 2024
Bash me if I'm wrong but I thought Qatar was another campus of TAMU and it's not a separate entity within the TAM System. That is, they receive Aggie rings like Galveston.
Mondemonium said:LMCane said:great news!!TommyBrady said:
Was just agreed upon at Regents Meeting. Will Wind down operations. Good move
Move it to Tel Aviv.
