A Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) professor has withdrawn from a $700,000 research project following an uproar over her 'disparaging comments' about the people living in Qatar, it is learnt.
In January, it was announced that the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) had awarded NU-Q professors Jocelyn Sage Mitchell and Venus S Jin, along with Hamad Bin Khalifa University professor Mohamed Evren Tok, a grant to study the obstacles and successes of women entrepreneurship in Qatar. The $700,000 grant was awarded by QNRF’s National Priorities Research Programme.
Since then, Prof Mitchell had been at the heart of a backlash over the inappropriate comments she had made in the past.
According to local news portal Doha News, Mitchell has informed the authorities concerned about her decision to pull out of the research team.
The action came in response to the massive outcry on social media and an email sent out by NU-Q faculty members who called on their colleague to withdraw from the project.
Following are some of the tweets: "$700k! One of the grantees has a dubious record on how she views Qataris and Qatar. If you are white, all your faults are forgiven. In fact it will be rewarded! They couldn’t find a Qatari woman (of whom there are innumerable highly educated ones) to carry out this research?"
"Professor Jocelyn Sage Mitchell once called Qataris Qatarded, and made fun of our South Asian community. She also shamed Qatari women and made fun of them, yet here she is receiving funds to research Qatari women with no credibility or legitimacy."
" I do believe in the significance of the proposed research, but I think the path ahead for Dr Jocelyn Mitchell is to leave the research team & to bring onboard a qualified researcher meeting the approved criteria."
Prof Mitchell has profusely apologised for 'the pain and hurt' caused by her and said she agreed with her colleagues who called 'these ideas abhorrent'.
“These are -- unrepresentative comments about Qatar, the Qatari people and its expatriate communities, with no basis in reality, and it does not reflect how I feel about the diverse people who make up this tolerant and accepting country,” she said in a statement to Doha News.
“I would never re-post such an email today, precisely because of how much I have learned and grown over my past thirteen years living and working in Qatar," she added.
Social media users also raised questions as to why the fund was approved despite it not being led by or even included Qatari women who are at the centre of the research.
The furore surrounding the belittling comments can be traced to a blog run by Mitchell and her husband. In 2008, they published a post titled “You know you’re in Qatar if”, which included a listicle of xenophobic and belittling remarks.
The blog was removed by Mitchell in 2015.
When the blog post resurfaced in 2019, a student protest movement demanded the university take action against Professor Mitchell’s comments.
Expressing her regret , she said: “I am also physically and emotionally sick when I look at these words, and that reaction is entirely because of what I have learned, living in Qatar’s diverse community for the last 13 years."
