As the January Term begins, opportunities to study abroad open up for students, including a program based in Dubai. The program emphasizes institutional, alumni and networking ties as part of its expanding international presence and is marketed as an opportunity for cultural immersion, professional development and global citizenship. Yet, beneath this rhetoric of opportunity is a disturbing contradiction. The fundamental problem with the University’s Dubai program is that its partnerships with institutions in the United Arab Emirates require negotiations that legitimize state institutions abroad. When a university partners with a foreign government or its universities to send students there, it is not merely offering a travel opportunity. Instead, it is signaling that the host state is a respectable place for academic exchange, investment and professional growth — a signal which overlooks oppression and active engagement with genocide.
Recent investigations have confirmed that the UAE is a primary financial backer of the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group responsible for genocide in Sudan. International observers and human rights organizations have documented the RSF’s reliance on foreign funding and arms, with the UAE identified as a key financial and logistical supporter. Therefore, the UAE’s financial support materially enables the RSF’s capacity to continue its campaign of extermination. This failed acknowledgement of the UAE and RSF partnership also overlooks the UAE’s kafala system, a state-regulated labor regime in which migrant workers are brought in under conditions of debt bondage, have their passports confiscated and endure conditions internationally recognized as modern slavery. Universities, construction firms and international institutions operating in the UAE rely on this system for infrastructure, housing and services, making kafala the invisible foundation of the country’s global image.
Study abroad programs like this one are implicit, institutional endorsements that certify the host state's compliance with the University’s ethical, educational and safety standards, all of which serve as a form of soft-power validation. Study abroad programs require formal agreements, diplomatic cooperation and resource allocation, meaning the University is not passively permitting travel. Instead, it is implicitly endorsing the UAE as a reputable and educational partner. Today, academic endorsement functions as moral currency, conferring legitimacy on regimes whose reputations depend on international validation. Because authoritarian governments strategically use Western university partnerships to burnish their global image, legitimizing the UAE as a place to study inevitably authorizes the state that administers that place. This sanctioning normalizes the UAE’s political actions, reframing a state actively funding genocide as a site of innovation and opportunity.
Further, this legitimization is materially reinforced through the very economic activity the study abroad program generates. Students who study abroad in Dubai contribute directly to the Emirati economy through tourism and engagement with UAE-based corporations. These financial flows are not neutral, as tourism and student spending reinforce both the UAE’s exploitative kafala system as well as the broader economic base of a government directly funding the RSF’s genocidal campaign in Sudan. Even if the financial support is small, it nonetheless strengthens the foundation of this state and participates in an inhumane economic system. When the University chooses to channel money and institutional legitimacy into that economy, it becomes complicit in laundering the image of a government funding atrocities.
Likewise, the University’s partnerships and exchanges signal to the global academic community that the UAE is a legitimate site of moral and intellectual collaboration, even as its economic and political systems rely on forced labor and human rights abuses. This moral dissonance has real human consequences. For students whose families are Sudanese, African, Arab or otherwise connected to these crises, the University’s choices are not theoretical but instead represent a direct betrayal of the very civic and humanitarian values the University claims to uphold. In celebrating alliances and economic ties with the UAE, the University asks these students to watch their grief and histories be erased in the name of global prestige, donor-friendly positioning and the illusion of opportunity.
In addition to investing in and promoting these harmful programs that impact Sudanese and Sudanese-connected students on Grounds, the University is also betraying its stated commitments to moral leadership and global justice. A university that publicly upholds principles of human rights and ethical global engagement cannot simultaneously promote a study abroad program in a state whose actions undermine those very ideals. In doing so, the University transforms its rhetoric of global citizenship into empty branding, prioritizing institutional prestige over the lives of those affected by the violence it indirectly enables.
If the University wishes to embody the ideals of global citizenship it so proudly markets, it must immediately suspend its UAE study-abroad program and commit to a transparent review of how the partnership was selected, funded and represented to students. By maintaining and funding a program in the United Arab Emirates, the University is not only endorsing a nation that finances genocide and sustains a system of racialized modern slavery, but it is also betraying its promise to global justice. A university that claims to educate ethical citizens cannot ignore where its money travels or whose suffering is erased in the pursuit of international prestige.
Ayat Younis is an opinion columnist who writes about academics for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of The Cavalier Daily. Columns represent the views of the authors alone.
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