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Update on U.S. Community College’s Gender-Segregated Satellite Campus in Qatar

Inside Higher Ed has an update on Houston Community College’s longstanding difficulties with its satellite campus in Qatar, where men and women must take separate classes to comply with the country’s strict religious customs:

Administrative squabbles, cultural misunderstandings and academic problems are perhaps understandable when an American college opens a campus in a place with vastly different customs and views on human rights.

But the frequency and scope of those problems at the Community College of Qatar, as shown in hundreds of e-mails sent and received by Houston Chancellor Mary Spangler in early 2011 and obtained by Inside Higher Ed after an open records request, suggest both sides might not have been fully prepared for the partnership. …

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the U.S. law best known for requiring equity in college athletics, also mandates that courses be open to students of both genders. Opinions vary as to whether the provision applies only to programs within the United States or all programs of American institutions, including those operating overseas.

The Community College of Qatar is an independent enterprise of its nation’s government, but its academic programs are administered by Houston.

Spangler maintains that gender segregation at the campus does not amount to a Title IX violation:

“The answer is simple and straightforward, frankly,” Spangler wrote. “According to our attorneys, Congress did not intend for Title IX to apply to activities outside of the United States. Thus it would appear that CCQ’s conducting classes separated by sex would not subject HCC to any Title IX liability because Title IX does not apply to operations in Qatar.”

Inside Higher Ed asked Erin Buzuvis, a law professor at Western New England University, whether that was true. Buzuvis disagreed with Spangler:

“There’s no basis in the law for an institution that receives federal funding to operate a program that is excluding one sex,” she said. “I see this as a clear case of Title IX violation.”

TCF Contributor Valerie Taylor wrote about the troubles at the Qatari campus last month. Read her story here.

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