Three Northwestern professors have been appointed to endowed chairs by the Qatar Foundation, Al Cubbage, vice president for University relations, said Tuesday. Medill Prof. Frank Mulhern, Communication Prof. Hamid Naficy and Weinberg Prof. Carl Petry were appointed to positions named after the country’s head of government, Qatar Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani.

“These are the first appointments of these chairs,” Cubbage said. “Basically, the funding is used to provide support for the (chairs), so it’s a real honor.”

The foundation is a charitable arm of the Qatar government, he said. It supports the initiative to bring universities like NU to Education City in Doha, Qatar.

The endowments were given to recognize the opening of NU’s Qatar campus, said University Provost Dan Linzer.

The three positions are the Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in the Medill School of Journalism, awarded to Mulhern; the Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in Communication, given to Naficy; and the Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in Middle East Studies, awarded to Petry.

Mulhern, associate dean for research in Medill and an Integrated Marketing Communications professor, said he expects to visit Qatar in the near future.

“It’s really kind of a remarkable situation where they want to accelerate the sophistication of higher education, and they’re doing so by partnering with these elite universities,” he said, adding that the arrangement, “enables them to immediately have first-rate education as opposed to forming their own university, building from the ground up.”[email protected]