Funded by authoritarian governments and led by military generals.

The establishing documents for the Brookings Doha Center may be uncomfortable reading for advocates of academic freedom.

Inked in 2007, the deal between the storied Washington think tank and Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs laid out the financial terms under which Brookings established a groundbreaking outpost in the Persian Gulf. The fantastically rich, autocratic emirate would put up $5 million, bankrolling the groundbreaking research facility — but also got a notable degree of contractual prerogatives for a government over a proudly independent organization. The center’s director, the , would “engage in regular consultation with [the foreign ministry],” submitting an annual budget and “agenda for programs that will be developed by the Center.” Any changes would require the ministry’s OK. (The document was obtained from Qatar by a U.S. source; a Brookings spokesperson did not dispute its validity.)

Brookings’s Doha presence was mothballed last year, but the history of chumminess between a Washington liberal bastion and a Middle Eastern monarchy is suddenly relevant again this week due to the abrupt resignation of Brookings’ president in a classic Beltway scandal involving allegations of improper lobbying for that very same country.

Ironically, the now-former president, retired Marine General John Allen, had worked during his four-year tenure to unwind the relationship, under which Qatar had become one of Brookings’ top donors, netting the institution millions of dollars — and no shortage of flak from critics of Qatar’s human-rights record and its friendships towards groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2019, Allen announced that Brookings would phase out money from non-democracies. In 2021, the Doha facility was quietly disaffiliated from Brookings.

And yet it now turns out that Allen’s entire run atop the capital’s leading liberal think tank was shadowed by a trip he took to the emirate just months before ascending to the presidency.

The alleged details of that journey, which leaked out via  that was inadvertently , have cost Allen his $1-million-a-year job, upended Brookings, and infuriated scholars who worry that they’ll again face suggestions that their work has been tarnished by unseemly foreign influence.

And reject space colonization impossible arguments: