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On Feb. 26, Princeton undergraduates received an email through the residential college listservs recruiting students for a new international consulting project: 5Terra Advisory. It sounded like a typical summer opportunity or start up project with added benefits, luring students with shiny promises of business-class travel, hefty wages, and an opportunity to work with world-famous organizations. At first glance, this is like any other listserv email — until you look into who is undersigning this project.
Red Sea Global (RSG), the corporation that this program is partnering with, is led by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). RSG is owned by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the Saudi Arabian government’s investment portfolio, and part of MBS’s “Vision 2030” project to diversify the Saudi economy and open it to foreign investment.
MBS has been one of the main architects of the war in Yemen, one of the most horrifying humanitarian crises of our era. His actions have led to a manmade famine affecting 17 million people, with at least 85,000 children dying of starvation. Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes, which MBS approved and initiated, have killed or maimed over 19,200 civilians, including 2,300 children. Further, in 2021, he infamously ordered the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in retaliation for speaking out against his government. An investigation by Human Rights Watch found that the PIF, of which RSG is a member, has been used by the Saudi government as a tool of their human rights abuses — the plane which assassins took to kill Khashoggi was a PIF company plane chartered by the government.
Before continuing any work with RSG, or any PIF company, 5Terra must distance themselves from any human rights abuses and investigate their own work through a due diligence process, as laid out by human rights organizations.
5Terra’s exact relationship with RSG and the PIF remains unclear. An early Memorandum of Understanding between students and the company discusses a relationship based mostly on the exchange of ideas, though they do discuss “collaborat[ing] to offer … internship programs,” which seems to be the program 5Terra has been advertising to Princeton students. A program based chiefly on the exchange of ideas would not inherently support government policies, though it still risks engaging in image washing for the PIF if it does not take seriously the human rights abuses by the Crown Prince.
However, 5Terra has advertised their mission as “[c]onnecting top US and Chinese college talents to Saudi Arabia to solve human capital challenges.” This suggests that this relationship is fundamentally built on funneling students from Princeton and elsewhere into careers in Saudi Arabia, potentially with Public Investment Fund companies. The fact that the exact relationship between 5Terra and the Saudi government is not being made explicitly clear to prospective participants shows that the group has not adequately assessed the risk of contributing to structures of violence and harm in Saudi Arabia.
Additionally, the partners it advertises are also troubling. 5Terra’s listserv email advertises a “pathway for full-time job offers” with firms like Neom, the planned “line city” in northwest Saudi Arabia. Neom is expected to forcibly expel 20,000 members of the indigenous Howeitat tribe by its completion, and three activists were sentenced to death for resisting this displacement, while another one was murdered by Saudi special forces.
In March, I met with the team behind 5Terra and relayed my concerns about their work. They told me they were open to a human rights due diligence process. However, after our meeting, they proceeded to solicit applications from students through a public interest session where they advertised a continued collaboration with RSG, according to one person who attended the meeting. When I broached these concerns again to them over email, they claimed they did not have a contract with RSG, a direct contradiction of what was reported at the interest session. It also flies in the face of the fact that the relationship is advertised on 5Terra’s own website. By not raising these concerns to students interested in participating, 5Terra hampers students’ abilities to make informed decisions on their work and its possible ties to harm.
After I publicly raised these concerns in a listserv email, 5Terra responded with a laudation of the values of cultural exchange, which is certainly a worthy endeavor. However, this statement fails to recognize the major difference between constructively learning about cultures and tacitly supporting the economic and political goals of an employer. While the Royal Family does have a wide degree of control over political and social life in the Kingdom, an effort can and should be made to seek opportunities with companies who are not directly linked to the Saudi regime or with limited risk of human rights abuses.
Without an investigation into how Princeton students’ work may connect to the Saudi government, it is irresponsible to continue this partnership. If successful, 5Terra’s stated long-term goal of building a talent pipeline between Princeton and PIF companies, like RSG, will allow the Saudi government and their corporations to whitewash their image using our university’s name and implicate our students with the Saudi government’s undemocratic regime of human rights abuses.
While 5Terra was previously advertised as a partnership with the Entrepreneurship Club and one of the E-Club’s co-presidents does have a leading role in 5Terra, the other co-president distanced the club from 5Terra and the relationship has been removed from the teams page of the E-Club website. It is time for 5Terra to follow this example by thoroughly reviewing any possible ties to projects with human rights concerns.
It’s clear that 5Terra is making the wrong choice by failing to fully investigate their own plans and attempting to build a talent pipeline between students and PIF companies, putting Princeton’s values of service and ethical leadership at risk by wading into possible involvement in human rights abuses. I implore all students to withhold or withdraw their applications from their program, refuse to pursue further opportunities with PIF companies, and demand an end to any partnership with the Saudi government until a thorough human rights assessment is complete.
Kristin Nagy is a sophomore majoring in Anthropology. She can be reached at kristinnagy[at]princeton.edu.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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