The advent of powerful Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen-AI) and the proliferation of sophisticated digital disinformation represent two sides of the same coin, a profound, systemic challenge to the core mission of higher education. Together, they are reshaping how knowledge is created, validated, and shared, creating both unprecedented opportunities and significant risks. Institutions worldwide are grappling with a dual imperative: how to harness AI as a transformative tool for learning and research while simultaneously building resilience against the digital threats that undermine academic integrity, social cohesion, and informed civic discourse.
The study “Fortifying Education in the Age of Disinformation” has been conducted in collaboration between World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) and Northwestern University in Qatar (NUQ). The report seeks to move beyond reactive responses to offer a proactive, evidence-informed, and human-centric framework for navigating the challenges of AI and disinformation in educational settings. Rather than treating AI adoption, online discourse quality, and information resilience as separate challenges, this study recognizes them as deeply interconnected facets of a single, systemic transformation. Our core philosophy is that an effective strategy must be explicitly designed to combine the strengths of people and technology in a “human-in-the-loop” system, where technology provides scale and data, but trained people make consequential judgments. Through this partnership, WISE and its partners aim to provide Education City, and by extension Qatar and the broader region, with a strategic blueprint for responding to this transformation in a way that preserves the core mission of higher education while harnessing technology for human flourishing.
The report is organized into three main parts, which together form a comprehensive ecosystem approach, moving from understanding the problem, to designing solutions, to implementing them at scale.
- Part 1: Institutional Foundations presents an in-depth case study of AI adoption at HBKU, establishing the empirical foundation for our recommendations by examining how students and faculty perceive, use, and are governed in their interactions with AI.
- Part 2: Fostering Healthy Digital Discourse translates these insights into action by developing practical tools, including a curated Arabic toxicity dataset and a bilingual digital literacy platform, to address the critical challenge of maintaining respectful and informed online academic interactions.
- Part 3: Building National Resilience scales these lessons to the policy level, proposing the Haqiqatar framework—a ten-year national strategy for building information resilience and media literacy that aligns with Qatar’s long-term education and innovation goals.
These three subprojects ensure that empirical insights inform intervention design and that both feed into a coherent, evidence-based policy vision for building ethical, informed, and resilient digital learning environments.