It doesn't have to be a case of a university signalling to the world that they are embarking on a formal partnership with government of Qatar, it just needs to

It doesn't have to be a case of a university signalling to the world that they are embarking on a formal partnership with government of Qatar, it just needs to be one of many indirect mechanisms through which they take a large amount of money that originates from Qatar, and a department or scholar or research foundation or a commercial partnership confers kudos upon a Qatari foundation or the royal family, or indicates patronage. There are a million ways of dressing it up, universities have PR departments and strategic communications consultancies to keep bad news at bay, and few students or academics are going to go to all that trouble to bite the hand that feeds them. You just end up with a state of the art new department building or facility that has been funded by a foundation with an Arabic name (perhaps an Emir or a sheikh's wife or daughter), and some dignitaries attending an opening ceremony on a Saturday morning to a hand-picked crowd while most of the students on campus are sleeping in. None of this is at all remarkable in today's landscape of intense inter-university competition. Also, they're not going to fund sociology departments; it's often directed towards the hard sciences or Arabic language/literature/history/cultural studies. And that's before you get onto endowments from Blue Chip companies that are actually vehicles for wealthy investors.