Umar Matthew Ingalls, the expelled Cornell fraternity brother at the center of a gang-rape lawsuit, has fled to Dubai and previously expressed embarrassment about his American citizenship while attending an elite private school there.
Ingalls, 21, grew up between the Middle East and the United States, attending Dubai International Academy in the Emirates Hills neighborhood, an area dubbed the “Beverly Hills of Dubai” where homes start at $3 million. The school charges about $21,000 annually and was listed as his alma mater on Cornell’s 2023-2024 rugby roster.
A 2020 high school online magazine article quoted Ingalls, who then went by Umar Ingalls, describing his discomfort with his American identity abroad. “Generally speaking, ‘American’ over here is synonymous with ‘Trump,’ which is synonymous with a whole bunch of other words that I won’t mention,” he said, with the article describing him as half American. He told the magazine he had to explain to people in the United Arab Emirates that “no, I’m not a Trump supporter.”
His father, Matthew Burtchaell Ingalls, 48, is a professor of Islamic studies at the American University in Dubai, where he has taught since 2016 and chairs the Department of Middle Eastern Studies. The elder Ingalls, a convert to Islam, earned his doctorate in Islamic studies from Yale University in 2011 and a master’s in Arabic studies from the American University in Cairo in 2004. He taught Sharia law and Islamic Fundamentalism at Yale. His wife, Yasmine Khattab, is Egyptian.
In a 2021 research paper, the senior Ingalls criticized the focus of Western scholarship on his field. “Much of the research in the Americas focused on questions of assimilation or terrorism and neglected the more basic issues of belief, practice and community,” he wrote. “Islam, in other words, was framed as a problem, not a way of life.”
His photo and contact information were removed from his bio page on the American University in Dubai’s website this week amid the scandal surrounding his son.
Ingalls was one of two Chi Phi brothers expelled from Cornell in 2024 after an internal investigation found them responsible for sexual assault. He reportedly fled to Dubai following the lawsuit filed last month, though he had told friends he was taking a gap year in Thailand to “find himself” after his expulsion.
Text messages newly released this week revealed Jane Doe’s state of mind in the days following the incident. Four days after the party, she texted Ingalls in a panic. “My reputation is destroyed and i’m utterly ashamed. I’m f—king pissed because this many people shouldn’t know and i feel like i know who some of the rats in the room were,” she wrote. She added that rumors were spreading and growing “crazier every f—king day.”
Doe also threatened violence against anyone who gave them “sh-t” about what happened, while expressing openness about sexuality. “Everyone needs to grow up cause sexuality and sex and sh-t is changing and stuff like this is going to become more common,” she texted, adding that she is “also really open minded tho.”
Two weeks later, she texted him about how the night began. Ingalls replied, “you come in, say hi. We start dancing for like maybe three to five minutes, and then I pop the question,” regarding the threesome.
Ingalls then wrote “boys come whip it out” — twice — in the Chi Phi Snapchat group conversation. He later claimed he was the real victim and was “sodomized” by Jane Doe, complaining that nobody at the Ivy League school cared he was a sex-assault “survivor.”
All seven of the Chi Phi brothers have denied raping Doe, and none have been charged with any crimes. The lawsuit stems from an incident where an unnamed female student claimed a threesome that Ingalls initiated turned into a gang rape.
Ingalls could not be reached for comment, and questions to his father were not answered.