CORNELL ASSAULT CASE: MATTHEW INGALLS APPEARS TO BE UMAR INGALLS OF DUBAI
It appears Umar Ingalls, one of the central figures in the Cornell assault case, has been living under a different name (Matthew) in the United States. His father allegedly teaches Islamic Studies and is the Chair of Middle Eastern Studies at American University in Dubai.
Matthew Ingalls, the Cornell student a Title IX panel found responsible for sexual assault and expelled, appears to be the same person I found pictured in Dubai in 2022 as Umar Ingalls. (attached) Khaleej Times, on October 28, 2022, named him as a Year 13 student at Dubai International Academy Emirates Hills and quoted him on a lunar-rover project he built with four classmates. The photo in that article matches the Cornell defendant. (
khaleejtimes.com/uae/dubai-s…)
According to students posting in a Cornell Reddit thread, (attached) he went by Umar, switched to Matthew after moving to the US for college, and spent his junior and senior years at Dubai International Academy.
Students familiar with him have been identifying Professor Matthew Burtchaell Ingalls, Chair of Middle Eastern Studies at American University in Dubai, as his father. The timeline is consistent with that claim, although I have not seen an official public record independently confirming the relationship. (
aud.edu/aud-school/school-of…)
Prof. Ingalls joined the AUD faculty in fall 2016. Umar was a Year 13 student there in October 2022, so the professor had already been in Dubai for about six years by the student’s final year of high school, and he is still listed as department chair. Prof. Ingalls’ doctorate is in Islamic studies from Yale, 2011, after a master’s in Arabic studies at the American University in Cairo. He has published on late-medieval Sufism, Islamic law, and Muslim commentary, and has been co-authoring a history of Islam in Egypt. At AUD he teaches Islamic civilizations, Islamic politics, and Islam in its historical and social setting.
According to the complaint, this all starts with Umar (Matthew). Jane Doe went to the Chi Phi house to see him, and investigators say he was the one who asked her to have a threesome and supplied her with more alcohol and drugs. Jonathan Newell, the other participant in that first threesome, told investigators Ingalls invited him in and that he assumed the victim had already agreed. Her complaint alleges Umar gave her more alcohol "Jamaican high proof rum" and coerced her into taking ketamine before and multiple times during the alleged assault, which she says happened while she was incapacitated. ("In her 2024 account to Cornell police, she described becoming progressively more high over the course of the night, reaching what she called nearly a 10 out of 10. “It was the most intoxicated I’ve ever been in my life,” Jane Doe told Cornell police investigators in 2024. “I felt like I was unable to make any decision.”-The Guardian)
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Originally, Ingalls was said to be an employee of DataAnnotation. The company says he's not, he had registered as an independent contractor but was blocked from the platform in May 2024, five months before the alleged assault, and had no access afterward. The company has not said why he was blocked.
According to screenshots reported on of the Chi Phi group chat, Ingalls allegedly twice invited fraternity brothers to come in and “whip it out,” later confirmed that the “shop is still open,” and allegedly shared an image of Jane Doe in a compromising position.