Global.Chronicle.Com support of that family’s leader, Sheikh Khalifa “Any academic, any university—you have to Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the country’s presidentbe connected to the reality of the country you’re for-life. His brother and heir, Crown Prince in,” says Christopher Davidson, a former Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, professor of political science at Zayed Univerworked closely with Mr Sexton to hammer out sity, in Abu Dhabi, and author of several the deal that brought the university to books about the UAE. “You can’t say your acaSign up for a free weekly the Emirates. demics are protected but the ones at the electronic newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education at By 2014 the campus will move to splendid university down the road aren’t. You can’t enter Chronicle.Com/Globalnewsletter new digs on an exclusive island, alongside a situation where you admit there isn’t The Chronicle of Higher Education is branches of the Louvre and the Guggenheim academic freedom in the country, there isn’t a US-based company with a weekly museums. For now its 300 students and 125 academic solidarity.” newspaper and a website updated faculty members, recruited from around the New York University’s leaders insist that daily, at Global.Chronicle.com, that cover all aspects of university life. world, work in a modest complex in downpublic, and sometimes critical, engagement With over 90 writers, editors, and town Abu Dhabi. with one’s host country is not part of their miscorrespondents stationed around NYU-Abu Dhabi’s goal is to be both a presion abroad, In fact, they argue, it could be the globe, The Chronicle provides mier research university and a highly selective taken as a sign of hubris. timely news and analysis of academliberal-arts-and-sciences college. In both “What is inherent in the very notion of the ic ideas, developments and trends. respects, it is a new venture in the Emirates, global network university is that we often are functioning as a model for other universities going to take ourselves outside our comfort there. The pursuit of academic excellence, say zones,” says John Sexton, NYU’s president, both NYU and the UAE’s leadership, is how the new university who is the architect of the Abu Dhabi venture, in a written will affect and benefit its host country. response to The Chronicle. “Many of us will find ourselves living So far the campus seems to be having its greatest impact in new cities, new countries, new parts of the world, and it through research and collaborations with local universities and would be downright presumptuous to pretend that we have government institutions. some inherent understanding from day one that would allow us “Part of our role here is to build capacity indirectly, to import to think that we have all of the answers for society, much less scientific expertise and share equipment through collaborathe questions.” tions.” says David McGlennon, vice provost for research admin“It’s not that we’re not concerned” with off-campus events, istration and university partnerships. says Ms Reynolds. “We’re learning what’s the best way to The linguistics departments of NYU-Abu Dhabi and United engage with the context we’re in. It doesn’t have to be the same Arab Emirates University, for example, are jointly studying the way as in New York.” differences in cognitive processing of Arabic and English. But is treading cautiously a long-term strategy for success, “It’s benefitting us and our students—there is more expertise particularly for a university that hopes to shape the region’s coming from overseas, more money for research, more opporcultural and intellectual landscape? tunities,” says Steve Bird, Dean of the Linguistics Department at UAE University. An Academic Capital Through the government’s largess, NYU-Abu Dhabi has allotIn operation for close to two years, NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus is ted $36-million to finance work at five research centres dedia high-profile experiment for both the leadership of the federacated to fields such as Arabic literature, communication nettion of small, oil-rich emirates and the American institution. works, and climate modelling. The university plans to create The NYU campus was invited in, and is fully subsidised by, about a dozen such centres, generally supervised by senior facthe ruling family of Abu Dhabi. The operation enjoys the ulty from the New York campus. The establishment of NYU-AD, as it’s known, has raised “great expectations on all levels: economic, social, and on a policy level,” says Sunil Kumar, Dean of Engineering, who has helped form a consortium of engineering faculty in the Emirates. They plan to share curricula and equipment and to coordinate course offerings. The new university also hopes to attract more Emirati students; currently it enrols only 16. It runs summer academic camps for local high-school students and offers tutoring to Emirati applicants who don’t meet its admission requirements. Within the country, spending on the university is a sensitive and closely-guarded subject. Some local academics ask why, if the government wishes to improve higher education, it doesn’t
Critics say this mindfulness turns foreign branch campuses in the region into exceptional conclaves
July 2012 EduTech
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