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NYU’s Abu Dhabi Campus

Brian Leiter

I am curious to hear what readers make of this.  John Sexton, the NYU President, is an interesting phenomenon.  He made his name from his work as Dean at NYU's Law School (from 1988 to 2002), where he genuinely improved the quality of the faculty (making it competitive with Columbia, which would have seemed incredible 25 years ago), but also pioneered ways to game the US News law school rankings through inflated per capita expenditures, fudged employment statistics (e.g., hiring unemployed grads as RAs and library assistants), and other forms of petty dishonesty–as well as establishing the public persona of a used car salesman.   The Abu Dhabi campus seems to be his main initiative since taking over as President of NYU.  (Philosophy and Economics, the two main success stories outside the Law School, made their big leaps forward in the 1990s, but all indications are that he has strongly supported their rise to excellence.)  The Abu Dhabi government appears to be footing the bill for the whole affair, including, presumably, student recruitment.  Would you send your child to college there?  Why or why not?  Does the world need branch campuses of American univeristies abroad?  Can an American university survive in the reactionary Arabian Peninsula?  Signed comnments only:  full name in the signature line and valid e-mail address.  Post only once, comments may take awhile to appear.  

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22 responses to “NYU’s Abu Dhabi Campus”

  1. Evan T. Woods

    Something about this makes me very uncomfortable on a number of levels. I cannot help but wonder who will be teaching at Abu Dhabi. As a student, I can easily see this becoming a sort of semester-abroad/exotic vacation sort of program (maybe even for faculty!). Also, I worry that this will end up being a sort of intellectual imperialism–"we'll set up a branch campus overseas which will be staffed by our folks and run for our students, with a few of the locals thrown-in for 'local color,' as it were." Finally, given the way in which the campus is financed by the government of Abu Dhabi, it seems to me that this *could* lead to less intellectual freedom, especially if NYU doesn't have, on its own, the resources to support and maintain such an institution without outside assistance.

    Reply
  2. Allen Hazen

    O.k., two comments.
    (1) NYU had really serious financial issues in the period around 1980 (they "voluntarily" suspended giving the PhD degree in philosophy, basically because the philosophy department had been allowed to run down — by attrition — to the point where the NY State Board of Regents thought it wasn't good enough). During the 1980s, the financial crunch eased: I think the settlement of a suits regarding a huge bequest was a key part of this. Money started flowing: first, I think, to the Law School, but spreading around to the rest of the university: the rebuilding of the NYU philosophy department was one result… So, did the improvement in the NYU law school derive more from Dean Sexton's leadership or to the exogenous fact that money started to flow on his watch?

    (2) Story I was told in Australia (where a number of universities have opened campuses overseas): a certain Australian university had a big celebration, at which it patted itself on the back for how ethical it had been in opposing Apartheid before South Africa's régime change, and in the same week proudly announced the opening of its new Kuala Lumpur campus… where, at the request of the Malaysian gov't, admission policies would follow normal Malaysian practice of strongly favoring "Bhumiputra" over ethnically Chinese applicants. I couldn't POSSIBLY comment on similarities to NYU's Abu Dhabi campus.

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  3. Jonathan Birch

    This is the future. I am sure that before long big names will be moving out to the UAE for previously unthinkable sums of money. But will the authorities really uphold the level of academic freedom we expect over here? To soon to tell.

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  4. Gualtiero Piccinini

    I'm inclined to think that countries like Abu Dhabi could benefit by having branch campuses of American universities. This means a slightly higher access to American-style higher education for a slightly larger percentage of local elites than was available before. It's probably better education, and more friendly to democracy and critical thinking, than anything else they have available there.

    In any case, there is now open global competition in the education market. If American universities do not pursue foreign students, someone else will–and they may not share and teach all of our values.

    (Of course, it remains to be seen which of our values are taught at these foreign branches; I personally don't know.)

    Reply
  5. Tom

    You ask whether the world needs branches of American universities abroad. Arguably, UAE and other countries in the Middle East would benefit from them. These countries are going to face crises in the short to middle term. The oil is going to run out, and with it the massive state surpluses that bring with them extensive state services and boondoggle government jobs. How are they going to make the transition? Their best bet is to invest their present wealth in education, hope that the youth catch onto the change in time and that they can create competitive e.g. service industries. (Not to say that this cultural shift will be easy, as presently there are meager incentives for people to take education seriously while they know state jobs are bountiful.)

    Reply
  6. Jon Cogburn

    I don't know if it's a category error to compare the two, since it's not a branch campus of a stateside school, and since Egypt is a completely different culture than the UAE, but The American University in Cairo has a flourishing philosophy department ( http://www.aucegypt.edu/academics/dept/phil/faculty/Pages/default.aspx ) with people doing pretty interesting work.

    Reply
  7. Susana Mai

    perhaps nitpicky but…Abu Dhabi is a city, not a country, in the United Arab Emirates.

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  8. David Velleman

    For those who are curious about the academic quality of NYUAD:

    The NYU Philosophy Department has hired its first faculty member for the NYUAD campus. He is Matthew Silverstein, who holds a B.Phil. from Oxford and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He has just published a Critical Study of Kieran Setiya's book "Reasons Without Rationalism" in the current issue of the Philosophical Quarterly. His article "In Defense of Happiness" was published in Social Theory and Practice in 2000. He has also recently joined the blog Ethics Etc. as a contributor.

    After receiving his Ph.D., Matty spent two years as a Visiting Professor at Amherst College. He has spent the past academic year teaching in our Department on the Washington Square campus. He will return here on a regular basis.

    Reply
  9. J Pastorius

    These are interesting questions. I have lived in the UAE and continue to travel extensively throughout the Gulf. I think the NYU campus in AD is a terrific idea for a number of reasons and would encourage my children to apply if they were interested. First, I find that there is often a uniquely American negative view of the UAE (one that the Europeans, who have been going on holiday to the UAE for a long time, find puzzling), and having an American university in the country and presumbly a sizeable portion of American students will help create discussion about that prejudice. Contrary to some of the earlier comments, I think that openness and questioning assumptions is precisely one of the values that should be taught at any American university, foreign branch or not. Second, being a student in the UAE will open a differnt world of travel and cultural experience to students than they would have the opportunity to explore by going to an American or European univeristy. Many parts of the world look to Dubai/Abu Dhabi as a hub, and the international experience available in these cities is extraordinary. Third, the UAE has repeatedly shown it is willing to have an open, intelligent conversation with the rest of the world and having a credible and prestigious university will be a permanent accomplishment toward that goal. The UAE is not opening a rural madrassa, it is opening an international branch of an American university and knows full well the responsibilities and commitments this brings.

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    The NYT article Brian links to mentions that "homosexual acts are illegal" in Abu Dhabi. This alone seems to raise serious ethical problems for NYU's having a campus there, and encouraging faculty and students to go there.

    At least faculty who are homosexual likely know that they are homosexual, and they can make informed decisions about whether to go to the campus. But students who decide to go may not anticipate that their college years will lead to their coming out (even if "on some level they already know"), and this would obviously be a terrible place to find oneself if one does come out during college.

    Also, as an employer, how can NYU offer a job on these terms? You can take the job, but it'll involve being somewhere that homosexual acts are illegal. !

    Reply
  11. Yakov A.

    Considering the BDS, shouldn't there be similar concern about a country where something like 90% of the labor force consists of the equivalent of indentured servants and homosexuality is outlawed?

    Surely even if you think Israel's conduct more deserving of sanction, there is some argument for extension to this situation, as a U.S. university campus on the soil of a country serves as both a greater endorsement of the country's practices and greater cultural exchange?

    I tend to think the calls for boycott are misplaced, as I maintain a great deal of faith in the ability of universities to subvert some of these practices. That being said, I'm a bit surprised at the muted of the reaction.

    Hoping the post doesn't hi-jack the thread to a debate about BDS.

    http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mnp/ijgr/2008/00000015/00000001/art00004;jsessionid=utxuestt1d9p.alexandra

    http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_United_Arab_Emirates

    Reply
  12. David

    One thing I'm surprised no one has commented on: only taking students from the 'best' schools. Its hard to imagine a more classist admissions policy than this (other than actually selecting on basis of parental wealth directly). I can only imagine the outrage in the UK is Oxbridge tried a similar thing, even if the method of selecting top schools turned up some state schools as well as private ones. And yet they even boast about the diversity of admissions as though only ethnic/national diversity counted.
    I understand of course, that students from the top schools will be definition (at least, I hope they chose the top schools on their students marks rather than 'presitge')will get better marks by definition, and will therefore be more likely to get in anyway, even if they just took grades into account. But closing new flagship thing off completely in its first year to bright students at ordinary schools seems very dubious to me.

    Reply
  13. Chike Jeffers

    I was under the impression that campuses of American universities on the Arabian peninsula was already a normal thing. For example, my institution – Northwestern University – has a campus in Qatar.

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  14. Matthew Silverstein

    As the resident philosopher at NYUAD, let me clear up a couple of misconceptions.

    First, NYUAD is *not* taking students only from the 'best' schools. The policy that was described in the NYT article was a recruitment strategy. The admissions officers at NYUAD asked these schools to nominate students that would be a good fit for NYUAD. But all of these nominated students made up only a fraction of the 9,000 applicants. And not all of the students who received an offer of admission were from this group.

    Second, while there are other American universities that have campuses on the Arabian peninsula, none of these campuses are four-year liberal arts institutions that will be granting their own degrees. As far as I know, NYUAD really is a first in this respect.

    Regarding the worries about the laws concerning homosexuality and the treatment of guest workers in the UAE, these are issues that all us who have joined the institution have had to consider. By coming to NYU, am I implicitly lending my support to policies that should not be supported, or am I instead participating in a cultural exchange that might eventually bring about changes in some of those policies? Obviously, I believe the latter, but I recognize that the issues are anything but clear cut.

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  15. Adam Patrick Taylo

    Others have been (rightly) pointing to the issue of the UAE legal policy re: homosexuality, but we shouldn't overlook the fact that the issues with sexual freedom in the UAE run much broader. This from the website of the US Embassy in UAE ( part of the full human rights report here: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2009/nea/136082.htm),

    "Shari'a courts sometimes imposed flogging sentences as punishment for adultery, prostitution, consensual premarital sex, pregnancy outside marriage, defamation of character, and drug or alcohol abuse. Authorities used canes to administer floggings, resulting in substantial bruising, welts, and open wounds on those flogged…"

    The tough one there is that "consensual premarital sex" is illegal…and common law marriages are not recognized (nor apparently is the right to cohabitation with an unrelated person of the opposite sex).

    Furthermore, drinking is largely illegal, as is the sale or possession of alcohol without a state issued license (so no "symposia").

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  16. Bahram Farzady

    Why not just work on lowering tuition rates in America rather than moving to a place with more rich people?

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  17. Eric Schliesser

    NYUAD was first mentioned, I think, on this blog December 2008. Out of curiosity I then had informal communication with Ned Block and Don Garrett, inquiring if people with Israeli stamps in their passport could travel to NYUAD. (I figured that given NYU's donor base, this would be an obvious issue to have been confronted in planning stages.) Don Garrett informed me that in briefings they had been assured that NYUAD is committed to academic freedom and freedom of travel presupposed in it. Of course, in the future the nature and extent of that academic freedom will be tested in many unsuspected (and probably a few all too familiar) ways. So, I am inclined to give NYUAD the benefit of the doubt.

    Let the innocent cast the first stone. Not so long ago I was employed as un-tenured faculty by Syracuse university, which is the home to the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication, where during just about my first week on campus the University administration closed down the radio station because a radio-program had made fun of the university president in a sexist and racist fashion. Not surprisingly this divided the philosophy department (free space vs hate speech, etc), and while I am sure my colleagues would not have held it against me if I had taken a stance, I happily kept my mouth shut. I don't think the incident caused any reputational damage one way or another to the Syracuse philosophy department among philosophers.

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  18. Bihui Li

    I'm not sure that the anecdote that Allen Hazen recounts accurately reflects the situation with foreign university branch campuses in Malaysia. I've Googled around but I can't find any indication of bumiputera admissions quotas being implemented at these branch campuses, my Malaysian acquaintances all seem to think that quotas apply only to public universities, and statements about the quotas I've found online also state that they are for public education.

    Malaysia and Singapore also have laws against gay sex, and there are many foreign university branch campuses in both (mostly from Australia but also from the US and UK). NYU's Tisch School of the Arts has a branch in Singapore teaching film and dramatic writing, in a country with heavy censorship of films and plays. The University of Nottingham has a branch campus in China.

    For the record, Warwick University abandoned plans to set up a branch campus in Singapore due to concerns about academic freedom:
    http://www.yawningbread.org/apdx_2005/imp-226.htm

    Reply
  19. Grahame Lock

    The following from the THES website, quoting from nymag, on the interesting phenomemon John Sexton:
    "The way Sexton describes his Abu Dhabi courtship is oddly rapturous. Meeting with the crown prince in his opulent majlis social hall was, Sexton says, 'electric'. He believes he connected to the prince metaphysically: 'The crown prince told me that he felt it in my handshake, in my eyes, in my aura at that first meeting.'"
    Nymag adds: "Sexton says that the university has essentially been given a blank check from Abu Dhabi to fund his most expansive fantasies."
    With metaphysical fantasies having first call on the opulence? Sounds like good news for distinguished parapsychologists.

    Reply
  20. Joshua Selby (aka Yakov)

    While my knowledge on the subject is admittedly lacking, I agree there does seem to be something fantastical and insane about the whole enterprise.

    The University, like much of Dubai, seems devoid of history and place in the UAE.

    1) Where is the Islamic influence?

    The faculty members engaging in a critical study of Islam form a vast minority of those involved. Where is the linkage to the historical great Islamic centers of learning? Where the scholars studying Islamic history and society? The university and higher education was only truly preserved in the Islamic world. Is this an admission by UAE and NYU that Islamic society has become so backward that it can only be resuscitated by a near total abandonment?

    Surely, a critical engagement with Islam could have accomplished much more in achieving a centre of learning, than whole scale transplant. This smacks of Japan of the late 19th or early 20th century or the Chinese cultural revolution, more than a re-birth.

    2) Where is the social concern? Great universities in the United States received their vast endowments at least in part by industrialists trying to "give" back what had been earned in part through the hard labour of Americans with fewer opportunities. They were not about rewarding the best, but providing a ladder to promote social mobility.

    One is struck by the absence of discussion of scholarships for the teams of south Asians and other laborers who have been the economic engine of Dubai. Where is the opportunity for the children of the working man in Dubai? This seems to be a group of men who came into great wealth through no virtue of their own, giving away the wealth to other countries as opposed to those involved in earning it. The tradition of amassing great wealth on the backs of working people and then "rewarding" them for their hard work through charity is not even paid lip service here.

    One can point to a great deal of Islamic organizations that are complying with the models above, such as the Aga Khan Foundation and others. Think their architecture prize.

    Anyway, I'm interested how some of the NYU people would respond to those criticisms. I hope I'm just not as knowledgeable about this whole thing as I should be.

    That being said, it is nice to see this money going to making the world a better place, as opposed to Islands shaped like things.

    Reply
  21. Joshua Selby

    To clarify, the following people are listed with an Islamic bent to their studies:

    1) Walter Zev Feldman – a leading researcher in Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music;

    2) Elias Khoury – Global Distinguished Professor of Modern Arabic Literature;

    3) Sheetal Majithia – Assistant Professor of Literature, NYU Abu Dhabi – focuses on theories of modernity; globalization; comparative post-colonial literature, film, feminist, gender, and sexuality studies; cultural studies; and South Asian studies;

    4) Lauren Minsky – Assistant Professor of History, NYU Abu Dhabi – research integrates the social, medical, and environmental histories of South Asia;

    5) Yasser Tabbaa – A specialist in Medieval Islamic architecture;

    6) Philip Kennedy – associate professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature; and

    7) Bernard Haykel – focuses modern Islamic political thought and reformist movements.

    That isn't a bad start, but is still under 1/3 of faculty. Given the breadth of Islamic civilization and the location of the school, I wonder if more efforts will be made to attract some very big names?

    Reply
  22. Allen Hazen

    Bihui Li–
    In my post I was reporting something said in conversation some years ago, I think before the KL campus of the university in question opened: if the situation is actually better than I thought, that is a good thing! … The general worry — that a university opening a campus in a country which does not share all our liberal and democratic values might be tempted to compromise some of them — has been raised by other people posting comments here: apparently I am not the only person with limited faith that university top management can be relied on to act in principled ways. Let us hope that (as you suggest) they aren't always as bad as we fear. (Thank you for your comment: I'll be more careful about my stories in the future.)

    Reply

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