IN a small classroom at New York University Abu Dhabi, Paulo Lemos Horta was pushing his students to explore the difficulties of translation. In some ways, it might have been a class on any American campus — except that virtually everyone was fluent in a second language.
CULTURAL EXCHANGE Chani Gatto-Bradshaw, top left, socializing in her dorm and in an abaya, a gift from a classmate (her usual street attire: American teen).Between them, Mr. Horta’s six students spoke Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, Polish and English. They were able to take a poem written originally in Portuguese and, with occasional help from Google, translate it over and over from one language to another, considering the shifts in meaning and emphasis that resulted.
“You can see,” said Mr. Horta, “that some things just cannot be said in another language.”
N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi isn’t much to look at yet — a low-rise building of steel and purple (one of N.Y.U.’s colors), about the size of a high school, sitting in a drab part of this fast-growing city where minarets and cranes fight for air space.
But it is taking shape nonetheless, opening last September with 150 students and about 45 professors, some like Mr. Horta having moved here for newly created tenure-track jobs. Its modest campus, surrounded by a patch of green grass, belies the scope of the ambition at work here.
Many American colleges and universities have created outposts around the world. But N.Y.U. is the first to open a liberal arts college intending to roughly reproduce the experience students get in Washington Square. It aims to have 2,200 undergraduates within the next 10 years, part of a plan by New York University’s president, John Sexton, to create a worldwide network with N.Y.U.’s name on it. Last month, he announced a similar project for Shanghai, to open in 2013. Mr. Sexton says that the original founders of N.Y.U. saw it as a university “in and of” the city. Now, he believes, it is time for the university to become “in and of the world.”
The financing of N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi is noteworthy. The college is being entirely paid for by Abu Dhabi, the largest and richest of the United Arab Emirates, which has so far provided generously, including financial aid for many students and a promise to build a sprawling campus on nearby Saadiyat Island, where branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums are under construction.
Whether the college will succeed, however, remains an open question. It is too soon to say, for instance, what, if any, impact the unrest in the Middle East might have on recruitment. And universities that have tried smaller projects in the region have failed spectacularly in the last year — some, like Michigan State, losing millions of dollars in the process.
“John Sexton has a very entrepreneurial vision here,” says Ben Wildavsky, senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation and author of a book on international education, “The Great Brain Race.” “He is trying to turn N.Y.U. into a global talent magnet. It may not work for many schools. It may not work for N.Y.U. But it is an audacious new way of thinking about a university.”
For now, the students live in a glass office tower, a noisy, dusty 20-minute walk across several eight-lane roads from the purple building, which is already fading in the intense sunlight. But beyond that, they are experiencing a Cadillac education. Most of their classes run like senior seminars. And they don’t lack for comfort or entertainment. On a recent evening, a half-dozen students took swimming classes at a local country club. There was kayaking the evening before and a horseback-riding trip planned for the weekend.
Students travel farther afield, too. Mr. Horta’s literature class is studying the Portuguese poet Luis de Camoes and the influence that living in the Arab world might have had on him, and he has taken them to a Portuguese fort on the Strait of Hormuz. Rubén Polendo, who teaches a class on theater in the Arab world, is taking his students to India to meet artists and participate in workshops, including one with his mentor.
Laith Aqel says he tried not to describe his school to friends when he went home to Wayne, N.J., over break. “They would all just be jealous. I don’t talk about it.”
The project is not without its critics, many of whom wonder how an American-style university can manage in a country still ruled by a royal family, where most Emerati women cover their heads and wrap themselves in black abayas when they go out, and local universities are single sex. Some N.Y.U. professors have said they feel cheapened by the deal. Some worry that the money can stop at any minute. Others do not want the university affiliated with a country that has a troubling history regarding academic freedom and human rights.
“The faculty was not consulted on this plan,” says Andrew Ross, the chairman of the N.Y.U. chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “If it had been consulted, I’m not sure many of them would have said yes.” But hundreds of faculty members have volunteered to work there on a temporary basis.
Suzanne Daley is European correspondent and former education editor of The Times.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 24, 2011
An article last Sunday in the special Education Life section about New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus misspelled the name of a student. He is Laith Aqel, not Laif Aquel. The article also misstated, using information from N.Y.U., the number of applicants flown to Abu Dhabi last year to see the campus. It was 274, not 300.
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