Go Forth (or Give us Four Years)

It turns out that not everyone going to NYUAD is flying 9000 miles to get to the UAE. My total travel happens to around 24 hours. That’s miserable. Others, like a gentleman from Qatar, have a twenty minute flight. Some even live in Abu Dhabi. Then the circle moves slowly outward, moving to Hungary and Kenya, Russia and Australia and China, South Africa and Europe. Then there are those of us from across the pond, with the furthest away being in California and various places throughout Latin America.

We are all coming from various distances, yet we are all pioneers to a new, dangerous place. Do not interpret that as if I were saying Abu Dhabi was a dangerous place. It is not in the least bit unsafe. The dangerous place to which I refer is the university itself. NYUAD is a new venture that presents many apparent and probably even more hidden risks. What if a major war erupts in the Middle East? What if funding is removed? We could continue playing this “what if” game, but I’m not so cruel and I have no desire to be so tedious. Suffice to say though, our quest is fraught with many more perils then that of the average college student,

There was a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that outlined many of the potential pitfalls that NYUAD could find itself in. It was actually a refreshingly well thought out op-ed. Something in it stuck with me though, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. The writer referred to our class as “pioneers”. That phrase still strikes me. We’re pioneers. How often have pioneers had the pleasure of knowing that were just that? But everyone else knows that same fact, that we’re pioneers (I like to type that phrase, so if you don’t like it, too bad). The world is watching us, and we are painfully aware of this.

Quite a bit of the coverage has caused negative sentiment from the vast world of bloggers. Especially the New York Times article from mid-June. NYUAD hasn’t even had a chance to welcome its first class of pioneers onto its campus and the world has already begun to condemn it. I would ask them to wait ten years, but we aren’t going to need that long to prove that NYUAD is going to become a beacon of academy and social change and cosmopolitism. If I were to write a letter to the world, I would look a lot like this:

Dear World,

I know you have a lot of concerns about New York University Abu Dhabi. I understand your issues and in fact sympathize with a few of them. It seems like you won’t even give us a chance though. You call us student spoiled and our university unsound and founded on poor moralistic grounds. But those two concepts are really hard to determine at this early point. And believe me, this machine isn’t stopping anytime soon. So, why not give us a chance? In fact, give us four years. I promise in four years we will change your mind, and for that matter, you.

Thanks,

Stephen

I might bulk it up a bit if I were to actually send that, but I’m not going to send due to the enormous amount of paper that it would take. And postage. Mailing stuff isn’t exactly cheap.

To those coming with me to AD, we are pioneers, let’s show the world what we can do. Let us show the world that the world can still change and there is a vast jungle of cosmopolitan academy that is still unexplored. Let’s map that jungle for them.

And world, give us four years.