Archive | August, 2010

An Abu Dhabi Day

August 31, 2010

5:00 a.m. Wake up and call home to say good-night. (It’s 9:00 p.m. in NYC). Try and fail to go back to sleep. Nothing doing. Go to computer. Stream Emmy Awards via Slingbox from my dad’s apartment in NYC. Ain’t the internet amazing?

6:00 a.m. Look at the window of 19th-floor Sama Tower apartment at the sun coming up. (The picture in the linked page cracks me up: the tower is in fact surrounded by other buildings, and the sky these days is very hazy.) Do some e-mail and blogging.

7:00 a.m. Ride the stationary bike in the rooftop gym (46th floor).

8:30 a.m. Walk to the Downtown Campus Building.

9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Second day of the Faculty Orientation. Topics include the curriculum, programming at the NYUAD Institute, global education, community-based and service learning, athletic facilities and other physical plant issues, and an inspiring presentation by Vice Provost for International Education and Outreach Carol Brandt about the incoming class of 2014. I’ve heard some of the student testimonials in previous presentations but they never get old as far as I’m concerned.

1:00 p.m. Meeting with Arts & Humanities Dean Reindert Falkenburg and Associate Dean of Arts Mo Ogrodnik, followed by a meeting with Senior Vice Provost Ron Robin to talk about the year’s faculty searches and other hiring in the arts and humanities.

4:00 p.m. Reindert and I meet with Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Chuck Grim to talk about The ARC (Academic Resource Center). Despite what his surname suggests, Chuck isn’t grim at all — and he’s incredibly upbeat despite his ridiculous workload as we prepare for the start of the first term ever here. The ARC is one of our most exciting pedagogical initiatives, as far as I’m concerned.

5:15 p.m. Walk back to Sama Tower, via the Al Safa supermarket, where I pick up some Diet Pepsi, water, and and a/v cord. Yes, it’s hot and humid.

6:00 p.m. Get on a bus that takes us to the Emirates Palace, where we have an Iftar dinner in the Ramadan tent. An iftar is a community meal with which Muslims break their daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan. At the Emirates Palace, it’s a huge affair, and the NYUAD group has only a few of the many tables. Lots and lots of wonderful food. I stuff myself.

9:00 p.m. or so: Post-dinner socializing with Arts & Humanities colleagues at the Hemingway Bar at the Hilton. Part of the joy of this endeavor is having the chance to work with so many interesting people.

11:00 p.m. Back to Sama: e-mails and phone calls with New York to about logistics for the next day’s meetings.

[Photo: View from my 19th-floor Sama Tower apartment looking east. Early morning.]

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Let the Great Work Begin

August 29, 2010
Al Bloom

Al Bloom Speaking at the NYUAD Faculty Orientation

As I flew into Abu Dhabi airport the other night to attend the opening of NYU Abu Dhabi, I thought a line from Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America: “The Great Work Begins.” The line first occurs when an angel arrives at the end of the play’s first part, Millennium Approaches, and also serves as the final line of the second part, Perestroika, where it follows a blessing given by Prior, the play’s central protagonist: “And I bless you: More Life. / The Great Work Begins.” I’ve written about the play’s conclusion over at Patell and Waterman’s History of New York, where I described the ways in which I believe it embodies a commitment to a cosmopolitan approach to living.

I believe that this is great work in which we are all engaged here in Abu Dhabi. “The world only spins forward,” Kushner’s Prior tells us: “We will be citizens. The time has come.”

And now that the time has come to open the Abu Dhabi campus, I’ve been reflecting back on my involvement with NYUAD over the past two years, which I owe both to Senator John McCain and NYU CAS Dean Matthew Santirocco. I wrote about that connection during my first trip to Abu Dhabi last October, and while my account of the genesis of my involvement in the project may have been slightly tongue-in-cheek, I was quite serious when I described having “the fervor of the convert.” That fervor continues, stronger than ever, now that I am serving NYUAD as its Associate Dean of Humanities.

Back in October, we visited the Downtown Campus building before NYUAD had formally taken possession of the site. One building was still closed to us. During my subsequent visits to Abu Dhabi to help out with the admissions process for our first class, I was delighted to see the building become a real workplace and to imagine what the place would be like when it opened in the fall. Watching the candidates spread themselves out in the library or on the lawn while writing personal essays as part of their weekend’s work, I could envision NYUAD as a place of learning and scholarship — as a college.

Now it’s about to happen for real. Yesterday morning, at the orientation program for our inaugural faculty, Vice Chancellor Al Bloom described NYU Abu Dhabi as a “historic undertaking.” Our new provost Fabio Piano described compared NYUAD with the human genome project, on which he worked, and predicted that of the two, it would be NYUAD that would prove to be the more significant. As the day progressed, the excitement of the faculty who had assembled here was palpable, and it was gratifying to start the first of what I hope will be many conversations with my colleagues here about pedagogy, scholarship, and educational innovation.

The Great Work has begun.

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