“With Sexton, digressions quickly metastasise into ideas, ideas into schemes, and schemes into rosters of personnel,” Gravois writes, and this already explains a lot, conceptually, about NYUAD. The piece describes Sexton’s manic devotion to a girl’s debate club he founded (to the detriment of his own school work), the class that he flew to Abu Dhabi to teach every other week, and some of the controversies surrounding the project. What it doesn’t tell us, however, is how the locals feel about NYUAD.

As current students, it can be difficult to appreciate what Sexton is trying to do for the university, because as much as we would like him to, he’s not thinking about us individually. Rather, he’s thinking about the school as a whole, and not even right now, but in the future. Regardless, it’s hard not to gain a new kind of appreciation for the man after reading the piece.

Here is the full thing, but we’ve chosen some choice quotes after the jump.

[Sexton's] fortnightly trips to the UAE are a symbol of his devotion to one of the most audacious, ambitious and strange projects in academia today, the creation of New York University, Abu Dhabi. With his Emirati counterparts, Sexton is proposing to build an American-style research and liberal arts institution that will attract the world’s most elite students and scholars from day one. Just as grandly, Sexton envisions the Abu Dhabi campus as a kind of network hub that will operate in tandem with NYU in Manhattan to power a new “global university” comprising study sites on five continents. And as if all that were still too modest, Sexton believes these global moves will slingshot NYU into the ranks of the Ivy League. If the Abu Dhabi and New York campuses aren’t both ranked among the world’s top 10 universities in 20 years, he says, he’ll consider the whole undertaking a failure.

…

Many academics regard the offshoring of education as a grubby enterprise, a profit-maximising strategy that is bound to dilute academic standards. But in Sexton’s mind, NYU’s best shot at competing directly with schools like Princeton and Harvard lies overseas. He is betting that the right kind of global presence will actually lure cosmopolitan students and professors away from the old, established Ivies – to the UAE.

…

Sexton tells the story as if it were an origin myth, one that he still consults for its meaning, almost as if it were about somebody else. One of the meanings, he figures, is this: “Because this oblivious, immature, overly confident young man set unreasonable expectations, the students met them. There was strength in my obliviousness.”

…

One sentence on the brochure’s cover described Abu Dhabi’s relationship to “NYU’s anchor campus in New York City”. With a few strokes of his red pen, Sexton performed minor surgery with drastic results. Now the sentence referred to NYU Abu Dhabi and “NYU’s other anchor campus in New York City”.

…

The school’s financial aid policies, meanwhile, will take their cues straight from the highly endowed Ivy League – according to NYU, “qualified students will not have to incur any debt to support their education”.

…

“It’ll be the most selective school at NYU,” he says. He has taken to calling it an “honours college”.

…

Indeed, Sexton expects the new campus to inaugurate a transformation of the entire university. He envisions both Abu Dhabi and Washington Square as “portal” campuses in what he calls a “global network university”. Students will enrol at either the Emirati or the American NYU, the idea goes, and then circulate among the university’s academic outposts on four continents, while faculty will move within the network to teach and do research.

…

An even more common view is that Sexton, the fundraising impresario, is merely in thrall to the promise of petrodollars. Sexton’s main argument against these suspicions is essentially that they mistake the global network university for a little plan. “The notion that Abu Dhabi is somehow some one-off operation that has special motives, I reject that completely,” he says. “You can’t build a great university on a business plan.”

…

In the revised, expanded and somewhat idiosyncratic notion of ecumenism Sexton now preaches, the word implies a kind of pluralist dialogue among cultures that studiously remains true to the important differences between worldviews. Sexton even likes to refer to NYU as “the ecumenical university”.

…

NYU Abu Dhabi will operate outside the supervision of the Ministry of Higher Education. But it seems almost inevitable that similar flare-ups will arise at the new campus – in a context, moreover, where free speech groups do not rule the media terrain. “We’re going to come in here and do what we do,” says Sexton, “which will over time obviously test the bona fides of our partners. We’re not going to do provocative things just for the sake of testing. It’s a call for a certain amount of maturity.”

…

For all his exuberance and dishevelled naturalness – the hugs, the rumpled clothes – Sexton is a highly strategic figure. He often seems perfectly aware of how and when his “Who, me?” persona works to his advantage. Occasionally, he will speak self-consciously about his eccentricities. “That’s what I’m doing with the hugs,” he might say.

…

Al Bloom, who will head the Abu Dhabi campus, was for 17 years president of Swarthmore, a small Pennsylvania school perennially ranked among America’s top three liberal arts colleges. “Four hours after I announced publicly that I would step down from the presidency at Swarthmore,” Bloom says, “I got a call from John Sexton at my office.” The two men had never met. By the end of the phone call, says Bloom, “I was about ready to say yes.”

…

“He’s interested in running a very top-down model of a university, and that’s not a model a lot of people agree with,” says Rana Jaleel, a graduate student who is both an organiser for the graduate student union and a member of a group called the Coalition for Fair Labor, which has advocated for worker protections in Abu Dhabi. “You can’t go around hugging people,” she added.

…

Around that same time, Sexton boarded a plane for his class in Abu Dhabi, leaving one of his deputies to monitor the campus disturbance back in New York. Holding true to his theme of healthy disrespect for authority – including his own – Sexton told the Sheikh Mohammed Scholars all about the sit-in. The students laughed. “We’ve always wanted to do that,” one of them said.

Image from NYUAD

Your goal is to evolve a disease that will kill every person on the planet, and your enemy is the government, who is trying to stop you. Hint: choose symptoms that are very subtle, because if people start vomiting and and suffering necrosis, the government will close everything down. Also, Madagascar is almost impossible.

Good luck!

But it turns out that this wasn’t another TBNYU! stunt – the note was signed by “The Eucleian Society,” an NYU secret society with a literary bent. Apparently, “NYU has its secrets, too” is one of its catchphrases. It’s unclear as to what the group actually does, as well as what they were trying to accomplish with the beepers, but it’s lucky for them that we weren’t taking a final.

Full text of the message after the jump.

Fellow Classmates,

Truth is something you find outside of the classroom, outside of the walls of this university, and only from the professor in front of you insofar as he can serve as an experienced guide.

We’re not here to preach. We’re here to simply say, NYU has its secrets too.

This is your friendly wake-up call.

Regards,
The Eucleian Society

UPDATE. Here’s a tip we received from NYULocal reader Dan:

At approximately 10:00, room 806 in Silver erupted into a swarm of beeps from unknown locations. Everyone (including professor) got really nervous until somebody pointed out that had happened in a previous class of his, and that it was most likely some sort of protest related thing.

Please leave a comment if a beeper went off in your class, and tell us which class it was. We’re trying to get a sense of how many they’ve hit.

Photo by Nicole He

Description is as follows:

A lot of negative media has begun surrounding what is known in America as Swine Flu. News anchors and bloggers alike have been viciously attacking this condition, pointing out solely the unfavorable aspects, such as death.

What the reports fail to mention, however, is that it also produces a need to dance til your pants fall off.

If you recently discovered that you have Swine Flu, have known for years, have had sexual relations at least 4 times with someone who has or just want to feel included, then this convention is for you.

Be yourself. Have Swine Flu. Kiss someone with Swine Flu. Eat sandwiches with muenster cheese and thinly sliced tomatos. Fuck it.

Photo: Flickr courtesy of xirzon

Case in point, a tweet from NYU Financial Aid Counselor Paolo Lim, shown above.

The compliment refers to when Dan, who is running into financial problems for Yale, suggests that he could go to a “great school” like NYU, because “they offer financial aid.” (Best joke of the episode by far.)

But they compromise by making fun of NYU’s hipsterdom, as Blair complains about ironic facial hair. And no one can argue that we don’t have a lot of that.

See for yourself here. From these pictures, we can see that what it takes to be the hottest kid in New York City is having more makeup than clothes.

The best part of the whole thing is that they say things like “My legs are hard and muscular from dancing and my lips are big and I know how to use them,” and “I’ve been doing ab workouts since I saw Will Smith in ‘Bad Boys’ running with his button-down shirt unbuttoned. It was inspiring.”

NYU is represented by Danielle Simons, pictured here on the left.

Photo from the New York Post

NYU making the SAT I non-mandatory will likely increase minority numbers on campus. (Or, more students will apply and NYU will still only accept the ones that have 2100+, sneakily lowering the acceptance rate.)

It’s Ben & Jerry’s 31st birthday, also known as Free Cone Day. From noon to 8 pm today, run by your nearest Ben & Jerry’s to grab a free scoop in a flavor of your choice.

The closest location is at 3rd Ave and 10th St. Here’s a map of the Ben & Jerry’s locations in NYC after the jump:

View Larger Map

Grad students protest in Bobst, a high school senior says “They’re saying that tuition rates are going up by 60 percent.” Hmm?

Earth week!!!