We’ve been looking at the sordid story of NYU president John Sexton‘s acceptance of Abu Dhabi dough in exchange for his university’s ethical reputation. In both Shaun Tan’s and Zvika Krieger’s retellings, Sexton comes off as an utter fool – and, needless to say, a useful stooge of the first water. Here’s Krieger on Sexton’s first rendezvous with his desert prince, otherwise known as Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan:
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan
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.” And perhaps most significant to Sexton, when they prepared to part ways, the prince said, “What, no hug?” (Sexton is famous for hugging most everyone in sight.) “I knew right then and there,” Sexton remembers fondly, “that we had found our partner.”
Imagine: this idiot is the head of a leading American university. Tan picks up the story:
Having decided on his plan, Sexton pushed it through with autocratic fervor. “It was negotiated secretly and announced to the rest of us with only a veneer of serious faculty consultation, but we knew it was a fait accompli,” said a senior NYU professor who declined to be named because of “a sense that people who get on Sexton’s wrong side get punished.” Indeed, reservations about the project seemed to batter uselessly against Sexton’s bewildering naïveté. “The Crown Prince chose us,” Sexton said, “and he wants us to be the best.”
At the same time, Sexton warned students and faculty at the new campus that they couldn’t criticize Abu Dhabi’s leaders and policies without repercussions. However, he denied that such restrictions would betray the spirit of a liberal arts college. “I have no trouble distinguishing between rights of academic freedom and rights of political expression,” he said.
Before you continue reading, chew over that one for a few seconds.
Mary Nolan
Krieger attended an NYU faculty meeting at which news of the Abu Dhabi deal caused “outrage.” “To many faculty,” he wrote, “the Abu Dhabi project embodies the worst of John Sexton’s indulgences and the short-sightedness of his glory-seeking ambitions.” Mary Nolan, a longtime NYU history professor, described NYU-Abu Dhabi as “a quintessentially Sexton operation. He thinks he has some sort of a missionary calling, but he operates in a very autocratic manner. Deans are kept on a very short leash, and faculty governance has been absolutely gutted.”
Some NYU professors wondered if Sexton’s own course on “Supreme Court and Religion,” or other courses on “Theories of Gender and Sexuality” and “The Constitution in the Age of Terror,” would “be welcome in a country that lacks an independent media and judiciary or a separation of church and state.” (Krieger noted that two years earlier, “a foreign lecturer at a university [in the Emirates] was dismissed for showing and discussing controversial Danish cartoons that ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad.”)
As we’ll see, those professors’ concerns were more than justified.
In his devastating 2012 article “Dangerous Liaisons,” about the moral and intellectual compromises that major American universities have made in order to squeeze money out of rich foreign autocrats, Shaun Tan devoted a few paragraphs to NYU president John Sexton. If virtually all of America’s major universities have been known to sell out their principles as long as there’s enough cash on the table, NYU is arguably the most notorious offender in this regard. Often it seems to be a money-making enterprise first, a real-estate operation second, and a university (at best) third. And when it comes to licking the boots of creeps with deep pockets, the suits at NYU are especially quick to drop to their knees.
NYU’s Bobst Library
But even for those familiar with NYU’s history of sleaze, the story of Sexton’s sellout to Arab fat cats is a head-turner. First, get a load of this, from a 2008 New York magazine article by Zvika Krieger entitled “The Emir of NYU”:
John Sexton’s office, which sits on the top floor of NYU’s Bobst Library and boasts an impressive view north to Washington Square Park, has recently begun to resemble a shrine to Abu Dhabi. The university president has installed a massive Oriental rug, a gift from the crown prince, on one entire wall. On another hangs a framed portrait of the sunglasses-clad founder of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. In the center of the room is a large framed photograph of an Emirati woman, hand covered in a henna tattoo, gazing provocatively from behind a sequined veil.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan
The reason for this nauseating display? Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, had plunked down $50 million to establish NYU-Abu Dhabi, which, on its opening in 2010, became “the first liberal arts college outside America.” Bankrolled completely by the Abu Dhabi government, NYU-Abu Dhabi was, in Tan’s words, “Sexton’s brainchild, conceived through his mad obsession with dethroning what he calls ‘the holy trinity’ – Harvard, Yale, and Princeton – from their perch at the pinnacle of American education.”
Back to Krieger’s 2008 piece: Sexton “has taken the thirteen-hour flight to the desert emirate four times over the past two years to personally broker the deal with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi. He refers to his trips there as a ‘spiritual experience’ and sees the project as honoring his late wife.” Sexton even planned to teach a course of his own in Abu Dhabi, flying back and forth every other weekend:
“I can’t wait to teach my class over there,” he exclaims, his face flushed with excitement as he throws his feet up in the air and falls back in his chair.
Some NYU professors wondered if Sexton’s own course on “Supreme Court and Religion,” or other courses on “Theories of Gender and Sexuality” and “The Constitution in the Age of Terror,” would “be welcome in a country that lacks an independent media and judiciary or a separation of church and state.” (Krieger noted that two years earlier, “a foreign lecturer at a university [in the Emirates] was dismissed for showing and discussing controversial Danish cartoons that ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad.”)
