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It’s possible to combine an urban campus with a relatively traditional college experience. UCLA, USC, Northwestern, and Penn are but a few examples. </p>
<p>As Alexandre noted, NYU has excellent academic programs, and there is little to criticize in terms of quality. Unlike other posters, I do not see NYU’s college experience - or lack thereof - to be of particular concern. Students who matriculate at NYU know what they’re getting into, just as students at the military academies and single-sex colleges do. </p>
<p>If I have a criticism of NYU, it’s the dubious actions the university has unabashedly taken from time to time. For example, the campus in Abu Dhabi.
It’s an odd concession from the president of a school once named the most gay-friendly campus in the country by the Princeton Review. But Abu Dhabi is unapologetic. “If folks want to come here, they have to understand this isn’t New York; they have to be culturally sensitive,” says Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi, chief operating officer of Mubadala and a member of the NYU Abu Dhabi steering committee. “Nobody is going to have any special protection.”</p>
<p>Then there’s the problem of Israelis’ being barred from entering the country. “This is not just an abstract question of human rights,” says Sylvain Cappell, an NYU math professor and chair of the Faculty Senators Council. “Israelis are gigantic figures in academic life, and if we held conferences in certain disciplines, it would be an embarrassment not to be able to have Israeli participation.”</p>
<p>One wonders how the Jewish members of NYU’s board of trustees engaged the mental gymnastics necessary to process the U.A.E.’s disconcerting tolerance of anti-Semitism. According to the Anti-Defamation League, a 2002 symposium sponsored by a now-defunct Abu Dhabi think tank challenged the reality of the Holocaust; a speaker called Jews “the enemies of all nations.”</p>
<p>Abu Dhabi has also come under fierce criticism from groups like Human Rights Watch for its mistreatment of foreign laborers, mostly Pakistani and Indian, who have shouldered much of the country’s breakneck development. With few labor laws in place, there is little NYU can do to assure that its new campus will not be built by this workforce. Human Rights Watch has already criticized the Guggenheim for failing to address these concerns in the planning of its Abu Dhabi branch.
As another example, the accepting of money from a figure known to buy stolen antiquities to form an archaeological institute in which she has a key role in the governing committee.
By accepting the money, some argue, the university is tacitly approving Ms. White’s practice of buying Greek and Roman antiquities, including some that experts believe were looted from archaeological sites. Some scholars point proudly to policies adopted by their own institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Cincinnati and Bryn Mawr College, to discourage or even ban the acceptance of Levy-White money.</p>
<p>To protest the donation, one professor has already resigned from N.Y.U.'s existing Center for Ancient Studies, an umbrella group that will continue to coordinate the university’s study of antiquity across various disciplines.</p>
<p>“I simply no longer wanted my name to be affiliated with an organization that would accept such a gift without expressing severe reservations or even protest,” said Randall White, a professor of anthropology who specializes in prehistoric art and technology and Europe’s Paleolithic period.
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