A hub between east and west, Europe, Asia and Africa, connecting the old world with the new, a great library stood on the coast of North Africa. While Alexandria’s library has long since vanished, its intellectual contributions provide a guide 2,300 years after its birth. The spirit of inquiry and fusing of disciplines that took place there still define today’s great intellectual enterprises.
The UAE in general, and Abu Dhabi in particular, has the resources and will to become a new Alexandria. As New York University (NYU) plans to open a campus in Abu Dhabi by 2010 and branches of the Guggenheim and Louvre plan to join it on Saadiyat island by 2012, Abu Dhabi is laying the foundation for a new type of intellectual community.
Investments in the arts or in education rarely create immediate returns. At their onset, the questions these institutions introduce can be as disorienting as they are liberating. The difficulties raised by Dr Peter Heath, the new President of the American University of Sharjah, in today’s The National demonstrate the challenges of a project like NYU-Abu Dhabi. “When you’re coming out to give an equivalent education to what you would get in New York... it’s a high-quality education, but how relevant is it to society here?” he asks. For Dr Heath, these institutions must be “integrated into the needs of the community”.
Certainly, NYU-Abu Dhabi must cultivate roots in the UAE. But what every community, whether in New York or the UAE requires, is a global perspective. Education is derived from the Latin root, “to lead out of oneself”. Education in the 21st century must lead us into the new world of globalised businesses and globalised thinking.
The American University of Sharjah is already an example of how international education has become, with 81 countries represented in its student body. Both for students from emerging Asian economies where opportunities for a world-class education are limited and for those from the US and UK for whom higher education has become too expensive, studying in the UAE makes sense. In creating an educational hub for the world, and offering American, European, and Middle Eastern approaches to education side by side, the UAE can teach the world what’s possible.