Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, has been buzzing with construction activity for the past few years. Two prestigious western institutions, New York University and the Guggenheim Museum, have decided to open branches in the country — and were immediately embroiled in controversy.
Immigrant construction workers at the NYU site were working 11- to 12-hour days, seven days a week, it was revealed. Many of them have not been reimbursed recruitment fees, costing up to a year’s wages, and live in terrible conditions. The ones who were brave enough to protest the abuses were met with beatings and imprisonment.
Similarly, laborers of the Guggenheim Museum were forced to pay for their contracts, live in substandard housing, and had their passports taken so they couldn’t leave the work site. Last year, 40 of them were hospitalized after their employers cracked down on a strike.
Both institutions claimed to be shocked, with NYU issuing a “Statement of Labor Values,” to which all participants in the construction of NYU-Abu Dhabi were contractually obligated to abide.
But the deplorable labor conditions is just one piece of a larger question: Why are these organizations there in the first place?
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Foreign workers at a construction site on Saadiyat Island — a man made island off the coast of Abu Dhabi — where NYU’s campus is located.Photo: Getty Images
While UAE might appear relatively secular to outsiders, the truth is that the nation is still ruled by Sharia law. Don’t be fooled by the word “law.” The law of the US Constitution serves to protect individuals and their freedom, the law of Sharia serves to control individuals and limit their freedoms.
Women are legally treated as property. Rights such as free speech are unheard of. And contracts like the fair labor contract “negotiated” by NYU and agreed by the UAE are not grounded in any real law. Sharia leaders decided on a case-by-case basis, what the rules are, for that moment.
Mesmerized by the glory of having their institutions be the first to break into the Middle East, NYU and Guggenheim did little independent due diligence. They bought into the illusion that the UAE, with its man-made islands and skyscraper hotels, is a free country.
Of course, money is the primary motive for this ignorance.
NYU received $50 million from Abu Dhabi for signing up. And 2008 article by New York Magazine entitled The Emir of NYU reported that “NYU president John Sexton has been promised a blank check to duplicate his university on a desert island in Abu Dhabi, leaving both campuses flush with petrodollars.”
This blank check is being used to expand the NYU campus in New York City by 6 million square feet by 2031. This NYU 2031 plan is hotly protested by 11 community groups with petitions and lawsuits. What these protesters have not done is link the funding of NYU 2031 to the blank check by the UAE government, who denies their women, laborers, and everyone else equal treatment or due process under the law.
The cases are appalling:
In 2013, 24-year-old Marte Deborah Dalelv from Norway was sentenced to 16 months jail after reporting an alleged rape at a business meeting in Dubai. She was charged with sex outside of marriage, consumption of alcohol, and making a false complaint. Meanwhile, that same year, a father who whipped his 12-year-old son to death with electrical cord because his school grades were low was sentenced to only three years in jail.
In 2010, a British couple, Ayman Najafi and Charlotte Adams, was jailed for a month after sharing a kiss in an Abu Dhabi restaurant.
In May 2014, an Asian housemaid was sentenced to stoning to death by an Abu Dhabi Shariah Court for committing adultery.
In 2008, Australian Alicia Gali, was jailed in Fujairah, one of the Arab Emirate countries, for eight months for adultery after she reported being raped by three colleagues at the luxury resort where she worked.
British couple Vince Acors and Michelle Palmer were jailed for three months in 2008 for having sex on a public beach — an allegation they denied.
It seems that NYU is hanging its hat on the special “free zone” status that, in theory, exempts its students from many of Abu Dhabi’s strict restrictions on rights including media, political and LGBT freedoms.
However, we are already seeing that Sharia-driven UAE does not honor “fair labor contracts.” And NYU fails to recognize that their “free zone” status can be easily revoked under Sharia Law.
Free zone or not, what is the value of offering an NYU education in an artificial bubble surrounded by human rights abuses, sanctioned by country law? How does this align with NYU’s mission to shape an intellectually rich environment for faculty and students both inside and outside the classroom?
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