On Feb. 17, Gordon Brown, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, spoke at the Manarat Al Saadiyat Center on Saadiyat Island, the future home of NYUAD’s main campus. For the past three years, Brown’s annual presence has become a tradition in the NYUAD community.

“He comes in his capacity as NYU Distinguish Leader in Residence,” said Jason Seth Beckerman, Director of Administration and Operations at the NYUAD Institute. “He serves the campus in this way, to talk from his perspective as a world leader.” An important part of Gordon Brown’s visit is a themed talk organized by the NYUAD Institute and led by well-known academic figures, such as Bruce Jones and Bob Shrum.

This year the agenda of his visit included a special talk with the Sheikh Mohammed Scholars along with a lecture on current political issues, which was open to NYUAD and the local community. In the lecture he focused on the idea of international collaboration as a way to achieve economic prosperity.

“Financial Crisis is a failure of international cooperation,” Brown said to a diverse audience of students and professors from NYUAD and Zayed University.

To conclude the lecture, Brown emphasized the importance of investment in education. He supported his claim by stating that 61 million children in the world still don’t have an opportunity to go to school.

“Regardless of how Gordon Brown was portrayed as a prime minister, I think if not anything during his Institute talks, he is quite straight forward and transparent about his views,” Beckerman said. “He knows about how we can move through some of these economic crisis. It is somewhat refreshing.”

It is especially inspiring for students to see someone who has an experience in the global economy and politics to support the idea of global education.

“The reason Gordon Brown is interested in NYUAD is because it is a successful implementation of higher education institution that has been transnational,” said a junior at NYUAD commenting on the condition of anonymity. “It seems like some of it you can also adopt for other kinds of institutions.”

But, some people who have attended Gordon Brown’s lecture each year claim he can be repetitive and that his vision is very similar to the one expressed by the founders of NYUAD.

“I think it doesn’t make it less valuable,” the NYUAD student said. “I think every time I’ve attended one of Gordon Brown’s sessions I’ve come away with some of new insights about my position here.”

“He is a real politician and he is a very good public speaker, it is fantastic how he can turn any question or topic and make them sound interesting,” sophomore Petrus Bosa Layarda said.

During his most recent talk, Brown highlighted the role of the international cooperation based on the example of the united effort of the United Arab Emirates and the UK in saving Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani girl who was shot by Taliban gunmen in October of the last year. According to Brown, Malala became a true symbol for girls’ rights for education.

“For us it was a good self-connection,” said Layarda.

In July 2012, Gordon Brown was appointed to the position of United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education. This position increases the value of his opinion about NYU and its international expansion. It confirms that NYUAD with its innovative educational system and exceptional multi-cultural community is following the right path.

“The idea, that he sees global education as something so crucial to possibility to shape the international community, was really heartening,” the junior said.