It was The New York Observer this time. Timely, too, as it had been literally months since I had read a published article insinuating I was a terrible person whose sense of morality had been purchased into silence. One cannot help but feel unenthusiastic about opening an article about NYUAD and its theoretical future neighbors on Saadiyat Island when the accompanying thumbnail photo is a floating skull covered in skyscrapers. But, for the sake of argument, if you haven't already, you should read it.

The details are disturbing.

Saadiyat is referred to incessantly as Happiness Island. Facts given about the UAE are expectantly sensationalist, out of context or stretched ("women have barely more rights than farm animals"). The author quickly mentions the2013 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report and then lays it aside after providing one brief quote, and proceeds instead to make a series of poorly substantiated claims. In summation, according to the article, NYU has abandoned free speech and women's rights; and sold not only its soul, but the soul of the Western world.

In another article, “Should Top U.S. Colleges Expand Overseas?”, the author uses NYUAD as the focal point of her critique, but provides statistics almost exclusively about other colleges — including one confusing instance where she seems to discuss NYU students with a quote from a Carnegie Mellon Qatar professor.

There’s a way that these little details make these articles feel careless, which in turn makes them easy to ignore. Particularly because I've been reading them since before I attended NYUAD –—— before NYUAD even existed — and the misconceptions stay largely the same. Particularly because these questions of tacit endorsement are never reflected back on the reader or the author: What values did your education represent, and which did it betray? As a citizen of the United States or any other nation, what do you remain silent on? Where does the money that buys your chicken sandwich go?

The 2013 HRW singles out the United States government for its silence on the abuses within the UAE and the notable $3.48 billion dollar deal with the UAE to provide a missile defense system.

I have been abroad for a year now ¬— minus time well spent in an Abu Dhabi J-Term — and I have had to explain NYUAD time and time again, often for NYU staff across the global sites who pull me aside because they admit to knowing next to nothing about the Abu Dhabi campus ("Campus? Is it a Campus? How many years do you study there?"). I understand their confusion; from the outside looking in, our school is difficult to get one's head around. We are the exceptions to so many rules, and yet so exceptionally ordinary in some respects. Worse, we have not succeeded in telling our own story, and so others have succeeded in doing it for us. “Happy Island” spreads faster and is more acceptable than “cosmopolitanism,” and it will continue to be so until we can tell a better story about what it is we are doing here.

But that begs the question: what are we doing here?

I can point easily enough to some of the school’s rhetoric, to the partnership with and ideas of the UAE government; these are the reasons we came. I can point to the promising beginnings of some truly incredible student research and scholarship, to dialogues being started and ground being laid for progress; these are our hopes materializing. But what is the net effect of New York University in Abu Dhabi today? What will it be tomorrow? And when will we be able to say exactly how we're worth the investment?

Will we make a difference even though our students and faculty are constantly coming and going across the globe? Or will we become another regular Abu Dhabi occurrence of momentary faces, always passing each other on our way in or out?

What are our duties—our obligations as an institution, as an American university, as an international university, as a place of learning and as a part of a place? Do we represent the principles we believe in?

I say we because I have always felt that I signed up to be partially responsible for the creation and development of this university. In that sense, I understand that I have a different culpability for the flaws of my school than other students, and I can understand the critics who would equate me with the sins of NYUAD — I chose to be part of the shaping of my school; they did not. I have the distinct opportunity of being charged with shaping the institution I am enrolled in; they do not. I am paid to go to my college; they are not.

But I could just as easily ask: What am I doing?

I am a junior in college, and so much of what I believed about myself, and my life has been turned on its head. Inexplicably, I am surprised by this, as I apparently managed to previously convince myself I had pretty much figured things out.

I used to have an airtight life plan for ending up in New York City, and now I can't say for certain which continent I'll be on after graduation. There's enormous privilege contained in that statement, and an intoxicating excitement that I freely admit is part of what brought me to this college in the first place. In my time at NYUAD, I've traveled more than 100,000 miles. I have learned to convert that to over 160,000 kilometers when addressing an international group. I have met amazing people and had unforgettable experiences.

But what am I doing about it? Am I making the best of this opportunity? Am I focused on all the wrong goals—trying too hard in all the wrong places? Did I stay up late for all the wrong assignments, and sleep through the moments where I stood to really learn something? Do I know what matters to me? And am I working towards that, or something else entirely?

What am I doing right now? And is it something I believe in? I'm not sure. And maybe we aren't either. After all, NYUAD and I are both just juniors in college. We both had the best intentions when we started, and we both have hopes of where we could go. But ideals aside, I do not know if either of us really knows who we are right now.

Could that be all right? And could that ever be a better story than Happy Island?