New York University has promised a swift investigation into recent allegations that construction workers were mistreated at its Abu Dhabi campus, but the probe could be particularly thorny, given a university trustee’s role within the emirate’s government.
NYU has been embroiled in controversy since last week, when The New York Times reported that laborers building the opulent, government-financed campus in the United Arab Emirates lived in squalid housing and struggled to get by on low wages. Those charges were particularly damaging to NYU, given the university’s “statement of labor values,” issued in 2009, which pledged that all workers on the campus would be treated with a level of fairness and dignity uncommon in the region.
The controversy has brought attention to Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, a member of the university’s Board of Trustees who is a businessman and a policy adviser to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi. Through various leadership roles, Mr. Al Mubarak has been at the nexus of a group of organizations charged by the university and its Abu Dhabi governmental partners with monitoring whether workers, including contractors and vendors, were treated appropriately.
NYU officials have pledged a “thorough investigation” of the allegations raised in the Times article, adding that the “results will be transparently reported.” As of Wednesday, however, university officials said they could not answer questions about whether a third party would conduct the probe or how the board might respond if Mr. Al Mubarak were found to have any responsibility for labor problems.
“Mr. Al Mubarak is a respected member of the NYU board, and his membership is not in question,” John H. Beckman, a university spokesman, said in an email.
Mr. Al Mubarak was not made available for comment on Wednesday.
Jill T. Derby, a consultant with the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, said that the allegations had “cast a shadow” on New York University’s operations in Abu Dhabi and that any trustees with direct involvement in the project should step away from the investigation.
“There are clear guidelines about that person recusing themselves from that entire discussion,” said Ms. Derby, a former chairwoman of the Nevada System of Higher Education’s Board of Regents. “The standard is, you leave the room.”
Mr. Al Mubarak’s connections to the project are significant. He is chairman of Abu Dhabi’s government-run Mubadala Development Company, which was charged with building NYU’s main campus in the emirate, on Saadiyat Island. He also has reporting-line authority over Tamkeen, the Abu Dhabi agency charged with monitoring the project’s “commitment to workers’ rights,” an independent compliance report states.
Construction of the Abu Dhabi campus has involved numerous contractors. In a statement on Wednesday, a spokesman for Mubadala said that the company’s role was as “development manager,” overseeing the appointment of contractors who “pledged adherence” to the standards set forth in 2009.
“The issues raised, if accurate, not only violate the spirit of the Joint Statement of Labor Values, they violate Mubadala’s own principles of doing business,” Robin Haddrill, the spokesman, wrote.
Man of Connections
College trustees across the United States are expected to bring money and connections to the institutions they serve, and in that sense Mr. Al Mubarak is a typical board member. No one can argue with his connections.
In 2010, The Wall Street Journal named Mr. Al Mubarak among its “Who’s Who” of nonroyal officials in the United Arab Emirates.
Ticking off his credentials as a powerful force, the newspaper mentioned Mr. Al Mubarak’s role as “right-hand man” to the crown prince, his sporty Maserati, and his increasing international profile as chairman of England’s Manchester City Football Club.
NYU’s board added Mr. Al Mubarak to its roster in February 2008, about four months after the Abu Dhabi deal was announced.
Jack B. Siegel, a nonprofit-governance expert, said it is easy to see why the board would want Mr. Al Mubarak’s expertise. At the same time, Mr. Al Mubarak is in the unique position of serving two masters, as both watchdog for NYU’s best interests and a government official loyal to Abu Dhabi, Mr. Siegel said. Those interests may not always be aligned.
“Are they getting the full picture, or is he filtering information?” asked Mr. Siegel, a Chicago lawyer. “If I were on the board, I’d be saying to myself, ‘Wait a second, I can’t just be listening to what this guy says. I have to have some independent and objective viewpoint to make sure the university is being protected.’”
That objective viewpoint is said to be provided by Mott MacDonald, a third-party consulting company that produces annual reports about labor-standard compliance at NYU-Abu Dhabi. The group’s latest report found some problems but concluded that, “over all, there is strong evidence confirming the NYU-AD project is taking workers’ rights seriously.”
Mott MacDonald is part of a monitoring regime that includes several different agencies, and Mr. Al Mubarak is not far removed from any of them. Tamkeen, the government agency that appointed Mott MacDonald, is wholly owned by the Executive Affairs Authority of the Government of Abu Dhabi, a policy-advising group led by Mr. Al Mubarak.
“Tamkeen has the mandate to deliver the NYU-AD Project on behalf of the government of Abu Dhabi and to monitor the NYU-AD Project’s commitment to workers’ rights,” the compliance report states.
Officials at NYU and Mubadala, the development company, did not respond to inquiries on Wednesday about Tamkeen’s leadership, and specifically about whether Mr. Al Mubarak works directly with the agency.
Mr. Al Mubarak’s role as chief executive of Mubadala has come under some scrutiny because the company was responsible for construction of the Saadiyat Island campus, where the labor problems were alleged. But NYU officials have pushed back against any suggestion that a company headed by one of its trustees got a sweetheart deal to build a campus overseas. On the contrary, officials said, the government that owns Mubadala is pumping money into NYU by agreeing to pay for campus construction and operations.
“To be clear: NYU did not pay any money to Mubadala or anyone else associated with the project,” Mr. Beckman, the university spokesman, said. “Were there to be an issue that posed a conflict of some sort, the board would handle it in the appropriate manner.”
Mubadala, which has $61-billion in assets, does not claim to be a charity. In addition to improving the quality of life in Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates, its investments “are designed to generate sustainable profits over the long term,” the company’s website states.
Corporate Board
In recent years, New York University has seemed to lurch from one controversy to the next. Faculty critics have trained their criticism on John E. Sexton, the university’s president, and the Board of Trustees, both of whom detractors describe as having an overly corporate approach to governance.
Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media studies, said the Abu Dhabi controversy was just the latest manifestation of problems that arise when dealmakers run an academic institution.
“When you have a board that’s comprised exclusively of big players in real estate, finance, and law, without any academic element, it is inevitable that they will tend to forget what a university is really for,” he said.
“There’s a reason why all the schools in the country are watching this fight here,” he added. “What’s happening here is, in a way, the most extreme version of what’s happening all over.”
Professors in Abu Dhabi, however, have been less critical. In a letter to The Chronicle published on Wednesday, about 50 faculty members signed a letter that said they were convinced that the university’s partners were “trying to do their best.”
At the same time, the professors said, the university’s compliance mechanisms probably needed revisiting.
“We know that this review is now taking place, understand that it will take some time to complete, and are quite aware that the institution’s reputation rests upon it responding decisively to address any failings that emerge from this review,” the letter states.
Jay W. Lorsch, a Harvard Business School professor with expertise in corporate governance, said that any thorough investigation of the NYU matter would focus on who knew what when, including what Mr. Al Mubarak may have known in his role as a government adviser.
“Somebody had to know what was going on if it was going on,” Mr. Lorsch said. “Someone at NYU.”
