What is news is the silence around last month’s 2013 Human Rights Watch report claiming that the human rights situation in the United Arab Emirates (of which Abu Dhabi is a city-state) “deteriorated rapidly” in 2012.

So far, none of the bastions of Western tolerance have had much to say about that, or, for that matter, the previous annual reports detailing how laborers in the UAE are indentured servants, women have barely more rights than farm animals and political dissent leads directly to jail, sometimes by way of torture.

The details are disturbing.

Women’s rights are basically nonexistent. Like many Islamic nations, the UAE applies Shariah law to women, meaning that women cannot seek adjudication pursuant to a civil code. Rape victims rarely seek justice, and if they do, they are prosecuted themselves. In December, a 28-year-old British woman who claimed she was gang raped by three men in Dubai (another UAE city-state) was prosecuted for drinking without a license. The Supreme Court has upheld men’s right to beat their wives and children. Emirati women can only obtain a divorce through khul’a, a no-fault divorce that requires them to forfeit all financial rights. Emirati females are legally allowed to inherit just one-third of assets while men are entitled to inherit two-thirds. Men, but not women, are allowed to have four spouses. Men can marry non-Muslims; women cannot.

Two prominent human rights lawyers, Mohammed al-Roken and Mohammed al-Mansoori, have been detained for several years, along with judges, teachers and student leaders. Islamist activists simply disappear in detention. Last year, authorities issued a new federal decree on cyber-crime, making it a jailable offense to caricature or criticize the government. In 2011, a lecturer in economics at the Abu Dhabi University of Paris-Sorbonne (also lured to Happiness Island) was arrested for criticizing the government.

Nearly 90 percent of UAE residents are foreigners with limited rights. Many are Bangladeshi immigrant laborers who must work off the fees they are charged to get hired, have no right to organize or bargain collectively and face penalties for going on strike. Worker suicide rates are high.

This milieu would not seem to be the ideal home away from home for professors who teach labor history and gender studies.

But the price was right.

It’s unclear just how much Emirati money flooded Washington Square. Abu Dhabi gave NYU $50 million in the ’00s, but that was only the public, first tender offer. In 2008, Mariët Westermann, the former director of NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, appointed the first vice chancellor of NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) said, “Abu Dhabi is willing to invest in whatever is needed on the Square. They are very committed to the flow.”

NYUAD spokesman Josh Taylor declined to put a figure on the total contributed for The Observer but, referring to the new HRW report, he said: “NYUAD is committed to an environment that ensures academic freedom, thereby providing a context in which students, faculty and staff can engage in the intellectual exploration and analysis of even the most sensitive issues. However, such freedom does not extend to tolerating speech, writing and/or behavior that intentionally demeans others based on gender, race, religion, national origin, disability, and/or sexual orientation. It also does not extend to public defamation, libel or slander. Such behavior runs counter to NYUAD’s educational mission.”

Regarding women’s rights, he emailed us a Tumblr link with several dozen snapshots of NYUAD students holding small signs starting with “Feminism is important because ...”

He said that gender studies is not one of the degrees offered at the Happiness Island campus, but women are not subject to the dress code that prevails beyond its walls.

NYU’s president, legal scholar John Sexton (who cut the Abu Dhabi deal and has earned the nickname “the George Steinbrenner of academia” for his fund-raising and grand vision), is teaching a course in religion and government at Abu Dhabi and commutes between New York and the UAE. About a third of the NYUAD staff consists of New York-based faculty members who fly over (first class) to teach on a monthly basis.

A 2008 New York magazine story on NYUAD revealed off-the-record professorial angst over the collaboration, but faculty members have been mostly silent. It’s a rare voice on the left—especially in the academies—who will take on Islamist censorship and Shariah abuses against women.

This is all the more disturbing since at NYUAD, at least, the chill seems to be getting inside. Last summer, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that NYU’s “researchers in the UAE use caution in broaching topics such as AIDS and prostitution, the status of migrant laborers; Israel and the Holocaust; and domestic politics and corruption.”

Reacting to that, Naomi Schaefer Riley, a Wall Street Journal education writer, penned a piece in The New York Post accusing NYU and other American colleges of “pandering to despots.” The Village Voice’s Nat Hentoff picked up her theme and accused NYU’s Mr. Sexton of “despoiling” NYU’s reputation.

NYU professor Andrew Ross, head of the NYU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, told The Observer that the faculty plans a vote of no confidence on Mr. Sexton next month, and the Abu Dhabi issue is one reason for it.  “The decision to invest so much of NYU’ reputation in Abu Dhabi was made unilaterally by President John Sexton, and it is one of the factors weighing on the faculty’s desire to pursue a vote of no confidence in him,” he said.

Still, hundreds of NYU’s faculty members have volunteered to work in Abu Dhabi anyway. And why not? Who could resist the lure of large bonuses—in some cases the equivalent of two-thirds of a year’s salary—first-class airfare for family and free private school for the kids?

NYUAD aims to have 2,200 undergraduates within the next 10 years. Currently the school has 450 students who pay $65,300 per year, much of it underwritten by UAE financial aid.

While NYUAD has been open for business on Happiness Island since 2010, the Louvre’s opening has been delayed to 2015, and the $800 million deal to bring the Guggenheim there is also stalled, until at least 2017. Frank Gehry’s 90,000-square-foot design, looking every bit like a crazy pile of discarded origami bits, remains a model only. Not a spade of desert sand has been overturned.

Last year, artists and curators signed an online petition threatening to boycott the Goog over the treatment of workers in Abu Dhabi. “Artists should not be asked to exhibit their work in buildings built on the backs of exploited workers,” Walid Raad, a Lebanese-born New York artist who was one of the boycott’s organizers, said in a statement. “Those working with bricks and mortar deserve the same kind of respect as those working with cameras and brushes.”

But abused laborers aren’t the only obstacle to a happy marriage between the Goog and the emir. In a Guardian piece last year about the stalled plans, a museum official said the delay provides time to “educate the audience,” in case the art might provoke an “aggressive response” from conservative Emiratis. William Wells, director of the Townhouse gallery in Cairo, told the Guardian that the Guggenheim did not have a signed commitment from Abu Dhabi that there would be no censorship, although the project managers told the paper there was an understanding. Eleanor R. Goodbar, a Guggenheim foundation spokesman, told The Observer that terms of the agreement were confidential.

Last September, independent auditors looking at worker conditions at Happiness Island found that three-quarters of the site’s workers had paid recruitment fees for their jobs, a form of indentured servitude banned under international labor standards.

There is a very good argument to be made for liberal institutions putting down stakes in repressive regimes. They can serve as good bacilli of sorts, implanting ideals of tolerance, women’s rights and free speech in the belly of the beast. But there is no evidence that NYU or the Guggenheim ever insisted on anything like a free speech or women’s rights clause when they sold their brands.

We have (cynically) come to expect American corporations to remain silent on human rights abuses as one dirty cost of global capitalism. When these institutions, desperate for cash in recessionary times, take money (and first-class plane tickets) to expand the global brand without retaining the meaning of the brand, they aren’t much different from Shell, BP or anyone else doing business in the Gulf.

If our strongholds of tolerance and free and open discourse don’t maintain standards vital to our society and to their own enterprises, they are merely selling their souls, and by extension, ours.

editorial@observer.com

Facebook flap: Research teams at Morgan Stanley and other Facebook underwriters cut earnings projections after updated regulatory filings on May 9 showed Zuck & Co. struggling to make money on mobile—and those adjusted projections put Ma & Pa Facebook Fan at a disadvantage. How's that? The less-rosy projections, which Reuters reports Facebook urged on its investment bankers, were distributed to the big pools of money, but not to retail investors.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street's self-regulator, says the issue bears scrutiny, and the state of Massachusetts has subpoenaed Morgan Stanley. Henry Blodget is mad.

But it appears that rules that forbid underwriters from "marketing" IPOs by widely publishing research in the weeks before an offering will give Facebook's bankers cover. Likewise, for all the hand-wringing Nasdaq's executives have done over Friday's botched opening, the exchange's plan to return $13 million to investors feels like so many small potatoes.

After all, Facebook fell to $31 yesterday, down 18 percent from its offering price, wiping out billions in market value.

Said what, when?: “Our focus is on the quality of their risk disclosure,” said SEC chairwoman Mary Schapiro at Senate Banking Committee hearings yesterday. Ms. Schapiro's remarks indicated that the agency will focus on JPMorgan's Value at Risk calculations, according to Bloomberg.

No fee for you: Investors such as the Harvard University endowment and Abu Dhabi are building in-house operations for real estate investment, in hopes of side-stepping fees charged by so-called pooled funds.

Patch-y feeling: Starboard Value, the activist investor waging a proxy battle for seats on AOL's board, said that Patch, the company's hyper-local news service, should be sold in part or whole, or closed outright. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has promised to make Patch profitable by next year.

Cards checked: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is preparing new rules for prepaid debit cards, which have become a growing source of income for banks in recent years. "The people who use prepaid cards are, in many instances, the most vulnerable among us,” Richard Cordray, the consumer bureau’s director, said in a statement.

Domino effect: European banks have taken preparatory measures for a Greek collapse, but remain vulnerable to likely deposit-flight and rising defaults in Portgual, Italy and Spain in the event that Greek leaves the eurozone.

Timber!: The Ontario Securities Commission filed a fraud suit against Sino-Forest, the Chinese timber company that lost much of its $6 billion market value on the Toronto stock exchange after Muddy Waters Research published a report indicating that the company had overstated resources.

For a look at a truly grand airport, then, consider the work of local firm KPF, which just won the commission to design a new terminal for that mecca of Middle Eastern mega-development, Abu Dhabi.

A press release from the firm gives some sense of the new airports grandeur:

Within KPF’s master plan, the terminal is conceived as a gateway to the city. The design creates large, unimpeded internal zones that will enhance the passenger experience, and can accommodate long-term adaptability to industry demands. Uniquely engineered, long-span arches support a soaring roof and reach 50 meters at their highest point. Conversely, the internal scale of the departure hall endows the building with an openness that allows for meaningful connectivity between the outdoor landscaping and the indoor civic space.

Anthony Mosellie, KPF Principal-in-Charge, added “The Terminal Complex is designed to serve Abu Dhabi and Etihad Airways well into the 21st century and act as a key driver for the UAE’s economy and growth for decades to come.”

The Midfield Terminal Complex is integral to Plan Abu Dhabi 2030, a framework for the Emirate’s future development and projected population growth. The ultimate capacity will exceed 50 million travelers and 2 million tons of cargo per year.

This must have been what it was like to live in New YOrk in the 1950s.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The Observer has learned that Kanye West, the multi-platinum rapper and Twitter super-user recently sent representatives to the Persian Gulf region to scout locations for a short film. The project, which will take a form much like his 30-minute "Runaway"—a hybrid art film and music video starring model Selita E. Banks that premiered on MTV in October, 2010—is to be filmed in March.

Sources tell The Observer that Mr. West sent members of his team to meet with film companies and government officials based out of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Doha Qatar to explore the idea of a production. A number of local municipal officials and film companies are said to be engaged in what was characterized as a heated bidding war for the contracts involved in bringing Mr. West's vision to life.

"In Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha all of the film initiatives are government controlled," one source involved in the talks explained. "A bidding war is going on between various government entities and private investors to fund the film. There's pretty intense rivalry here between Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Qatar. They all want to claim the film as their own and take credit for generating the publicity."

Part of the reason for the excitement? The story—plot details of which were not divulged by one source "out of respect for Kanye's ambition"—was conceived by the rapper explicitly to take place in the Gulf. He is said to have fallen in love with the region after a concert performance last year in Abu Dhabi.

Mr. West's creative team is moving to the region for a few weeks, as part of an effort to create an "authentic" depiction of the culture. They plan to utilize local talent and production crews, and are said to be eager to portray the locales and their cultures in a positive light, mindful of recent productions that ran afoul of local sensibilities (2011's Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol was cited as one example).

"His reps seemed genuinely enthusiastic about creating a piece which highlights the culture accurately," our source explained. "There's a lot of preconceived notions and stereotypes about Emiratis and Qataris, which Westerners often play up. They discussed how Kanye is looking to bridge the cultural divide and break misconceptions." Mr. West also reportedly plans to cast some local royalty, as "many of the Sheikhs like to be flashy and appreciate celebrity notoriety."

Mr. West once rapped: "Spit it till you say / lil West's a little beast / And make the middle west / blow like the Middle East." Prophetic? Kind of?

Mr. West's representatives did not respond to immediate request for comment; we will update this report if they do.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Our take: The collection itself appears fairly conservative (think nautical paintings by Samuel Walters and Thomas Luny). Too bad Fuld didn't donate any of his bank-robber art.

2. Dealer John Connelly to Lead Gonzalez-Torres Foundation
John Connelly will close his Chelsea gallery John Connelly Presents to become director of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, Lindsay Pollock reported. The Foundation is represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery, where Connelly worked for eight years.

Our take: Connelly will be a good advocate for Gonzalez-Torres' work. We just hope all the artists in his stable are able to find new representation.
[Art Market Views]

3. Museum Directors' Free Housing: Revealed
Several of the city's most prominent museum directors live in astoundingly plush, tax-free housing provided by their employers. MoMA director Glenn Lowry lives in a $6 million condo above the museum; Met director Thomas Campbell shacks up in a $5 million co-op across the street from the Fifth Avenue institution. Some tax lawyers say the deals seem fishy.

Our take: And here we thought rent control was enviable.
[NYT]

4. Robert Goff Heads to Haunch
Robert Goff will become a director of the New York branch of Christie's Haunch of Venison Gallery, and he'll be bringing several of his artists with him. The gallery will also be moving from Christie's current home in Rockefeller Center to a new location in Chelsea.

Our take: In the face of rumors that the gallery is merely a front for the Christie's contemporary art division, a new director and location may give Haunch some much-needed distance. [Observer]

5. Trend Alert! Art Sneakers Attack
Art Fag City provides an exhaustive report on the latest art-meets-fashion trend: the art sneaker. From Jenny Holzer's truism-y Keds to Roy Lichtenstein's graphic Pumas to Terence Koh's pristine Converses, the kicks tread the line between charming and tacky.

Our take: Say what you will about artists selling out-everybody's gotta make a living. Plus, now you can finally make that joke about understanding Terence Koh because you've walked a mile in his shoes. [AFC]

6. Richard Price Doesn't Really Like LES' "Lush Life"
The New Yorker toured the LES gallery circuit with Richard Price, whose novel Lush Life inspired coordinated exhibitions at nine galleries, one for each chapter of his book. He doesn't seem to like the artwork very much. ("It's like that old phrase 'You don't bring a knife to a gunfight.' You don't bring a book to an art show," he said.)

Our take: The guy's got an unprecedented gallery collaboration, a screenplay in the works ("doing the book lite," he called it), and a Platinum American Express card. Why's he so darn grumpy?
[The New Yorker]

7. American Folk Art Museum Plagued By Debt
The Folk Art Museum isn't just losing one of its prized curators-it's also losing money. The museum's deficit almost doubled between 2008 and 2009, attendance is down substantially, and fundraising has stalled. MoMA's next-door neighbor also recently became the first institution to default on a loan from a city trust created in 1980 to aid cultural institutions.

Our take: It would be a drop in the bucket, but maybe Glenn Lowry could offer up that $6 million, tax-free condo to help out the Folk Art Museum. It would be a nice gesture.
[Bloomberg, NYT]

8. Back to the Drawing Board for Kapoor's Olympic Monument
Anish Kapoor's swirly, massive red tower for the 2012 London Olympics failed to get the green light from the government's architecture watchdog. The group said the current design does not appropriately incorporate sewage pipes or surrounding security checkpoints and ticket kiosks.

Our take: The report provides, mercifully, one last chance for Kapoor to change his mind about this red monstrosity. Beijing's Birdcage is a hard act to follow, but come on!
[The Independent]

9. Bill to Stop Certain Artwork Sales May Be Dead
A bill aimed at preventing art institutions from selling artwork to pay off internal debts has all but died in the New York State Legislature. Cultural heavyweights like the Met argued the bill was too broad, and the bill's sponsor subsequently withdrew his support.

Our take: As it is written, this particular bill would prevent zoos and aquariums from transferring animals. If that's not a tip-off that it might be too broad, we don't know what is.
[NYT]

10. Abu Dhabi Gunning for Largest Art Competition
Abu Dhabi is holding an art competition to raise awareness about traffic and road safety. The contest, open to participants across the globe, has received 134,583 entries since last February and aims to become the largest art competition in the world.

Our take: Does Abu Dhabi really want to steal a world record currently held by the children of India for an art contest about traffic?
[Observer, SIFY News]

We'd open with a montage of our four single protagonists leaving their offices, catching cabs, heading to hotel bars and asking other expatriates they meet the same questions again and again: What brings you here? Where did you come from? When? And, of course: How long will you stay? Now and then, these conversations serve as preludes to couplings in Ikea-furnished apartment shares; a series of shots detail morning-after cab rides home, during which our protagonists, already sweating from the morning sun, get a faraway look in their eyes as they reckon with the everyday but suddenly acute fact that they're far from home.

As the montage music fades, the four are sitting on one of their balconies, beers in hand. One of them-the overarticulate writer, say-is gesticulating wildly as he attempts to articulate a theory of something he calls Abu Dhabi Syndrome. "We can basically survive without sex," he says, eliciting three rueful smiles. "At least longer than we thought we could. But we've discovered-haven't we?-there's something else, something maybe harder to go without, something we never even knew we were used to until we moved here. Whatever it is, it must have something to do with the everyday mingling of the genders. Not sex, but a nonspecific sense of romantic and sexual possibility floating somewhere in the ether of public life. But that sense exists only in bland hotel bars, and even there, among the regulars who enjoy such places, too few are single, too many are sleazebags.

"And so," the writer continues, "we descend into madness. We feel ourselves warping, longing more intensely than ever before to be touched. Men catch themselves mentally undressing women-veiled and otherwise-in malls, even though they're 'not that kind of guy.' Women, horribly outnumbered, are pursued with a sort of manic intensity that could never be mistaken for romance. Abu Dhabi Syndrome has nested in our single souls and, we tell ourselves, only a relationship can chase it away!

"One day you meet someone." Now another montage, this time of our four protagonists being awkwardly introduced to people at parties in Ikea-furnished apartments. "Yes"-the writer's speech continues as voice-over-"you somehow meet a single someone who is roughly your age, speaks the same language you speak and hasn't been smuggled into the country by a Russian pimp. The cure to what ails you is but an arm's length away-and you grab it! Soon enough you are, of all things, dating. Regular sex abounds, in all its glorious regularity." Back on the balcony, smiles all around.

"And yet, soon enough, that old familiar malaise creeps back, prompting some discomfiting questions: How, honestly, did I end up with this person? Back home, wherever that is, would we have ever done anything more than exchange pleasantries with each other? Does the answer matter? Is the question even coherent? Probably not; but then why do I keep mulling it? Soon enough, one is indisputably back in the throes of Abu Dhabi Syndrome, which, like an adaptive virus, has risen again to vanquish the very antibodies sent to destroy it.

"As before, the cure is intuitively obvious." Yet another montage: breakups, awkward but not too painful. "In this sense, we live at summer camp. Everyone's going home sometime, so why get serious, or even pre-serious? How can you? Breaking up feels like the smart-nay, the responsible-thing to do."

At least for a few weeks, until you start feeling insane again. At this point in my daydream, I realized how perfect Abu Dhabi's single expatriate scene is for Sex and the City: The same damn thing happens again and again, episodes pile up, getting less and less interesting, and then one day you've had enough.

Whether the PETA spokeswoman will be as vocal about workers' rights as she has been about animals' in the past is still unclear, but so far none of the celebs who've done licensing deals in the Gulf have been vocal about the chronic mistreatment of construction workers there.

In early June, Brad Pitt also announced that he was involved in what he called his “first major construction project”: a Dubai hotel that will feature “environmentally friendly architecture, but also embrace my career in entertainment."

In publicizing the green hotel venture, Mr. Pitt also made no mention of the endemic labor abuses beneath the Dubai hype, but local advocacy groups told us that the actor-cum-architect is "definitely looking closely at the issue of workers' rights before proceeding."

The climate here is not exactly beckoning. Yet people are starting to speak of Abu Dhabi and Dubai—the two wealthiest and most powerful of the oil-rich principalities that make up the United Arab Emirates—with the kind of eagerness for the exotic that, say, Bali evoked a decade ago. Celebrities like the Beckhams and Robbie Williams are said to have bought vacation homes in Dubai recently. Abu Dhabi is selling itself as a cultural destination. The U.A.E. is blessed with enlightened royalty and a seemingly bottomless supply of energy wealth, including about 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, and it is pouring billions of dirhams into reconstructing its global image.

Abu Dhabi's government has recently unveiled plans to build branches of the Louvre, the Guggenheim and—according to early rumors—the Hermitage here. A satellite campus of NYU is reportedly under discussion. A pamphlet about planned building projects on Saadiyat Island, just off Abu Dhabi's coast, reads like a roll call of the world's most famous architects, including Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry.

But once you’re actually in Abu Dhabi, the largest Emirate and the country's capital, the prognostications about its grand future as a global cultural capital seem ludicrously at odds with the city's present offerings, which are slim by any standard.

A more accurate reflection of Abu Dhabi as it is today can be found in the classified ads in the local newspapers.

Engulfed by promotional material about Abu Dhabi's future, it's weirdly refreshing to find advertisements that are so grittily descriptive of Abu Dhabi's present. Anti-discrimination laws aren't a consideration here, so housing and help wanted ads are very specific about matters like gender, nationality, religion and visa status in a way that would be unthinkable in the United States:

"House Boy, Filipino male, live-in, preferably with HRM degree, required to serve as a Personal Assistant to an American executive."

"Lady Driver, Indonesian/Indian, with UAE driving license, required for a local family."

"Receptionist, female, Indian, on father's/husband's visa, required in Abu Dhabi."

There are scores of notices advertising labor camps, bed spaces, and spare bedrooms in family apartments to be shared by two or three people. Again, these tend to be quite precise about the ethnic groups that the advertisers are hoping to reach. It is hard to read them without imagining the economic pressures that have brought so many people halfway around the globe, the cots pressed close together in stuffy rooms, the anguished sense of dislocation.

"El Dorado cinema building, bed spaces available for Filipino bachelors."

"300 rooms labour camp available in Al Quoz."

"Big room plus wardrobe in Electra available for a non-cooking, single, executive bachelor, to share with a Tamilian family."

As the ads suggest, city life in Abu Dhabi has a strange, provisional quality. Most of the buildings are newly constructed. Their windows are tinted green or blue or purple, and iridescent like the inside of a shell. Construction cranes loom everywhere.

Abu Dhabi's planners want you to believe that the city is a model of contented multi-ethnicity. In fact, it is a deeply stratified society, and Emirati nationals, who make up only about 10 percent of the population, are at the top. None of these strata really mingle, though all of Abu Dhabi's inhabitants seem to spend much of their leisure time in the city's vast, chilly malls.

The U.A.E. also has a gender ratio that is more radically skewed than any nation in the world. There are about 2.74 males for every female here, though that number alone does not convey the horror of these contracted laborers living away from their wives and families for years on end.

Sometimes it can seem like everyone you meet in a given day has been here for less than five years, like everywhere you look, in cheap little restaurants all over the city, men are eating meager little meals alone, all facing in the same direction, not reading anything, looking slightly stunned to find themselves here.

Companies of all kinds are starting up here willy-nilly, and the housing ads are wrapped in advertisements for a host of firms that promise various kinds of assistance (attestation, debt collection, labor, immigration) necessary to start a business. A friend here who works for the Abu Dhabi government describes life in the emirate as "our gold rush," and it's true that there's a very Wild West feel to the place.

But that doesn’t begin to describe what a novel thing is truly happening here. Abu Dhabi is testing, as no place has ever tested before, whether money can make a society, and how fast this can be accomplished.

What happens if you drop, just as suddenly as modern capital markets will allow, a practically infinite supply of money onto a mostly inhospitable and uninhabited stretch of salty sandy soil? How do you build a great city? How do you build a great society? Will it work out? If Abu Dhabi builds it, will the people of the world come?

For now, they are coming in their multitudes. Yet the UAE doesn't extend the promise of citizenship, or even permanent residency, to more than a handful of these people. Does it matter that everyone is here for a more or less temporary stay, and that so few of these people have any kind of lasting stake in the society that they are spending years of their lives helping to build?

The new museums and performance centers will eventually go up, and Abu Dhabi no doubt has a lot more growing to do. But for now, beneath the breathless predictions and the gold rush excitement, the present here feels soulless and a bit surreal.