Abu Dhabi is interested in having Bryn Mawr College set up a campus in the Persian Gulf emirate, and the women’s college is mulling the proposal, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Bryn Mawr’s president, Jane D. McAuliffe, told the newspaper that officials expect to decide by early summer “whether a small liberal-arts college can manage something like this.” A group of faculty members visited Abu Dhabi this fall.

Single-sex colleges are appealing in the socially conservative United Arab Emirates. Several women’s colleges already exist there, including the well-regarded Zayed University.

But some Bryn Mawr faculty members and students told the Inquirer that they were concerned about the Emirates’ track record on human rights.

“I’m a lesbian, and I’m concerned about the ways in which lesbian and gay faculty, staff, and students could live openly with their partners,” Sharon Ullman, a history professor, told the newspaper.

Abu Dhabi has made an aggressive push to expand its higher-education offerings in recent years. Most notably, it has given New York University $50-million to open up a branch campus there. —Beth McMurtrie