NYU Hires Swarthmore’s President to Run New Campus in Abu Dhabi

New York University announced today that the president of Swarthmore College would head NYU’s new campus in Abu Dhabi.

Alfred H. Bloom, who has led Swarthmore since 1991, is to take over as vice chancellor before next August. In the interim, he will serve as a consultant on the project. The campus is scheduled to enroll its first students in 2010, although NYU’s president, John E. Sexton, has already started teaching a course at the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute, a precursor to the branch campus in the United Arab Emirates.

Mr. Bloom’s selection highlights NYU’s pledge to build a comprehensive and highly selective university in the region. “If one were listing the ideal liberal-arts college, one would think immediately of Swarthmore,” Mr. Sexton said in a news release, citing Mr. Bloom’s record at the college.

NYU said its New York and Abu Dhabi locations would become the “backbone” of the Global Network University, in which students and faculty members could travel between those two campuses and other NYU sites abroad.

In the news release, Mr. Bloom said NYU’s global vision was what had drawn him to the project. —Beth McMurtrie