NYU Washington DC Professor John Prados is a man of many talents. Professor Prados is an author and analyst of national security based in Washington, DC. He is the author of more than twenty books and many articles on topics of current importance, presidential studies, international security; and diplomatic, intelligence, or military history. He is also a noted designer of boardgames on military strategy, intelligence, and diplomacy. His Roman Empire-era boardgame The Victory of Arminius will be the next to appear from Turning Point Games, scheduled for December.

Students have always loved the Osadni dorm in Prague for its beautiful loft apartments, views of rooftops, and the music club in the basement. But the space in this former ham factory – constructed primariy with iron, concrete and glass- seemed cold. So this semester students brought energy and life into the building by creating a community garden on the sunny – but underused- terrace.
Early in the semester, everyone living in the dorm could adopt a box for their own plants.
At a workshop led by professional gardeners, the students chose from a variety of plants – cactuses for those who didn’t want too much responsibility, herbs for those who like to cook, or flowers for the romantics. As each box can take about 3-4 plants, the students had to learn which ones could grow next to one another and how to make them thrive – “It’s a bit like living in the dorm,” explained building manager Darima Batorova. “We need to figure out how to live different people in one box, how we can grow successfully together. “
These plants are annuals- they only live for one season- so when the students are gone, the plants will be gone too. Next semester, we can start over again – new students, new plants.
So far, the plants are thriving, and students are spending a lot more time on the terrace. “It smells wonderful up there. And everyone has his or her own names on the boxes, and now it feels like the space belongs to the students,” Darima notes.
What do the students think? “It’s really satisfying to see the progress of the plants. My plants are doing well – I’ve eaten most of my chili peppers,” reports Marilyn La Jeunesse (2016).

NYU Buenos Aires student Anushua Choudury is the first Student Senator-at-Large to study away while maintaining her university government responsibilities. Learn a bit more about this sophomore and her experience in Buenos Aires.
School of Origin: FAS – Liberal Studies / Global Liberal Studies
Concentration: Politics, Rights and Development
Congratulations, you are the first Student Senator to go abroad while still holding your post and fulfilling all the responsibilities. Does that feel like pressure?
Thank you. Yes, for sure. At first, when I was told that I would be the first Senator abroad, everyone said: “Who better to do it with, but also we’re looking at you to see how we can fit Shanghai and Abu Dhabi into the mix.” So, it’s definitely making me more aware of how to be sure I can video-conference in to all the meetings and reply to all the documents. That way the new Senators and the new Faculty on the Faculty Senators Council and on the Committees I work with will know me.
It’s starting to sound more complex already – how many government structures do you have to serve on?
I am just serving on the Student Senators Council, and within that I work on 3 committees.
Can we ask you what they are?
The Academic Affairs Committee, the All-University Events Committee, and the Global Affairs Committee.
How is this different from when you were on the Square and physically present for duties?
Last year I served on a University Senate Committee; I was on the University Judicial Board. But unfortunately due to the fact that I am not physically present in NY right now, I cannot serve on a University committee (which involves people from all of the other Councils, the Deans, the Faculty Senators, representatives from the Administrative Management Council, and other students).
How do you stay connected even though you are so far away, being in Argentina?
I video-conference in to all of our meetings, to my weekly committee meetings as well as my SSC meetings. I will also start calling in to the University Senate meetings, which are held once a month. This is a new process for everyone, so we’re all learning. If something doesn’t go right the first time around, the Executive Committee of the SSC reaches out to me; we are always in conversations about how to do things better.
Do you find this detracts from or hinders your ability to immerse as much as you’d like in the project of global study, meaning being here in South America? Can you explore as much as you’d like, can you dedicate all necessary time to your studies and planned travel? It must be a balancing act.
Yes, but it was a balancing act in NY as well. I am especially lucky to be able to stay connected like this to NY, especially after my last year of being in Student Government, which was one of the best highlights of my NYU experience. It’s also cool how I can bring in the global dimension because I have this experience. For example, for the All-University Events Committee, we always talk about Violet 100, and now we are planning to host a Global Day of Service during Violet 100 – that’s exciting to think about, and it gives me a concrete sense of how meaningful it actually is for me a Senator who is specifically drawing on having a global experience too.
Background:
When you apply to be Senator, you can be either a Senator at your school or a Senator at Large. Last year I was a School Senator for Liberal Studies. School elections happen after Spring Break, end March or beginning April, and about two weeks after School senators have been elected, we have the application process for Senator-at-Large, which is not an elected post but rather appointed by the other Senators. Last year was the first time we had global submissions for Senator-at-Large. So the current School Senators elect the Senators-at-Large (now there are several).
What would like to bring back to NY from your year spent abroad in Argentina?
On the Square we are always talking about the GNU and every committee whether it’s student services or academic affairs, the GNU always comes up. Very few Senators though have had the experience of studying abroad because when you are in Student Government, you have gone into NYU thinking “ok at some point I am going to take some time off to go abroad” because it’s so easy to do that when you’re at NYU – but then you become so involved, and it’s so intense that you end up deferring the idea of going abroad or you just go for a J-Term or a short-term experience, and that’s really not the same. So I’m really excited to go back and represent that voice that we always talk about but haven’t yet had tangibly among us.
Thank you. That is exciting. One last question: why did you choose Buenos Aires?
I have traveled a lot. Since High School, I had thought Madrid would be my spot because I’ve always loved Sevilla. But when it came time to decide where to go, I realized I wanted to go outside my comfort zone, really immerse myself in a culture that is foreign to me, new and challenging in other ways. ¡Acá estoy!

On November 6, NYU Washington DC will host a program focused on the US midterm elections and their implications. The John Brademas Center for the Study of Congress and NYU Global Programs are sponsoring a dynamic panel of American political analysts, media experts, campaign insiders, and scholars discussing the 2014 midterm elections. With 35 Senate seats on the line, and all 435 House seats up for grabs, the panel will consider the results of the Congressional elections – analyzing campaign strategies, game-changing events and what lies ahead for the American people for the 2016 presidential election.

On display until December 4, the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute’s Crochet Coral Reef Project exhibition is a colorful and wooly re-creation of our oceans’ coral reef communities. Begun in 2005 by sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim of the Los Angeles-based Institute of Figuring, the project aims to draw attention to the plight of coral reefs around the world, which are being devastated by pollution, global warming, and ocean acidification.
Bringing together community art practices, ecological consciousness, and science, the frilly forms and sculptures of the Crochet Coral Reef Project provide a spirited and powerful experience. Through the activism of the Institute of Figuring, more than 7,000 individuals have contributed to the project, making it perhaps the largest community art and science project in the world.
In addition to the exhibition opening on September 29, the Institute hosted two panel discussions about the art of crochet and the science behind the crocheted coral reef communities.
Radical Craft: Re-imagining Crochet was held in conjunction with the exhibition opening. Attendees were able to view the coral reef sculptures and take part in a talk by project co-creator Margret Wertheim, textile artist and researcher Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam, and “crochetdermist” Shauna Richardson. The discussion focused on the art of crochet and how it has broken traditional boundaries and established itself as a sculptural medium.
“I was really surprised at how this seemingly simple type of art can make a huge difference to life,” said Ziyi Mo (NYUAD ’18). “The part that struck me the most was the work by Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam. She devoted herself to this simple art for so long that she discovered something that no one else could see — the flow of life and joy that this art form brings to children and adults alike.”
The second panel discussion took place just two days later. Reefs, Rubbish, and Reason focused on the world’s coral reefs and the devastating impacts that pollution, global warming, and ocean acidification have on these fragile communities. The panel — whose members included NYUAD Associate Professor of Biology John Burt, Margaret Wertheim, and author and NYU New York Director Emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities Lawrence Weschler — discussed the possibility created by the intersection of science and art to establish a global ecological consciousness.
As well as a crochet coral forest, the Crochet Coral Reef Project exhibition features a collection of miniature coral “Pod Worlds” and the NYU Abu Dhabi Satellite Reef, the latest addition to the Institute for Figuring’s ever-growing archipelago of community-made crocheted reefs worldwide. Twelve members of the NYUAD community contributed to this satellite reef, including Assistant Vice Provost of Institute Administration and Executive Education Jason Beckerman, Senior Lecturer Jill Magi, Security Guard Ratnayake Mudiyanselage Chandrawathie, and Global Academic Fellow Blair Matarlo.
“It’s very exciting to have an art project that is a collaboration between visiting artists and local members of the community,” said Andrew Starner, an NYUAD Writing Program lecturer. “It’s a great way to interface with the biological sciences alongside art practice and the work that we do in the writing programs, which is, how do we use novel approaches to inform and entertain?”
The Crochet Coral Reef Project will be on display on the ground floor of the Arts and Humanities Building on NYUAD’s Saadiyat Campus through December 4. Visitors are welcome daily between 10am and 9pm.

We hope you had a great summer. As the fall semester gets started at NYU’s global sites, we’ll again be sharing stories.

A former student at NYU Berlin, Logan Verdoorn received a President’s Service Award this year for launching a cooperative theater program with students from NYU Berlin and a local high school. After graduating from Tisch, Logan decided to return to Berlin, where he now lives. He shares his experience:
This year, I won a President’s Service Award for my work creating a collaborative, multi-lingual theater cooperation between a group of students studying at NYU Berlin and a class from a nearby Berlin high school. The students did incredible and inspiring work over the course of the semester, enabling us to write and build a show that was performed as part of NYU Berlin’s Farewell Event. The final product included entirely student-produced monologues, scenes, dance, music, improv and poetry.
As much of an honor as it was to receive the award, I have never been much for accolades (says the former Tisch Drama student) and what interests me far more than gloating or grandstanding is sharing with you the conception, creation and implementation of the project in the hopes of describing what I learned about global education from the process and through working with such an amazing group of students.
The concept of the GNU is one that, while offering a great number of incredible opportunities and benefits, is not without its specific challenges, not the least of which being the difficulty for students to break out of the so-called “NYU Bubble” and branch out into the city and community in which they find themselves. This was one of the issues we were hoping to address with the original idea for a cooperation between the Kurt-Tucholski Oberschule (KTO) and NYUB. Berlin being the artistic metropolis that it is and I being the theater junkie that I am, theater seemed a perfect and obvious medium through which to begin such a collaboration and so it was.
Despite all my planning, I was entirely unprepared for and wholly overwhelmed by the students’ unending curiosity, astoundingly personal writing, and deep dedication throughout the entire process. Their passion for cultural exploration, their commitment to examining and adopting a new community, and their fascination with communication – whether lingual, physical, or otherwise – all helped to build a new, creative, exploratory lens through which to view the concept of Foreign. This is the type of self-examination and cultural outreach that can be the new face of the ‘Study Abroad’ experience in a society that is becoming increasingly globalized – an experience that I hope to continue supporting as the theater project progresses.

Madeline Friedman, from the Communications team in Global Technology Services in New York, discusses upgrading IT at the global sites, starting with the recent upgrade at NYU Paris.
Sometimes a small change can have a large impact. When it comes to life at NYU’s global study away sites, a simple IT upgrade can revolutionize everything from professors’ teaching styles, to students’ learning abilities, to administrative staff’s workload.
That will be the case with the NYU Academic Center in Paris, France, which has just moved to a new building with new technical capacities in the city’s Latin Quarter. “It’s going to be night and day in terms of the technical possibilities and capabilities there,” said Janet Alperstein, Senior Director of Academic Support for NYU Global Programs said.
Upgrades Provide New Possibilities
Several upgrades to IT services have been done so that students, faculty, and staff will have a seamless technological experience at the NYU Paris campus. The campus will have NYU-NET wired and wireless, that includes internet, voice, video, and data, ensuring access is consistently available. NYU print services will also be a new feature that will allow students to print documents from any computer via print stations at the Academic Center. The Center will also have increased capacity for videoconferencing, boasting two dedicated videoconferencing classrooms with full equipment.
“Now, it’ll be as if we are already on the New York server. It will make accessing certain applications easier and faster,” said Ivy Vo, Housing and Student Life Assistant for NYU Paris.
Unique Challenges
Updating the IT infrastructure at NYU’s locations across the globe often requires creative problem-solving skills for unique challenges that arise in different regions.
Global Service Delivery Manager Brian Schiesser mentioned that upgrading services and wiring in old buildings can be a challenge in cities like Paris. “One problem we had [in the new Paris Academic Center] was that one side of the flooring was weaker than the other side, because they were built in different centuries.”
Despite the challenges it provided for technology, many people appreciated the old Center’s charms. “The building had moulding, the floors creaked. It felt old world,” said Schiesser. “The new building is art deco. It’s in an amazing location. The top floor has 360 degree views of the city. Both locations are very different spaces, but both are great and come with their own benefits.”

Summer is here. We’ll be posting less frequently over the summer and will resume more regular posting when the fall term starts. Enjoy the summer holidays!

The NYU Middle East Alumni Club hosted a networking reception at the St. Regis Abu Dhabi in early May with many alumni coming from Schools at NYU New York, including Stern, Law, Wagner, and Steinhardt. About 30 of NYU Abu Dhabi’s soon-to-be-graduating seniors were also present at the event, which created a unique opportunity for members of the Class of 2014 to meet and mingle with NYU alumni in this region.