Wet Paint

Back in October, I participated as a “World Thinker” at a remarkable conference held every two years in the United Arab Emirates called the Festival of Thinkers. Past Nobel Award laureates and mere mortals like me get to mingle with experts in areas such as poverty alleviation, health care, entrepreneurship, education, and the media.

More importantly, for the event’s host, Sheik Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Chancellor of the UAE’s Higher Colleges of Technology, the conference gave literally hundreds of university-level students from across the Gulf States an opportunity to interact directly with the many global luminaries during breakout sessions and public lectures, some of which were moderated by the students themselves.

Imagine my surprise on the first day when, in a working session that I was leading, a very bright and opinionated woman from Kuwait got into a protracted argument with one of the Nobel laureates over climate change which then spilled over into discussing the tradeoff between actively limiting the world’s population and supporting the rights of women to make their own choices. At one point, he glanced over at me with a look that said “a little help here!” mixed with clear amusement, surprise, and admiration.

Later in the conference, I was having lunch with Michael Goodwin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from the New York Daily News. He and I were talking about how much Dubai had changed in such a short time and he said, “If there was a sign for this region, it would say ‘Wet Paint’.”

His comment made be think (which is the best kind of comment!). The skyline of Dubai isn’t the only thing that seems to change every day. There’s “wet paint” everywhere you look. And the real revolution going on in the Gulf doesn’t have anything to do with armed conflict. Sure, to the naked eye, it has everything to do with the amazing transformation a place that, just a generation ago, was largely inhabited by Bedouins living in tents. Supposedly 25% of all the world’s construction cranes are in Dubai.

No, the real and lasting revolution is focused on education. This ancient seat of innovation, learning, and discovery is on a quest to recapture its leading position in the world. Sixteen thousand students are enrolled in the UAE’s Higher Colleges of Technology alone, mostly women, in fields ranging from electrical engineering to computer science to finance. Hundreds of students are getting full scholarships every year to study abroad, preferably at universities in the United States but quickly shifting to places like Australia that are considered safer and more inviting. Their facilities are world class, using technology to merely augment the overall student experience.

I make no apologies for wanting to attract top students from the region to the Heinz School’s campuses in the U.S. and Australia. Who wouldn’t want to support a new generation of emerging leaders determined to keep their paintbrushes wide and wet?