NYUAD Leadership

Mariët Westermann is Vice Chancellor for New York University Abu Dhabi. Since 2002, she has been the Judy & Michael Steinhardt Director and Professor of Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU's graduate program and research institute in art history, archaeology, and conservation.

A scholar of the art of the Netherlands, her native country, Westermann is the author of A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic 1585-1718 (1996), The Amusements of Jan Steen: Comic Painting in the 17th Century (1997), Rembrandt (2000), and Johannes Vermeer: The Rijksmuseum Dossier (2004). She curated the exhibition Art and Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt for the Newark Museum and Denver Art Museum (2001). Her current research concerns the history of painting as a resource of Western culture and the role of aesthetics in art history. Her edited volume Anthropologies of Art (2005) addresses the disciplinary entwinements and intersections of art history and anthropology.

Mariët Westermann earned a B.A. in history from Williams College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in the history of art from NYU's Institute of Fine Arts. Before coming to NYU, she taught at Rutgers - the State University of New Jersey and was Associate Director of Research at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown.

Hilary Ballon is Associate Vice Chancellor for New York University Abu Dhabi. An architectural historian, her work focuses on cities and the intersection of architecture, politics, and social life in two fields of research, 20th-century America and 17th-century Europe.

She curated Robert Moses and the Modern City (2007), the three-part exhibition that re-evaluated Moses's physical transformation of 20th-century New York. Ballon was a principal author and co-editor of the accompanying book, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York (with Kenneth T. Jackson, W.W. Norton, 2007).

Ballon is Editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH), the journal of record in the field. Her previous books include New York's Pennsylvania Stations (W.W. Norton, 2002); Louis Le Vau: Mazarin's Collège, Colbert's Revenge (Princeton University Press, 1999), which won the Prix d'Académie from the Académie Fran�aise; and The Paris of Henri IV: Architecture and Urbanism (Architectural History Foundation/MIT Press, 1991), which won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Prize for the Most Distinguished Work in Architectural History and is widely cited as a model for its consideration of urban planning in relation to social, political, and economic forces. Ballon also curated Gateway to Metropolis: New York's Pennsylvania Stations at the Wallach Art Gallery and Frank Lloyd Wright: The Vertical Dimension at the Skyscraper Museum.

Before joining NYU in September 2007, Ballon taught for more than 20 years at Columbia University, where she served as Director of Art Humanities and Chairman of the Department of Art History and Archaeology and received Columbia University's highest teaching awards: the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, the Great Teacher Award, and the Philip and Ruth Hettleman Teaching Award.

Ballon serves on the Board of Directors of the Museum of the City of New York, the Regional Plan Association, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, and the Skyscraper Museum. Ballon was chairman of the Planning Board of Englewood, New Jersey from 2000-05. She received a B.A. from Princeton University and Ph.D. from M.I.T.

Cheryl Mills serves as Senior Vice President and Secretary of the University.

Mills is responsible for all legal matters affecting the University and its schools, colleges, and divisions. She selects and supervises the in-house legal staff in the Office of Legal Counsel and, as needed, all outside counsel. With the President and the Provost, she is an ex-officio member of all satellite boards of trustees at the University. As Secretary of the University, she is the principal liaison to the University Board of Trustees. Mills manages the business operations of the University, including real estate, labor relations, planning and construction, procurement, facilities management, security, transportation, human resources and auxiliary services (bookstore, faculty and student housing, dining and catering services, university life center).

Mills served as Deputy Counsel to President Clinton, where she supervised 35 attorneys and staff. She gained national prominence for her defense of President Clinton during the 1999 Senate impeachment trial. Mills' legal experience also includes serving as Associate Counsel to the President, as Deputy General Counsel of the Clinton/Gore Transition Planning Foundation, and as an associate at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Hogan and Hartson, where she represented various school districts seeking to implement the promises of Brown v. Board of Education.

From 1999-2001, Mills was Senior Vice President for Corporate Policy and Public Programming at Oxygen Media. From 1990-1999, Mills co-founded and worked with DCWorks, a non-profit organization devoted to the academic enrichment and interpersonal development of underprivileged high school students of color. In 1999, DCWorks merged with the SeeForever Foundation in support of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School. In presenting her with the 1999 Susan B. Anthony Achievement Award, President Clinton described her as "[a]n eloquent and effective champion of equality in education, she has opened the doors of higher education for under-privileged youth."

Mills serves on the Boards of the SeeForever Foundation, National Partnership for Women and Families, the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights Education Fund, the Jackie Robinson Foundation, the Center for American Progress and the William J. Clinton Presidential Library Foundation. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Cendant Corporation.

Mills received her B.A. (1987) from the University of Virginia and her J.D. (1990) from Stanford Law School, where she was elected to the Stanford Law Review.

Farhad Kazemi is Professor of Politics and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University. He holds graduate degrees from Harvard (MA) and the University of Michigan (Ph.D.). He has served as NYU's Vice Provost (1999-2003), Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science, Chairman of the Department of Politics, and Director of the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies.

He has also served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and of the International Society for Iranian Studies. He is a member of several professional organizations including the Council on Foreign Relations. He has served as the trustee of several academic institutions and is currently a member of the Board of Trustees (Executive Committee) of the American University in Cairo. He has served as a consultant to the U.S. Government including the White House, National Security Council, and the State Department. He was appointed in 2003 to the Government Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World. The group's report was submitted to the President and US congress on October 1, 2003.

Kazemi is a specialist in comparative and international politics, and Middle Eastern politics. A former editor of Iranian Studies, he has authored Poverty and Revolution in Iran (1980) ; Culture and Politics in Iran (1988) ; and has edited Iranian Revolution in Perspective (1980) ; (with R.D. McChesney) A Way Prepared: Studies on Islamic Culture in Honor of Richard Bayly Winder (1988) ; (With John Waterbury) Peasants and Politics in the Modern Middle East (1991) ; and Civil Society in Iran (two special issues in Persian of Iran Nameh, 1995-1996) . He has also contributed numerous articles to professional journals and edited volumes.

Kazemi has been the recipient of several research grants including two from the Social Science Research Council for field research in the Middle East, National Science Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation (Scholar-in-residence at Bellagio and conference grants). He has served as the co-principal investigator with August Richard Norton of a research project, supported by grants from Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, on "Civil Society in the Middle East." He has traveled and lectured extensively in the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He has taught at the University of Michigan, NYU in Prague, and has held visiting professorships at Princeton University and the Universities of Pennsylvania and Oxford. He has also held the Nazarian Visiting Lectureship at Tel Aviv University.

Philip F. Kennedy is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University (where he is also affiliated with the Department of Comparative Literature).

As author or editor, his published writings on Arabic literature include The Wine Song in Classical Arabic Poetry: Abu Nuwas and the Literary Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Abu Nuwas: A Genius of Poetry (Oxford: Oneworld 2005); On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Literature (Harrassowitz Verlag 2004); and Islamic Reflections Arabic Musings (co-editor with Robert Hoyland, Oxford: Oxbow for the E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust Series 2004).

His interest in comparative poetics has issued in two volumes: Islamic Recognitions: Anagnorisis in the Arabic Narrative Tradition [in Routledge's Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures] and Recognition: The Poetics of Narrative [co-edited with Marilyn Lawrence for Peter Lang's Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature], which will appear in 2008. He is executive co-editor of Routledge's Studies in Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures; is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society; a member of the School of Abbasid Studies; and has served ex officio on the Board of Directors of the American Oriental Society. He has lectured widely in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Middle East. He has served on several university wide committees at NYU, and served both as Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Graduate Studies for his department. As a student, he studied in Oxford, Cairo, Madrid, Aix-en-Provence and the United Arab Emirates.

Born in England, where he worked extensively as a writer, director, actor, teacher. As an actor he worked with leading theatre companies and appeared in numerous television productions. As a writer, his work has been performed by the National Youth Theatre in England, the Half Moon Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company and The National Theatre, as well as in Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Canada, the USA and Australia. His published plays include The Children's Crusade, The Motor Show, By Common Consent and The Lorenzaccio Story. He was resident dramatist with the Royal Shakespeare Company and with the The National Theatre. He has also written for BBC Television, BBC Radio and feature films.He worked as a screenwriter on location for Lion of the Desert (feature film starring Anthony Quinn). He has directed at numerous theatres in England, Australia, and the United States.

Paul Thompson's previous academic positions include Lecturer in Playwriting at the City Literary Institute, London (1978-84). Director of the Theatre School, Morley College (1978-84) and Lecturer in Acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London (1981-84), Head of Directing and Director of the Playwrights' Studio, National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney (1984-86). Head of Scriptwriting at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (1987-93) and Head of Film and Television at the AFTRS (1993-97). He has presented guest lectures at several leading academic institutions including USC, Yale, Temple University, UCLA and the London Institute.

Elizabeth Dianne Rekow was recently appointed Special Advisor to the President and Provost on Engineering at NYU.

Dr. Dianne Rekow is a professor of orthodontics and of basic science and craniofacial biology at NYU College of Dentistry. She has been practicing orthodontics since 1985, and is an internationally known authority on the development of new materials and products for use in esthetic and restorative dentistry. Dr. Rekow holds a Doctor of Dental Surgery (D.D.S.) degree, an M.S. degree in mechanical engineering, a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, and a certificate in orthodontics, all from the University of Minnesota, as well as an M.B.A. from the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Dr. Rekow publishes and lectures extensively on orthodontics and on dental materials and techniques, and is working on establishing guidelines for the use of new, advanced ceramic materials for use in crowns. Dr. Rekow also is researching the use of bio-engineered tissue to facilitate the growth of replacement bone in people who have been disfigured by disease.

Daniel Stein became NYU's Dean for Science in 2006. Stein is considered a leader in theoretical condensed matter physics, which centers on building models of physical processes and transferring these models into other areas of research. Stein’s scholarship focuses primarily on randomness and disorder in condensed matter systems, with an emphasis on magnetic materials and on random processes leading to rare nucleation events. In addition, he has worked on topics as diverse as protein biophysics, biological evolution, amorphous semiconductors, superconductors and superfluids, liquid crystals, neutron stars, and the interface between particle physics and cosmology.

Prior to his arrival at NYU, Stein was a professor of physics at the University of Arizona for 18 years, serving as chair of the department for a decade (1995-2005), and on the faculty at Princeton University (1979-1987). At NYU, Stein is also a provost fellow, working with Senior Vice Provost for Research Pierre Hohenberg on conflict of interest policies, issues, and enforcement.

Stein has been awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the University of Arizona’s College of Science Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Commission on the Status of Women’s Vision 2000 Award. He has also been elected as a fellow of the American Physical Society. Stein received his bachelor's degree from Brown University and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. A list of Stein’s publications may be found at http://physics.nyu.edu/~ds1752/allpubs.html

Jerry M. Hultin was appointed Polytechnic University’s 10th president on July 1, 2005. Before joining Polytechnic, Mr. Hultin was the dean of the Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management and Professor of Management at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. As dean, Mr. Hultin was responsible for leadership of the university’s newest academic school, formed in 1997. From 1997 to 2000 Mr. Hultin served as under secretary of the Navy, the department’s number two civilian leader. In this position, he led numerous programs that supported innovation in strategic vision, war fighting and business operations to meet the evolving needs of the Navy and Marine Corps in the 21st century. He helped direct a department composed of two military services, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps. Over the course of his career, Mr. Hultin has helped create and support a number of national, nonprofit programs that provide leadership, community development and job skills to young people from all walks of life.

Mr. Hultin’s major accomplishments as under secretary included taking a leadership role in the Department of the Navy’s Revolution in Business Affairs, which brought private-sector business acumen to both the Navy and Marine Corps. He was one of the creators of the Navy-Marine Corps Corporate Intranet and introduced a major program of Enterprise Resource Planning systems into the Navy acquisition commands.

A 1964 graduate of Ohio State University, where he also received his commission as a naval officer, and 1972 graduate of Yale University Law School, Mr. Hultin spent more than 25 years in the private sector in Ohio and Washington, D.C. His work included the practice of law, management of small businesses and business consulting in areas including technology, defense, health care, finance and the environment. Mr. Hultin is an honorary fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, a member of the New York/ London Transatlantic Council, a director of BABI, the founding chairman of the Technology Management Education Association and an adviser to senior military and defense leaders.