An open letter to NYUAD students
The mission of NYU Abu Dhabi is among the most needed and noble of any university: a place that embraces ethnic, cultural, and global diversity. There is no place on Earth that has welcomed more students from more countries speaking more languages — all in a spirit of education and inclusion.
That was the NYU AD that we gratefully enrolled in. Tragically, that is not the NYU AD of today.
None of us would have ever dreamed of writing an open letter to the university community, but none of us can remain silent any longer.
What was presented to us as an inclusive, open-minded, and welcoming community has instead become a narrow, negative environment where peer pressure and social adversarialism have taken the place of reason, objectivity, and intellectual freedom.
It’s that last point that matters most — and why we have decided to speak up and speak out — not for ourselves but for those who follow us.
NYU AD is no longer a safe space intellectually.
Instead of being a community where individuality is encouraged, NYU Abu Dhabi has become a place where intellectual creativity is discouraged and conformity is demanded. With over 100 different countries represented among the student population, our campus should be a place where diversity of opinion on any topic is not only expected but cherished. Instead, we see groups of students repeatedly and viciously targeted on social media for holding different opinions.
An increasingly alarming number of students on our campus feel empowered and encouraged to employ any tactic at their disposal — from shouting down to cyberbullying — to intimidate students who don’t think the same way as they do. Their goal and they are succeeding, is to silence anything and anyone they disagree with. What was once a vibrant and exciting learning environment has become precisely the opposite — a place where ideas and individuality go to die.
The problem is acceptance. Most people who choose to bully feel completely protected originating from their awareness that most students on our campus fall on the same side of the ideological spectrum. NYU AD may be diverse by gender and by culture, but it is decidedly one-sided where diversity matters most: intellectually.
Why does the idea of respecting intellectual minorities cease to exist when it comes to political perspectives? Why does the idea of cheering diversity cease to exist when it comes to diversity of opinion? The students who justify banning certain voices on campus claiming mental health concerns are often the same students who find no issue in bullying their colleagues for holding different views. Apparently (at least to us), they believe those they disagree with are of less importance and therefore do not deserve to be treated with the same degree of respect and human decency as everyone else.
It is tragic that in the current dynamics at NYU AD, people can escape (cyber)bullying others without being held accountable for their behavior. Even more tragic, we almost lost one of our own — a victim of the cyber mob. That is unacceptable and intolerable on any campus, but particularly here where we are taught and told to hold ourselves to a higher standard.
At the end of the day, we all need to be responsible for our words and actions. Moreover, our responsibility as a community is to take care of one another, support each other and help each other grow.
And that is why we are asking for public support from the NYU AD faculty. If they remain silent, the end result is that students with different perspectives won’t speak up, afraid that what happened to their courageous classmates may happen to them as well. This toxic situation in the classroom creates an echo chamber campuswide where the same set of opinions are the only ones heard or spoken off on campus.
We know our professors cherish their academic freedom. The question is … do they care about ours?
But in the end, it is us, the student body, who must lead the way.
For a long time, we saw The Gazelle as a bastion of free speech on campus; a publication where no matter where you stood politically or ideologically, you were granted the opportunity to express your opinion through thoughtful and well-reasoned articles. However, in light of recent decisions made by the publication’s Management Team, The Gazelle itself has turned against free speech.
By having Management and Senior Editors publish pieces such as “The Gazelle cannot be neutral on equality” and “Should all voices be heard?”, we have realized that our beloved student newspaper is no longer a platform open to all student voices. This deeply saddens us, as we believe that all students at all universities should have at least one neutral publication where students are free to share their thoughts without being judged, attacked, or bullied into submission.
This is a very difficult statement to craft and present. We know the consequences to our reputation and safety are significant, and we deeply admire all the students who had the courage to sign it. No one should fear the truth. After weeks of conversation and discussion among dozens of students, we decided to put the wellbeing of our community, together with those of the students who will come after us, above our personal one.
Hopefully, one day, decisions like this will no longer be necessary.
Signed by:
Aris Panousopoulos
Nicholas Patas
Domnica Dzitac
Andrea Arletti
Pavle Vulanovic
Desmond Ofori Atta
Uljad Berdica
Vaso Borovic
Michelle Shin
Mouza Alzaabi
Eshaan Patel
Dhbaya AlQubaisi
Chris Doney
Brian Shin
Davit Jintcharadze
Aditya Balakrishnan
Sydney Sund
Raghav Kumar
Rania Kettani
Alex Agiostratitis
Tamer Haddadin
Anonymous
Hugo Domingo Fan
Joanna Jagodzinska
Salama AlHosani
Aidan Alme
Mauricio Lamoyi
Keshana Ratnasingham
Juan Piñeros
Dogukan Avci
Kacper Jarco
Valentin Josan
Thabiso Percy Xaba
Kunal Satpute
John Philippos Ioannou
Juno Yoon Park
Mohamed Alhosani
Giorgi Kituashvili
Maimuna Zaheer
Thani AlMheiri
Asma Alabbar
Manson Tung
Dimitris Chatzoulis
Foivos Mavridis
Kateryna Korobkova
Kimberly Hills
Shaurya Singh
Rishit Saxena
Sarah
Ethan Fulton
