My dearest rising seniors, juniors, sophomores, incoming freshmen and faculty,

I write to you in the hope that you invest more of an effort into the NYU Abu Dhabi I thought existed for the past four years. I write to you in the hope that you recognize reality sooner than on the eve of graduation. Most importantly however, I write to you in the hope that you do not repeat the same mistakes that my fellow graduates and I have committed over the course of our time here.

The values espoused by NYUAD, which you have been indoctrinated into believing since Candidate Weekend, are a hoax. Do not dupe yourself into thinking this is a community of acceptance that fosters global leaders and hones their abilities to make the world a better place. But it does have the potential to do so. It has so much potential, but in eight years we still haven’t figured out how to properly create or use it.

In a matter of days, I will be marking the end of my time here at Commencement; walking the stage with people who, despite living in a Muslim-majority country, in an environment with people of all skin tones, shapes, sizes, creeds and sexualities, voted for the likes of Trump, Brexit and Marine Le Pen. I consider myself to be just as guilty, not for putting a sack of moldy tangerines in the White House, but for being complacent in my privilege at this institution.

Allow me to contextualize: one of the main reasons individuals have chosen to vote for the likes of Le Pen and others is because they come from a place of privilege, in which the hateful, racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric these figures spout does not affect them, therefore allowing it to be disregarded it in its entirety and instead be able to focus on what she offers in economic policy. We have seen the same privilege that allowed some of my fellow graduates to vote for Trump because they wished to, as they claim, either shake up the system or support the economic policies of a man who filed for bankruptcy six times. Needless to say, most are likely to be cis-gendered white males.

Some might call me a liberal snowflake, but this epithet is not an excuse to neglect misinformation. The truth of the matter is that people of higher socioeconomic, ethnolinguistic or geopolitical strata are only recently coming under threat. In other words, to put it bluntly, much like we’ve learned from the controversy surrounding the Netflix TV show Dear White People, those who come from privilege are more sensitive to critique. This is what we in the NYUAD community struggle most with.

On the one hand, we are too quick to criticize U.S. American students for the imperialism of their government or too quick to play the colonialism card against Europeans. Whether we like it or not, the world is still largely under American and European hegemony — but that is not an excuse for Trump, Brexit or Le Pen. Rather, it is a testament to our absolute need to continue addressing these issues, and pioneer new ways to address them.

My fellow students, I am sincerely sorry to say that we have yet to figure out the best ways in which to engage in such dialogue and discourse. In my current position, the only thing I am capable of doing is to hold people who voted for the far-right to be accountable for their choices, regardless of the fact that the far right's rhetoric targets the very same people which these students shared apartments, meals and memories with. I hold individuals who cast these votes accountable for refuting facts, but mostly for the deaths of all people who fell victim to increasing acts of terrorism against minorities since the rise of the far-right. But I write this article not solely to make a statement of where we are as a global community, threatened by the rise of far-right populism. I write this article to draw parallels with our own privilege at NYUAD.

MP Shashi Tharoor stated that Britons suffer from “historical amnesia”, exemplified by the fact that a whopping 59 percent of the population feel pride in the British Empire and 49 percent believe it left former colonies better off. My problem is not so much with their belief; nobody can be blamed for the ideological baggage we come into NYUAD with. Claiming ignorance, however, is not an excuse anymore. The coupling of ideological baggage with privilege is why people are inclined to vote for far-right parties and why NYUAD only makes a very sluggish movement towards true cosmopolitanism, if not outright decline.

Examples on campus are plenty and variant. In the dining hall students and faculty yell at staff because they claim food is crap, or the chicken steaks are over or undercooked. This is miniscule however, in comparison to the fact that staff are literally segregated from the rest of us — they have their own counter without the diversity offered to the rest of the patrons and sit in their own section to the right. There is of course nuance to these observations, but my point is to question what right students have to indulge in the extravagant benefits offered by NYUAD, while the staff that make this campus function are denied these benefits. We see them on a daily basis, but turn the other cheek. And this narrative repeats itself like an E.L. James novel.

Consider this article from a couple issues ago - which speaks volumes of the level of privilege we enjoy on campus. Although the reality of the situation is a little skewed, the fact is that trash needs to go through a second round of sorting before it is shipped off of campus. Is it so difficult for students and faculty to sort their own trash? The need for this stems from people throwing their trash in the wrong labeled section of the bin. Surprising? To think that your trivial actions have a very large impact on the amount of work others have to do, and at a tremendous cost to Serco and NYUAD.

The controversies surrounding the lead up to Commencement highlight the inability of the student body to engage with these more substantive debates. What angered me the most was the fact that the class of 2017 was more vocal about what color tassels we should be wearing than about those graduating after four years at this institution with the same privilege and ideological baggage that they came in with — the privilege that compelled them to vote for Trump, Brexit and Le Pen.

I thought NYUAD was a place where students engaged critically with all ideas. I thought students actively questioned everything we were spoonfed, and developed a more nuanced perspective of the world. Instead, we still have students who believe colonialism was good because of vaccines. We have students who can barely name five countries on the African continent. We have students who, despite their four years here, voted for Donald J. Trump.

How shameful of us. How shameful of me for not doing more. With that said, at the end of the day, I recognize that I haven’t tried hard enough to help others recognize the impact of their complacency. What I leave you with is the following question: I recognize my privilege. Do you recognize yours?

This is why, my fellow underclassmen and faculty, I urge you to address the urgency of these issues. The NYUAD I thought existed from Candidate Weekend, the NYUAD that is still being marketed, is not the NYUAD that exists. This NYUAD, one that recognizes its privilege and challenges its ideological baggage is up to us to create and perpetuate. On an administrative level, I would say make courses along the lines of African Politics or Tolerance 101 mandatory for freshman. However, it ultimately falls on you — the students — to set your privilege aside and recognize that you are given these privileges precisely so you can focus on making the lives of others better.

If that sounds unappealing — if you are here for purely individualistic reasons, or if you simply feel like you care very little for the issues of the world and only for yourself — then perhaps NYUAD is not for you. Either that or NYUAD stops marketing itself as the Global Network University. Learn from our mistakes, and I hope you have taken something away from the rants of a disappointed and regretful alum.

All the very best, Kamel AlSharif