Health, safety and the continuity of our academic mission: NYU Abu Dhabi’s Return to Campus is rooted in our commitment to these touchstones. NYU Returns is similarly grounded in conventions designed to keep each other safe. Throughout the fall, we have acted to prioritize the academic and research mission, accommodate robust health and safety protocols, act with flexibility in response to uncertainty and react to evolving local and global guidelines and travel restrictions.

The recent announcement about the continued suspension of study abroad programs for the spring 2021 semester was met with understandable disappointment and a sense of loss for those who were planning to study abroad this year and the many faculty and staff who deliver these important programs around the world. NYU New York, NYUAD and NYU Shanghai collectively made this difficult decision with a great deal of forethought and a heavy heart.

We share students’ disappointment at this most recent news, as well as other impacts the pandemic has wrought on the normal rhythm of life at NYUAD and across the global network.

Yet, as Covid-19 continues its rampant spread across the globe, with travel restrictions ongoing, and no vaccine in sight for the near term, this decision was both necessary and prudent. To call it a “fiasco” as The Gazelle Managing Editor has characterized it is unfair and a misapprehension of what is at stake: the health and safety of the thousands of students at NYUNY, NYUAD and across the global network. The real fiasco would be to put students knowingly at risk by scattering them around the globe and increasing exposure for them, faculty, staff and families at a time of great uncertainty and peril.

As to the writer’s claims of hypocrisy and irrationality surrounding this decision and the very design of the Go Local program, the bottom line is that NYUNY and NYUAD, like other universities around the world, are making the best decisions possible within a rapidly changing and uncertain situation while prioritizing health, safety and academic continuity. What sets NYU uniquely apart, and what the university is rightly leveraging, is the ability to tap into the global network and use its campuses and academic centers to support students who may have otherwise encountered serious issues in returning to their home campuses, while also supporting academics and the continuity of research.

We also take issue with the assertion that the program "privileged passports, mostly from the West." In fact, the totals across the sites do not support this view, with the largest number by far of those “going local” studying at NYUSH.

The pandemic continues to be keenly felt by our students, faculty and staff. But our ability to act with flexibility, understanding, patience and empathy is at the heart of who we are and who we strive to be as a community. NYUNY and NYUAD are proof that a university can respond with alacrity to rapidly evolving global events while advancing research and scholarship and keeping the community whole and safe.

We support the tough decisions that have to be made here and across the NYU global network because we understand that these hard choices are rooted in keeping each and every member of our community healthy and safe.