After the tragic events in Paris on Friday, members from NYU’s global community kept our students, faculty, and staff at NYU Paris, and all Parisians, in their thoughts. Here is the message from NYU President John Sexton:
Dear NYU Community Members,
I know I speak for us all when I express my heartbreak, bewilderment, and grief at the terrible, senseless violence that shook France late yesterday.
Our thoughts, naturally, turn first to our own students, faculty, and staff in Paris. Since almost the first moments after the attacks, we began the process of reaching out to every student there to make sure he or she was safe. I am glad to report that all the students at NYU Paris have been located and are safe and secure. We have increased our safety presence in Paris, and will continue to closely monitor developments.
Yet even as reassuring word has come about our students’ safety, we remember that NYU has been part of Paris for nearly 50 years, through good times and hard times, and never in all those decades have our hearts been more filled with sorrow than today. We mourn the victims, and the sting of this loss is made all the sharper by coming less than a year after the attacks upon Charlie Hebdo and the supermarche.
When New York was attacked on 9-11, everyone in the world proudly became New Yorkers; today, we are all Parisians, bound by a commitment to persevere in the face of extremism, to show courage in the face of terrorism, and to find renewal in the face of tragedy.
We stand with the people of Paris today; they are in our hearts and prayers.
—John Sexton