Ken’s Blog

As I walked to NYU this morning, I passed coffee shops and classrooms around campus filled with excited and happy young people, all busily engaged in conversations with people with different backgrounds and perspectives. Muslims and Jews, men and women, straight or gay or transgender, european, asian, african. Just a complete mix of young minds from around the world, all engaged in rapt discussion.

I thought about how fortunate we are to be in a place where can bring your identity with you, yet you are not defined by it. People here are interested in who you are, but they don’t reflexively reduce you to a member of some group.

Coincidentally, this evening NYU’s new president sent an email out to our entire university community. I was so inspired by his moving and thoughtful words that I am sharing the letter with you, in its entirety:

Dear NYU Community Members,

Affected by a sharp national sense of divisiveness, many in our community are worried and unsettled, both by national events and by the echoes here on our own campus.

The effects of the election will play out across the country in the coming days and years. Here at NYU, we should remind ourselves who are we as a community: we reject intimidation and discrimination; we strive for diversity and inclusiveness; and we are a community in which each person takes as his or her responsibility the welfare and well-being of others, irrespective of citizenship, faith, race, national origin, gender, sexual orientation or any of the other identities that might, but surely need not, divide us.

A community is defined by its ideals as much as its membership. These are ours. And we should conduct ourselves in accord with them now and at all times.

With that in mind, I wanted to mention two specific items:

First, there was an incident at Tandon School of Engineering earlier in the week that involved the defacement of the door of the Muslim prayer room. The police were called and you can read here the statement we posted which clearly states that this behavior is unacceptable.

Also, I know that many on our campus have specific concerns about the status of undocumented students at NYU. The university’s program to provide funding to undocumented students will continue; it will not be affected by any changes in federal funding. As is the case now, undocumented students will be treated exactly as all other students at NYU with regard to housing, privacy and all other matters.

Our home city, New York, is a “sanctuary city.” This means that municipal law enforcement agencies do not alert federal immigration authorities about the immigration status of undocumented individuals except in very specific circumstances, such as in response to a judicial warrant for an individual wanted for a violent or serious felony. Moreover, NYU’s Department of Public Safety officers are not “sworn peace officers” and they do not have police powers; they are not asked to and they do not convey an undocumented individual’s status to any other governmental entity.

You will find below a list of resources and events that maybe helpful to you.

Above all please stay connected with your colleagues and friends. This is an unusual time as our government undergoes transition, but rest assured that NYU will remain steadfast in adhering to its values and ideals.

Sincerely,

Andy Hamilton

Inside the eye of a hurricane, everything is calm. People walk around, laugh and enjoy the day. Sometimes they have a coffee.

Sure, the sky seems dark and overcast, but nobody sees the need for an umbrella. The wind doesn’t even seem to be blowing very much.

Off in the distance, you can just barely make out the wall of the hurricane approaching. If you strain your eyes a bit, something seems to be flying up in the air. Is that a pile of debris blowing aport, or a building? From here it is hard to tell.

But not to worry. Inside the eye of the hurricane, everything is calm.

This week I went to a number of events related to Virtual Reality. At one of those events I saw a description of a truly beautiful film, with a companion VR piece, Defying the Nazis, co-created by the celebrated documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.

The true story being told is of a daring rescue of 29 children from Nazi occupied France — children who otherwise would have been put to death simply for their ethnic identity. The film is transported to an entirely different plane by the way it uses virtual reality.

One of those children — now, 76 years later — is given the opportunity to view that long ago escape within immersive VR. Her response to the experience is a marvel to behold.

I am sure that all Americans will join me in agreeing that there can be no greater way to honor our country, no more powerful affirmation of our nation’s fundamental ideals, than our willingness to rescue innocent children from the threat of death or great suffering, and to welcome them into our land with open arms. I’m proud that I live in a country where every one of us can at least agree on that.

In the last four days I have noticed, both within myself and within the people I work with here in NY, a consistent mental state. It is not the one that I might have predicted.

We have not been talking about politics very much. Instead, we all seem to be thinking about how each of us, both individually and together with others, can learn more about how to help make the world a better place.

There seems to be an increased awareness of the troubles of others — particularly in places where we had never had the awareness to look, such as other parts of this country. And then a working through of possible ways to help lighten the burden of those troubles, as well as a willingness to learn more about how we might be helpful, across cultural divides.

It reminds me, in a way, of how we New Yorkers were with one another in the Autumn of 2001. We were aware, of course, that all around us was a maelstrom of rage. But here on the streets of New York, I mostly observed that people, amidst their mood of terrible sadness, were unusually kind to each other. Strangers would smile reassuringly at one another, and make a point of helping each other out.

It seems that New Yorkers are at our best when we have a sense of purpose.

There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.

– L. Cohen

Whenever I have found myself lost in darkness, the words of this beautiful man have always brought me back to light and possibility.

Now he is gone. Yet like all great souls, he is still with us.

For the last two days I have been thinking long and hard about what it is about America that makes me the most proud. Can we look past our short-term failures as a nation, to ask why we are a wonderful and noble experiment that helps to make this world a better place?

And I realized that everything I love about this country was best summed up by Emma Lazarus, within her poem “The New Colossus”, at the base of the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

If I needed one reason to show that America is something glorious, it would be this: That sometimes — not always, but sometimes — our nation remembers to live up to that beautiful idea.

I guess I am supposed to weigh in here on the results of yesterday’s election. But it’s not that simple. In fact, it’s complicated.

I am not sure that anybody fully expected this — possibly the largest protest vote in U.S. history. But now that it has happened, we need to figure out the best path to the future.

And make no mistake about it: There is always a path to the future.

Your child is lying on the operating room table, your beautiful precious child. Brain surgery is needed, you are told, but you are not sure you can trust the surgeon.

She is secretive, it has been said, and she is given money by rich friends, sometimes merely for giving speeches about neuroscience. Yet she has spent decades studying her profession, and she knows that the proper use of a scalpel is both delicate and complex.

She has become adept, through many years of practice, at dealing with lesions, aneurysms, abscesses and hematoma. Whatever you think of her personally, you realize her knowledge of this difficult and subtle craft is both extensive and practical.

But then at the door appears a butcher of some renown. He is finely dressed, for he has done very well indeed in his trade. You are immediately taken by the man’s sheer boldness and confidence. In your moment of grief and indecision, you stare up at him dumbly, awed by his arrogant swagger and air of self-possession.

“I alone can fix it,” he declares, and you let him in the door. As he sweeps confidently past you into the operating theater, you realize that he holds in his hand not a scalpel, but a butcher’s knife.

“Yes, of course,” you say to yourself, “I must have known that. After all, he said he was a butcher.” But by then he is already at the table.

The great man has no use for precision or accuracy, for arcane learning from books, for the mundane niceties of neuroscience. Before you know it, he has already plunged his butcher’s knife deep into your child’s brain, and has begun to slice away the parts he deems useless, or that simply bore him.

You rush to the table, as in a terrible dream, trying vainly to stop the dripping red flow that has already begun to pool onto the floor, and you recall that the man had never claimed to be an actual brain surgeon. He’d merely said that he was a successful butcher.

You realize that this was not his fault, it was yours. As you gaze down at your hands, now covered with the blood of your dying child, you remember that it was you who opened the door, it was you who let the butcher in.

Our country, and in some sense the state of the world, is hanging in the balance. Much depends on what happens tomorrow.

Even if you buy into every nutty conspiracy theory against Hillary Clinton that Fox News loudly repeats — and then very quietly retracts — there is still no comparison between the two candidates. It’s not mainly that Donald Trump is a bully, or a narcissist, or a proud mysogynist, or says deeply insulting and offensive things about blacks, Jews, hispanics, Muslims, and many other Americans.

It’s mainly the fact that he is completely unqualified for the job. He has no experience or knowledge of foreign policy, of economic policy, of law or even the U.S. Constitution — except, of course, for his cherished Article XII.

The moment Trump gets into the White House, Vladimir Putin will begin to manipulate him into starting an ill-conceived war somewhere. Trump will take the bait, because he won’t have the slightest clue he is being manipulated. Things will work out very well for the Russian strongman, but very badly for the rest of the world, including the United States.

If you were a Bernie Sanders supporter, if you don’t agree with Hillary Clinton on all the issues, if you are reading this blog and are wavering, please think about what’s at stake here. Don’t sit this one out. Don’t for a third party candidate.

Even if Clinton wins tomorrow, if she does not win by a decisive margin, or if the Senate stays in Republican hands, this ugliness will continue. Without a clear mandate at the polls, don’t expect a ninth Supreme Court justice any time soon. The GOP leadership has made it clear that it is not interested in playing by the rules.

If you think Trump, and all he stands for, is a horror show, then don’t kid yourself. Neglecting to cast a vote tomorrow, or throwing your vote away on a third party candidate, is effectively a vote for Donald Trump.

Today I was explaining to someone how difficult it can be for me to navigate the differences between languages. To illustrate, I ended up describing a bus ride I once took in Brazil from Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo.

It was quite a long trip, so along the way the bus driver stopped at a rest stop, which contained a little snack bar, a rest room, etc. I found myself running into a surprising number of language barriers just trying to use the rest room.

First off, to enter the rest room, I needed to go through a door labeled with a word which is pronounced “Push”. In Portuguese, this word means “Pull”.

Then I needed to decide exactly which restroom to enter. One of the doors had a big “M” on the door. It turned out that the “M” stood for “Mulheres”, which is Portuguese for “Women”.

Once inside, I needed to figure out which tap was for hot water and which was for cold water. Just like in the U.S., one of the taps had a big letter “C” on it. Except in Portuguese, the “C” stands for “Calore”, which means “Hot”.

I wonder whether Brazilians visiting the U.S. for the first time are as confused about our signage as I was about theirs.