On Oct. 10, NYU Abu Dhabi celebrated the inauguration of Andrew Hamilton as the president of NYU in the NYUAD Arts Center. NYUAD’s welcome event followed Inauguration Celebration Week at NYU New York and a similar ceremony is planned for NYU Shanghai.

Andrew Hamilton is a prominent chemist and the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford. NYU’s Board of Trustees elected him as President in March 2015. He started executing his duties in January 2016. Hamilton is the 16th President of NYU, succeeding John Sexton, who was in office from 2002 to 2015. In an interview with the Office of Public Affairs at NYU, Sexton expressed his gratitude to the whole NYU community for allowing him to serve as president, and he commented on his successor:

“I love NYU, and I could not be more thrilled with the selection of Andrew Hamilton. I know and admire him, and I am certain he will do great things for the university.”

The day before NYUAD’s public inauguration, a more intimate affair was held in Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi, which was attended by the university's leadership and members of the NYUAD community.

According to Junior Class Representative Kelly Murphy who attended the event with the Student Government Executive Board, the event began with Vice Chancellor Al Bloom welcoming Hamilton and expressing the excitement of NYUAD’s community for hosting the inauguration ceremony.

Following Bloom’s welcome, a video was shown with short clips of New York’s Inauguration Week. Hamilton ended the night expressing his admiration and appreciation for the boldness of NYUAD and of its community, positioning the campus in the longer arch of NYU’s expansionist history.

Bloom opened the public ceremony on Oct. 10 by expressing his views on the essential qualities that should define NYU’s president. Bloom mentioned that NYU — and NYUAD in particular — is in need of a president who “appreciates the role of undergraduate education in imparting not only the foundational skills for success in careers, but the critical thinking, ethical complexity and global embrace required to lead within and across careers an interdependent and highly vulnerable global world.”

Following Bloom, there were more preliminary speeches, two student performances and a piece by two professional musicians prior to Hamilton’s Speech. Representatives of faculty and administration welcomed Hamilton to the NYUAD community, followed by some words from Student Government President Rend Beiruti.

In a subsequent conversation with The Gazelle, Beiruti expressed that the main purpose of her speech was to emphasize the centrality of student opinions. She stated:

“Students at NYUAD are a vital component of the NYU community and should be included in decision making processes at NYU. I hope that … Hamilton will appreciate the diverse demographic makeup of NYUAD.”

Hamilton’s speech started with him outlining the importance of attending the inauguration ceremonies at each of the three degree-granting campuses, thus underlining the importance of NYUAD and NYUSH in the Global Network University. In regard to NYUAD in particular, he expressed an ever-growing admiration for the work that is done.

Hamilton summarized NYU’s four most urgent priorities going forward:

“[Strengthen] the sciences at NYU, “[leverage] our entrepreneurial spirit to stay ahead of innovation, [ensure] that we are being faithful stewards of this planet even though we continue to grow and to build new facilities by making sure we renew our efforts on the sustainability front and [progress towards] affordability and diversity.”

Hamilton also addressed the concerns over a recent NYU-wide email that acknowledged the Jewish New Year but not the Islamic New Year, both of which occurred on the same day. Responding to claims about his oversight in not mentioning the Islamic New Year, he apologized, stating:

“I offered best wishes to those celebrating Jewish New Year but failed to acknowledge those celebrating the Islamic New Year. It was an oversight that I deeply regret, and I can assure you it is an oversight that will not happen again, but it’s also a reminder that our efforts on these issues must be ongoing: they must be diligent, and they must be approached with humility, by all of us, and especially by me.”

Approaching the end of his speech, Hamilton explained that considering the current needs of the university, more focus has to be put on pursuing the full potential of the existing global enterprise than on increasing the number of NYU campuses.

Hamilton’s speech ended when he made the offering of a symbolic gift to the NYUAD community: a 3D print of NYU’s seal over the images of the New York, Abu Dhabi and Shanghai skylines, made by NYUNY students.