Dear NYU Steinhardt Community,
Yesterday, after a day of Zoom meetings in my living room, I stepped out for a walk, leaving my teen son bored on the couch. Bleecker Street, usually packed with people, was sprinkled with only the occasional pedestrian. Bars and restaurants lining the street were dark. Stores with bright neon lights, doors open, beckoned for the rare passerby to enter. After just a week, an afternoon walk in NYU’s Greenwich Village neighborhood felt surreal.
But then I noticed a row of daffodils reaching for the sun in the small triangle-shaped park by Minetta Lane. On the windows of a locked restaurant, in bright yellow paint, were the words “We love you, West Village. Take care of each other.” My phone buzzed – a colleague sent a picture of her swaddled newborn baby just home from the hospital. I arrived home to find my son animated on the couch playing a video game virtually with his friends. Life, love, play, and human connection persist, even though our world has been turned upside down.
In my welcome note in the Fall, I wrote that this year is about NYU Steinhardt’s core values of inclusion, innovation, and impact and emphasized the power of interconnection. Today, these core values persist, with interconnection taking on even greater significance. Our collaborative spirit has always given us an advantage – academically, scholarly, creatively, culturally, and now, remotely.
A wise person once told me that getting through a crisis is like being dealt a new hand of cards in the middle of a game. We are halfway through the semester, with new hands to play, but the game hasn’t changed. We will find new ways to continue to work, teach, create, and learn. Let’s also continue the informal interactions that make us a community – the ad hoc study groups, coffee dates, drop-ins just to say hello. In doing so, we will remain connected.
We will come together, from spaces around the world, to meet this new reality. This is who we are. Nothing – not space, nor time – can keep us from moving forward, together.
Take care.
Pamela A. Morris-Perez, PhD
(pronouns: she/her/hers)
Professor of Applied Psychology
Interim Dean
NYU Steinhardt