Security

Gilets Jaunes Demonstrations Update to Parents and Families

This post is a republished version of an email communication sent by AUP President Celeste Schenck to the parents and families of our current students on December 13, 2018, about the Gilets Jaunes demonstrations. It is part of our Safety & Security blog that rounds up all the latest news and updates for our community.

Dear AUP Parents and Families,  

We're turning the corner on the semester, as students dig in deep to finish their papers and presentations, and study for exams, with one more Saturday of demonstrations in Paris this weekend to get through safely as a community. Very soon they will be on their way back to you, very much in need of post-exam rest and relaxation. As you'll see below, where I've copied my message to your children, our students, we're strongly recommending again that they shelter in situ and not go out to join, watch, or take pictures of the demonstrations. Please support our recommendations to them when you speak to them.  

I'm sorry that an unintended glitch meant that my last email to you permitted the Reply to All feature and revealed the contents of a list. We identified it and fixed it within an hour or so, thanks to your alert. It will not happen again and was never our intention.  

As you will note in all my communications to you and to our students, I believe passionately that a university must remain a free marketplace of ideas, where students will inevitably have fierce conversations, and come up against ideas they will both love and hate. We do not shy from staging strong debates at AUP, but they are framed by faculty in ways that promote the development of powerful intellectual muscles--the ability to frame an argument and to support it, the capacity to evaluate the truth of ideas they read or hear, the willingness to live with uncertainty, and a commitment to remain civil at all times when we engage our differences. By hearing ideas they sometimes hate, students learn to structure their own value systems; they learn to identify what they love, what they personally want to stand up for.  As student activism and civic engagement hasn't been high for some years, both in France and in the US, I salute and welcome our students' interest in what is happening in the country where they are living.  

During these last few weeks, faculty across campus have brought the discussion of demonstrations into the classroom so that students could consider the social and political demands of the protesters, the complex membership of the group that is protesting, the role of social media in contemporary politics, the rise of populism in Europe, the future of liberal democracy and of the European Union. While it's been a time of some consternation, especially for families who live far from Paris, your children have had a front-row seat on some of the most important debates of our day. Could there be a more valuable experience for a college student today?  

Wishing each of you a healthy, happy, and peaceful holiday season, 

Celeste Schenck