The entire NYI Team stands strongly against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which we consider an outrageous violation of international law, unjustified by any considerations of historical context. We believe that the brutal attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, the wanton destruction of cities and towns, the overt attempt at general annihilation, the use of banned weapons, the attack on nuclear facilities and on humanitarian corridors, are immoral and inhumane, and constitute war crimes of unprecedented proportions. We stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine.
We also strongly condemn the repression and censorship that we are witnessing within Russia and we voice our unequivocal support for all those who protest this senseless act of violence, including many current and former NYI students, staff and faculty.
We are also united against those who willingly close their eyes to the realities of the lived experience of people suffering and dying in Ukraine, as well as to those experiencing repression within Russia.
Until Covid forced us to go virtual in 2020, the NYI school had been organized as a joint project between Stony Brook University and universities in St. Petersburg, and ran for 17 consecutive summers, from 2003-2019. It was a non-profit program, open to undergraduates and graduate students from any country and any institutions. People from the US and Iran, Ukraine and Russia, Serbia and Croatia, and dozens of other countries, all participated in open discussion of pressing cultural, cognitive, and linguistic issues in the then safe and always beautiful spaces of St. Petersburg. Over a hundred students each year (over a thousand in all), along with dozens of faculty, came from distances as far as Los Angeles and Pretoria and Khabarovsk over those 17 years to make the trip to St Petersburg for a magic summer of borderless cultural interaction and intellectual exploration.
Then, in the height of the first waves of the global covid pandemic, the school went virtual as V-NYI, and grew to include 200-250 students from 50+ countries attending each session live via zoom, starting in summer 2020, continuing in winter and summer 2021, winter and summer 2022, and most recently in winter 2023, with V-NYI #6. The six V-NYI Institutes have hosted over 1400 students from over 70 countries. In March, 2022, we became the NYI Global Institute of Cultural, Cognitive and Linguistic Studies.
As of Fall, 2022, NYI is now active year-round. All former NYI students, TAs and faculty are invited to participate in ongoing live NYI programming.
Нет войне.
With peace and solidarity,
The V-NYI Team