The Abu Dhabi campus of New York University has closed until further notice after Iran warned on Saturday that American universities with outposts in the Gulf were “legitimate targets” in retaliation for strikes on Iranian universities during the war in the Middle East.
Administrators at N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi said in an email to the university community that the campus was immediately denying access to all students and faculty and staff members out of “an abundance of caution,” the N.Y.U. student newspaper first reported on Monday.
Earlier in March, N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi had moved classes online after Iranian missiles struck near the area, but the campus had remained open and continued to offer essential services.
The war with Iran is presenting a formidable challenge to the American universities with campuses in the region, including New York-based institutions N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi, Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar and the Rochester Institute of Technology of Dubai.
American universities began opening campuses in the Gulf region decades ago to attract international funding and students and to burnish their global credentials. But since the start of the recent conflict, university administrators have encountered the downside of their footprint in a conflict-prone zone.
Education City in Qatar hosts campuses for Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Northwestern, Texas A&M and Virginia Commonwealth universities, in addition to Cornell. Several national universities, such as the University of Bahrain and University of Jordan, have partnerships with American universities.
Classes on campuses in the region that are affiliated with U.S. universities have largely been remote since the start of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran on Feb. 28. In some cases, classes have been canceled for extended spring breaks. Universities have also attempted to help students evacuate from the region.
Wiley Norvell, an N.Y.U. spokesman, confirmed Monday that the Abu Dhabi campus had been temporarily closed. The students and staff and faculty members who had been residing on campus had already been relocated. The university has also temporarily closed its small study abroad site in Tel Aviv. Classes will continue remotely in both locations.
“We’ve continued to act out of an abundance of caution, and our priority in every decision is the safety of our students, faculty and staff,” he said.
N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi, which opened in 2010, has about 2,200 students, representing about 120 countries. About a quarter of its students are citizens of the United Arab Emirates.
The threat from Iran was posted to social media by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after an air strike on a physics building at the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran. The Associated Press reported that the strike was carried out by Israeli forces.
The Isfahan University of Technology and other universities in Iran have also been hit in the conflict, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baqaei, said on social media Saturday.
In its threat, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps wrote that “from now on, all universities of the occupying regime and American universities in the West Asia region are legitimate targets for us until two universities are struck in retaliation for the Iranian universities that have been destroyed.”
“All staff, professors and students of American universities in the region, as well as residents in their surroundings, are advised to stay at least one kilometer away from these universities to ensure their safety,” the post read.
The post said that the American government had until noon on Monday to condemn the bombing of Iranian universities if it wanted “its universities in the region to be spared.” The group warned that further attacks on Iranian universities and research centers would prompt more threats of retaliatory strikes on U.S. institutions in the Middle East.
On Monday morning, Georgetown University Qatar posted a message on its website saying that its building would be closed and instruction carried out remotely until further notice.
The American University of Beirut, which is chartered in New York, said on Sunday that all operations would be fully remote on Monday and Tuesday “out of an abundance of caution.”
Texas A&M University at Qatar had announced last week that it would be fully remote at least through the end of the spring semester. Virginia Commonwealth’s Qatar campus has moved to remote operations, and members of the public can no longer access its premises, the university said. Rochester Institute of Technology of Dubai is also operating remotely “until further notice,” a spokesman said, and the Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar campus is closed and functioning remotely.
Sharon Otterman is a Times reporter covering higher education, public health and other issues facing New York City.
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