Dear Friends,

I joined the AUAF community in the early spring of 2021 with the knowledge that change would inevitably come to Afghanistan and to a university that has faced many challenges in its short history – indeed, more than its share. What I found was a cohort of students, a leadership team, a faculty, and a professional staff whose resilience and ability to adapt surpassed any I’ve seen before. Nobody asks for adversity; but, when tested by it, we sometimes discover the best parts of ourselves. I was meeting a community at its best.

We anticipated the changes to come with the confidence that AUAF would adapt again to realities that might be hard but could be overcome. In August, as these realities crystalized, we closed our two campuses in Kabul with heavy hearts but the clarity of mission: we would choose knowledge over fear; strength over surrender; and ingenuity over doubt. When we decided in those early weeks to begin the fall semester online and on time, it was our answer to skepticism and illiberalism, and we found our students no less ready to learn, no less ready to question, no less ready to use their voices than the day before Afghanistan’s dramatic change in political fortunes. Every day since, signing into classes in the shared pursuit of knowledge, they reaffirm this answer. Learning has never represented a greater act of courage.

AUAF is now a global university, with more than half of our students continuing their studies from sites outside Afghanistan, and faculty teaching online from around the world. New programs in Doha and Venice give us a place to stand; digital technology gives us the means to reach more students, in more places, and in more ways.

This global identity reflects the way Afghanistan has touched the world, bringing nations together in our aspirations to help an opening society over twenty years, yet also illuminating the divisions that hinder progress. We know more about the limits of military intervention to create meaningful change, even as we realize how little we knew about the currents that were drawing Afghanistan back to an authoritarian past. The new Afghan diaspora, deserving all the support we can muster, has much to teach us – about the richness and diversity of their cultural heritage, about the meaning and heartbreak of exile, and about what we can and must continue to do for the Afghan people.

We can and must continue to educate Afghanistan’s ambitious young women and men for leadership in their own society and in the world. We can and must continue to equip them with knowledge, skills, and agency to define their own individual and collective futures. We can and must ensure that their dreams for a more just, more equitable, more prosperous society do not end in obscurity.

Sincerely,

Ian Bickford
President