For Protesting Gaza Genocide.
The student activists have been suspended for participating in non-violent collective action demanding the university disclose and divest from its ties to Israel.
On Dec. 11, over a dozen NYU students and faculty dropped flyers and hung banners throughout the Bobst Library while 13 people sat in on the administrative floor of thelibrary. The actionists were demanding a meeting with administrators, who had, in the spring during the Gaza solidarity encampment movement at NYU, promised students to disclose the university’s endowment, including all its investments in weapons manufacturers and ties to Israel and companies that profit off its occupation of Palestine.
The direct action was organized by student group Shut It Down NYU, which challenges what it sees as NYU’s ties to imperialism. Not only were the students’ demands ignored, but yesterday, 11 of them were suspended for a year on the pretext of participating “In coordinated and collective disruptive action” — the non-violent action at the library. Several more NYU students are currently going through disciplinary proceedings that could result in similar punishments.
Here is the press release we received from Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine:
New York, January 8, 2025 – In a draconian case of collective punishment, New York University has issued blanket year-long suspensions to students who participated in nonviolent protest on campus on December 11, 2024. As of today, at least eleven students have been suspended until January 2026. Those suspended thus far include students who participated in a sit-in in front of the administration offices on the 12th floor of Bobst Library and those who simply sat in the lobby of the library in solidarity. The sit-in was to demand a meeting with administration officials regarding disclosure of and divestment from institutional investments in Israel. All students identified as participating in these actions were charged with similar violations of NYU’s code of student conduct, first and foremost “engaging in activity that substantially disrupts or interferes with University or community activities, programs or operations.”
Messages sent by the Office of Student Conduct to suspended students indicate that they are being punished for holding a protest in the library at the end of the semester, claiming that this produced “a significant disruptive impact…during a particularly critical time.” The minor disruptions of distributing flyers and chanting for fifteen minutes were intended to highlight the much more significant disruption of teaching, learning and scholarship that has taken place in Gaza. As a resolution passed by the American Historical Association on Sunday indicates, scholarly life in Gaza has been destroyed, as Israel’s bombardments of the enclave have reduced all universities and nearly all schools, libraries and archives to rubble. As of December 11, the day of the protest, the death toll in Gaza had reached 45,000 people, more than half women and children.
For the last fifteen months, students at NYU and at universities across the country have consistently engaged in protest against Israel’s documented genocide in Gaza. However, the punishments in this case are dramatically more severe than those issued over the past fifteen months. Members of the administration have indicated this harsher punishment is related to purported “threatening messages” found in the library the same day as the protest, despite the lack of any evidence connecting the protesting students to the graffiti. In addition to associating the protests with anonymous graffiti, the administration accuses all protesting students of engaging in “coordinated and collective disruptive events,” including designing, printing and disseminating flyers and disguising their identities by wearing masks (actions that are not violations of the code of conduct). The extreme sanctions placed on all of the students charged with participating in the protest can only be explained as a complete collapse in any kind of due process and instead the arbitrary meting out of collective punishment – regardless of the actions of any individual student. This assertion of guilt by association is a dangerous smear tactic on the part of the administration. It attempts to delegitimize the most powerful student movement of recent decades. By suspending a large group of activists, the administration clearly aims to undermine this movement and intimidate those who remain at NYU.
Ironically, NYU’s University Student Conduct Policy states that “a critically engaged, activist student body contributes to NYU’s academic mission,” and emphasizes that the policy is not intended to hinder “organized, nonviolent, peaceful protest.” The pernicious weaponization of this policy to punish a large group of students otherwise in good standing for participating in just such an organized, nonviolent, peaceful protest with the unprecedented sanction of a full year’s suspension tarnishes NYU’s reputation as a global network university with a commitment to support free speech on campus. It reflects the ongoing “Palestine exception” to free speech on campus, also highlighted in yesterday’s press release from the NYCLU condemning NYU’s transformation of its non-discrimination and anti-harassment policy to stifle speech on Palestine.
Following on the heels of widespread public condemnation of NYU’s arrests and declaration of a number of its own faculty as Persona Non Grata (PNG), the university’s administration is once again setting a shameful precedent with this mass suspension of students protesting an ongoing genocide.
— FACULTY AND STAFF FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE