Above photo: NYU students chase the CIA off campus. Fight Back! News.
New York, NY – On February 12, the New York University Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) held a picket outside of the NYU Kimmel Center to protest the presence of the Central Intelligence Agency at a school career fair.
Students and others picketed in front of the building for two hours chanting, “CIA off our campus! No platform for state violence!” and “Brick by brick! Wall by wall! The CIA will fall!”
Shortly before the picket, NYU SDS, in collaboration with several student and community organizations, launched a petition that demanded NYU remove the CIA from the career fair and end all collaboration with the agency. The petition had over 80 signatures by the time the career fair started.
The CIA did not show up to the school career fair, with NYU setting up an empty table where the agency was supposed to be. NYU SDS wrote in a press release statement after the picket, stating, “Today, when the career fair took place, the CIA did not show up, leaving the table empty and unused. This represents a win not just for SDS, but NYU’s student body as whole.”
NYU SDS has also scared off companies from attending previous career fairs. In their last semester, the student organization scared away military company General Dynamics, which has provided weapons to Israel to enact its genocide and occupation of Palestine, and mining company Glenncore, which has ties to human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
NYU SDS reaffirmed their commitment to call out NYU’s hypocrisy in collaborating with these violent institutions and companies and to take action against their presence. In their press release, the organization says, “As we celebrate our win at the career fair, SDS reaffirms our demand that NYU hold itself to a higher ethical standard, stop platforming these war criminal organizations, and protect student activists. SDS will continue to act until these demands are met.”