On Student Protest

28 August 2024

 

NYU spokesman, John Beckman, claimed here on 27 August that the new  “‘Guidance and Expectations on Student Conduct’ document does not change our policies,” which is clearly untrue; or perhaps the policies were simply kept secret, when, as you will see in my report below on the April 22 student protests, we faculty supporting students on the Gould Plaza spoke with NYU security officers repeatedly, all afternoon, and they never once said that we were trespassing, or were making too much noise, or that our lively speakers denouncing atrocities in Gaza were being antisemitic or offending Jewish students. We in fact had Jewish students among us and an Orthodox contingent cheering us on. NYU never gave us any order to leave the plaza, or any indication that we were violating any NYU policy; instead, NYU had the NYUPD arrest us (on charges that would not hold up in court, for lack of warning by the owner of the property we were supposedly trespassing).  These new guidelines were composed in summer 2024 in order to stop students from protesting the ongoing mass murder of innocent civilians in Gaza, which is now approaching 50,000 dead, with countless injured, homeless, diseased, and harmed for life by the Israeli army, with full US support. The NYU administration is supporting those crimes against humanity by criminalizing protest against it, and by turning any critique of ideology that justifies genocide into a Title VI violation.

    

Here is a link to the NYU policy, which effectively makes any religiously self-justified ethno-nationalist ideology the basis for a protected religious identity. It extends Title VI protections to nationalists who tie their politics to religion and who claim their opponents discriminate against them on the basis of religion. [Following the logic of the House Bill passed in May 2024, in response to student protests critical of Israel: HR894.] 

 

Here is NYU FJP response … Here is update with details, 27 August 2024. Here is the MESA “Letter to New York University expressing concern about its new “Guidance and Expectations for Student Conduct” Here is AHA Resolution on Scholasticide.

“Zionist” Is Now a Protected Class at NYU.” by Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, 27 Aug 2024.

“‘A police state’: US universities impose rules to avoid repeat of Gaza protests,” The Guardian, 28 Aug 2024

Here is a collection of faculty letters to the President and Provost. More letters. Letter from Nikhil Singh. 

 

Below is a copy of the letter I sent to NYU President Linda Mills, on April 23.  I will continue to edit it for clarification.  Here is a collection of materials on Gaza. 

 

Dear Linda,

 

I want to clarify a few things about yesterday, which you do not seem to know. You surely do know, of course, that the protest was entirely peaceful and that whatever obstruction there was to Stern access was caused by the barricades and restrictions enforced by NYU security, not by students. You surely know that the so-called breach of the barricades was made by students and faculty with NYU IDs, not by “outsiders.” 

 

You may not know that the effort to check IDs from everyone in the plaza in the afternoon was proposed and begun by the faculty and then rejected and stopped by NYU security. Everyone in that plaza had an NYU ID: there is no proof otherwise. We were all students and faculty, exercising free speech on our own campus, where we work and students pay tuition. The chanting was free speech. If there was noise disruption of Stern classes, we were not told that or given any option to alter the free speech volume to improve the situation.

 

What you will not know is that several of us faculty and one of the student leaders spoke with the NYU security detail there in the afternoon. They repeated the same (false) “breach scenario” [asserting that non-NYU people breached the barricades] that you present in your statement, as the reason they would SPEAK TO THE CROWD over a bull horn and convey a 4pm deadline for everyone to leave the plaza or face arrest. 

 

They never did speak to the gathered protestors in Gould Plaza. 4pm passed, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, and then around 8pm or so, all of sudden, the NYPD arrived en masse through the W3rd St entrance. A very large gang of them, whose massing by the gate made it difficult for anyone to imagine leaving by that entrance, which I was starting to do when I was arrested. (This was during Muslim prayers in the plaza, by the way.) 

 

The cops played a recording over and over announcing that the University had declared that we were trespassing and that we would be arrested if we did not leave, WITHOUT INDICATING any time frame for that demand. Then all of a sudden they started grabbing people and tying their hands very roughly behind our backs. The guy who arrested me was clearly angry that I was a bit stunned and did not immediately put my hands behind my back. He and one other guy grabbed and forced my arms back, and tied my ties so tight they hurt like hell and cut off the blood supply to my fingers. I asked them politely over and over to loosen the ties; they refused until two hours later in Police HQ. 

 

We were expecting — based on our conversations with NYU security officers that afternoon — that Fountain Walker, you, or at least someone in NYU security would come speak to us over the bullhorn and explain how a peaceful demonstration had been declared illegal on our own campus, and give us a deadline to leave. We had talked to student leaders about how to respond and we had asked the security people to have further conversations about how to proceed. No effort was ever made by anyone at NYU to communicate with us and I was there with other faculty ready to talk all day after 2pm.

 

Clearly, the CIVIL way to handle the situation was for NYU administration to discuss with us how and when to disband. (I have been in protest situations before where that has happened, once when occupying a classroom/office building at Penn, which was clearly illegal but handled in a very civil way by the administration.) There was a rumor that you were on the way to talk with us; I was recruited to talk with you, and accepted because I know you from GNU work.

 

Instead, with no discussion whatever, we were roughed up with typically rude NYPD treatment as criminals. This treatment was inflicted upon us by our employer, for whom, I must say, I have worked very hard over the years, particularly to improve global education, as you know. 

 

We were engaged in the plaza in a public-facing global education project; our students were learning a lot. It was a public classroom on university property: just what public education should be. Unfortunately, our students learned, as I have learned, that NYU — and other universities — are now places more of arrogant discipline and rough rude treatment than of civil discourse and critical learning, places where blatantly false statements are used to justify arresting and roughing up university community members engaged in free speech and in serious critical public education.

 

Sadly

david

 

Here are my thoughts on how student protest might proceed effectively under the new conditions that we face at NYU. Dated 30 Aug 2024. 

 

Dear NYU News Editor,

I am a faculty member who was arrested on 22 April 2024 for protesting the war on Gaza in Gould Plaza. In consideration of trends since then, I recommend that NYU students concerned with that war consider its economic foundation in the American “military industrial complex,” a useful term invented by Dwight David Eisenhower in his farewell speech as President, on January 17, 1961.

He encouraged us then to remember now that all the billions and billions of US dollars that are called “aid” for wars being waged by US allies actually go into the pockets of investors in the US military. Political support rallied in defense of wars waged by Israel and Ukraine is actually support for massive and ever-expanding US government subsidies for the American military industrial complex — amounting to over 50% of the annual discretionary budget — paid for by American taxpayers, draining funds from education, health, and social welfare programs.

An anti-war movement on campus would not violate NYU policies justified as protections from ethno-religious discrimination and also would get to the heart of the struggle for justice in Palestine. Demands for NYU divestment from military industries and to end US military aid could be waged on the streets and directed at Trustees who control NYU’s funds (including your tuition) and legislators who represent us and control our taxes in Washington. An election year is a perfect time to mount such a movement.

Sincerely,
David Ludden
Retired NYU Professor of History