Around 120 students and faculty gathered outside Bobst Library earlier this afternoon — around six hours after NYU authorized police to arrest around 14 students at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the Paulson Center. Demonstrators chanted “Linda Mills, your hands are red” and “treat your students like you should” while around a dozen Campus Safety and two New York City Police Department officers stood across from the library.
Protesters demanded amnesty for all students, faculty and graduate workers facing disciplinary action for their involvement in the encampments on campus. They also called for the university to remove police presence from campus and disclose investments in and divest from companies and weapons manufacturers with ties to Israel. In a previous statement to WSN, a university spokesperson said that NYU would not consider divestment from companies connected to Israel due to the size of its endowment.
“It is an attack on the very idea of the university for the administration last week to arrest students and faculty, to this morning to arrest more students,” Gallatin professor Jacob Remes said in an interview with WSN. “Universities can only be universities if they are spaces of the free exchange of ideas.”
About half an hour after the start of the picket, a counterprotester entered the rally holding an Israeli flag and recorded the protesters as they marched, accusing them of continuing “to support the genocide of Hamas.” The counterprotester returned to the scene about 45 minutes later with a larger Israeli flag, waving it above protesters, followed by several more NYPD officers who surrounded them and eventually escorted them away from the scene.
CAS professor Sonya Posmentier, who is also a member of NYU AAUP, told WSN that the only violence she has seen is from counterprotesters, mentioning children throwing water balloons at the encampment and people throwing eggs from residence halls. She also said students “were literally asleep” as the NYPD swept the Paulson Center this morning.
“Linda Mills has never spoken to student organizers on this topic, has not come to the campus, has only sent the police,” Posmentier said. “This rally was meant to encourage the university to speak to students instead of sending police after them.”
Remes criticized President Linda Mills and NYU leadership for its failure “to listen to the faculty to negotiate” and called on the administration “to stop criminalizing us and our students.” Posmentier told WSN that the Department of English has voted “overwhelmingly, no confidence” in Mills.
The demonstrators called on faculty to cancel final exams and to not enter final grades for students, holding signs that read “listen to your students.” In a letter from NYU’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors earlier this afternoon, the group expressed “no confidence” in Mills’ leadership following the student arrests at the Paulson Center this morning. The vote comes after the board of trustees affirmed their “complete confidence in and full support” of Mills following a no-confidence vote where the majority of Gallatin faculty voted that they do not have confidence in Mills’ leadership last week.
A university spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Contact Aashna Miharia at [email protected].
