Over two dozen NYU students joined around 100 others from colleges and universities across lower Manhattan to condemn the university’s updated student conduct guidelines — which cite “code words, like ‘Zionist,’” as potentially discriminatory speech — and reiterate demands for NYU to divest from companies with ties to Israel amid the war in Gaza at a rally in Washington Square Park on Thursday afternoon. 

The demonstrators left the park 45 minutes after the protest began and marched down Sixth Avenue toward The New School, which was the group’s final stop after visiting the Fashion Institute of Technology and School of Visual Arts. Demonstrators claimed that New York City Police Department officers arrested a student leaving the building as the march approached. When asked for comment, the NYPD said it could not confirm the incident.

The protest — organized by four chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, including at NYU — saw at least two dozen New York City Police Department officers who surrounded the group. A member of NYU SJP, who requested to remain anonymous due to safety concerns, told WSN that the university has been “contacting the NYPD to be present at almost every mobilization” that pro-Palestinian groups on campus have held this semester — including a citywide march on Labor Day and a demonstration at the Tandon School of Engineering, which both saw police presence.

“The university didn’t call the police, and none of this has anything to do with the updated Guidance and Expectations document,” NYU spokesperson John Beckman said in a statement to WSN. 

A representative from NYU SJP spoke to the group at Garibaldi Plaza, criticizing the university’s student conduct guidelines, claiming that the regulations “protect Zionists.” Beckman had previously said the guidelines were updated for clarity and that no university policies have changed in a public statement, after NYU’s Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine group condemned the guidelines for setting “a dangerous precedent” in a press release. 

“At NYU, we see recent policy trying to not only conflate Zionism with Judaism, but also rule Zionism as a protected class,” the SJP member said. “We as students and as activists want to make clear that we don’t just stand for the investment that NYU has, but also the policy that it’s continuing to form.” Dozens of students, faculty and alumni were arrested at two Gaza Solidarity Encampments in Gould Plaza and outside the Paulson Center last spring. NYU community members have also demonstrated at several graduation ceremonies, including the all-university commencement, and are continuing to demand that NYU cut ties with companies tied to Israel and remove NYPD from campus. Members of FSJP claimed to have started a service strike on Labor Day until those demands were met, an ultimatum the university had called “unproductive.”

Contact Aashna Miharia and Dharma Niles at [email protected].