A group of graduate student workers at the Tisch School of the Arts sent a letter to the cinema studies department and NYU administration, demanding that the university remove “protective language around Zionism” in its updated student conduct guidelines. The group also called upon the university to protect students who refuse to complete the required “How We Engage Toolkit” on Brightspace — which overviews the student conduct and non-discrimination policies — from facing disciplinary action.
The letter, which NYU’s graduate student worker union publicized online, was authored by student workers at the Moving Image and Archiving Preservation program in the Department of Cinema Studies. It stated that many of the MIAP students and alumni who signed the letter are Jewish, and condemned NYU’s “weaponization of Jewish trauma to silence criticism” the university has faced for its response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus. The union, GSOC-UAW Local 2110, also encouraged other students to send similar letters to their departments, sharing a template for collective and personal letters in a social media post.
Jonah Inserra, a unit representative and organizer for GSOC, said the union has advised its members to refrain from completing the Brightspace modules until NYU details the process in which the Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment guidelines were updated.
“We’ve had a great number of workers come to us concerned about how and if they will be able to do their jobs now that — as teachers, for instance — you have to maybe, in a given context, discuss Zionism as a historical or political phenomenon,” Inserra said in an interview with WSN. “[They] are now unsure if they’re able to do without potentially exposing themselves to censure and punishment by the university.”
Inserra said that GSOC aims to bargain with NYU to remove the requirement for students to complete the modules because it is a “clear violation of the contract” the union has with the university. He added that the union will formally request the opportunity to bargain with NYU “in the coming days.”
The required toolkit on Brightspace includes four modules that ask students to agree with the university’s updated student conduct policy that cite “code words, like ‘Zionist,’” as examples of potentially discriminatory speech. NYU community members have protested the updated guidelines over the last few weeks, which the university had said came in response to “calls for greater clarity” heard in more than 20 listening sessions over the summer. GSOC also criticized the updated guidelines in August, condemning the university’s “dangerous and tendentious conflation of principled political speech with bigotry.”
Last December, GSOC accused the university of canceling “several” pro-Palestinian events and targeting students and workers promoting pro-Palestinian speech. The union also joined the American Association of University Professors and the Student Government Assembly in condemning NYU for authorizing the New York City Police Department to arrest dozens of students, faculty and alumni at a pro-Palestinian encamoment in Gould Plaza.
Inserra said that the modules offer a “good keyhole glimpse into these larger workings that affect all of us at NYU,” referencing the NYPD’s increased presence on campus since arresting community members.
“We want to make it very clear that people who are not completing this module aren’t just not doing it because they forgot or because it is another administrative nonsense that we’re asked to complete,” Inserra said. “But that we refuse the premise and are not gonna be browbeaten into betraying our principles — or just the principle to be able to speak freely on matters of politics, history and so forth — which is our job in many cases as teachers, student workers, intellectual workers.”
A university spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Contact Liyana Illyas at [email protected].
