Around 20 members of NYU’s chapter of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine gathered in Bobst Library for a “die-in” on Wednesday afternoon to honor the Palestinians killed in Israel’s ongoing siege in the Gaza Strip, which has destroyed almost all of the region’s schools.
Nine FSJP members laid on the floor of the library’s lobby, covered in white shrouds and holding tombstone-shaped posters with phrases including “12,000 Students KILLED” and “University of Palestine BOMBED.” The faculty demonstrated for 12 minutes, which they said was intended to represent how often a Palestinian is killed in Gaza. The entire group then circled the first floor, carrying roses, effigies, the tombstones and a banner that read “NYU OUT OF PALESTINE.”
Over 95% of schools have been destroyed since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, according to a Nov. 8 UNICEF report. Several major universities in Gaza, including Al-Quds Open University and Islamic University of Gaza, have also faced significant damage following Israeli airstrikes in the region.
At the start of the “die-in,” protesters threw papers from a higher floor of Bobst down to the lobby outlining FSJP’s message to honor the “victims of scholasticide” in Palestine, including educators, students, librarians and journalists. The group’s statement also reiterated its demands for NYU to divest from companies and weapons manufacturers with ties to Israel and shut down its study away site in Tel Aviv.
Sinan Antoon, an FSJP member and Gallatin professor, said that the Bobst lobby is one of the only accessible spaces on campus where students and faculty can still protest, describing NYU’s atmosphere as “Orwellian.”
“This is completely unacceptable, normalizing this militarized campus that has checkpoints and has security all over the place,” Antoon said in an interview with WSN. “Kimmel steps are closed, you can’t protest there. Paulson is closed. The walkway between Bleecker and Houston is closed. Why is the university afraid of people expressing their opinion?”
CAS professor and FSJP member Sonya Posmentier noted the presence of Campus Safety officers and NYU administrators at the Wednesday demonstration, including Karen Ortman — the associate vice president of Campus Safety — the President’s chief of staff Emma Wolfe and the head of student conduct and community standards Craig Jolley.
“University administrators and Campus Safety officers were on hand to ensure the safety of our community,” NYU spokesperson John Beckman said in a statement to WSN. “These administrators reiterate our rules, minimize disruptions and de-escalate any confrontations that may emerge. We urge all members of the NYU community to respect the library as a building devoted to scholarship and study.”
Last month, FSJP members gathered in the first floor of Bobst to read passages of books that they said could be “bannable” by NYU for their criticism of Zionism and Israel, protesting the university’s updated student conduct guidelines that cite “code words, like ‘Zionist,’” as examples of potentially discriminatory speech. Following the reading, Beckman denied in a public statement that the university would restrict any of the books listed by FSJP.
In 2014, hundreds of students joined NYU’s chapter of the Black Student Union for a “die-in” in Bobst during the revitalization of the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2019, members of NYU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine also held a “die-in” in Washington Square Park amid a celebration of Israel’s founding, holding signs with the names of Palestinian villages that were depopulated by the Israeli military.
About 15 minutes after the “die-in” ended, the faculty demonstrators went outside and lined the front of Bobst with the tombstones, flowers and effigies. Posmentier told WSN that the demonstration was meant to be a more “dramatic way” to draw the university’s attention to the war in Gaza and Israel’s escalating ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
“We keep speaking out and sometimes it’s not clear to me whether the university is listening,” Posmentier said. “People like to say, ‘I hear you’ a lot in meetings with faculty and students, but what we’ve seen is that the campus is still barricaded. There are still security officers everywhere to try to prevent students from speaking publicly.”
In response to a student’s concern for NYU to publicly recognize the destruction of universities in Gaza and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, President Linda Mills said at the University Senate meeting that the administration would “address it” and get back to the student. As the meeting took place, dozens of students and faculty picketed outside, calling on the university to shut down its Tel Aviv site and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Contact Kaitlyn Sze Tu at [email protected].