NYU has suspended at least 13 students since a group of protesters held a pro-Palestinian sit-in during finals week last semester, and has placed at least 20 others on probation for at least a year, multiple students told WSN.

The Office of Student Conduct notified most students of their sanctions — a year-long suspension from the university for the spring, summer and fall 2025 semesters — on Jan. 7. At the December demonstration, a group of students and faculty occupied Bobst Library’s 12th floor with dozens more organizing a sit-in in the building’s lobby. The protesters demanded that the university disclose its investments and withdraw from companies with ties to Israel amid its siege in Gaza. 

In emails obtained by WSN, the OSC accused the students of “engaging in behavior that substantially disrupts” university operations, “failure to comply promptly” with the instruction of a university employee and “engaging in behavior as prohibited under other established NYU policies.” Each student received the same list of policy violations, regardless of their involvement in the demonstration.

LS sophomore Hafiza Khalique, one of the sanctioned students, said they were not on the library’s 12th floor and spent most of the demonstration studying in the lobby. Khalique, who was previously suspended for taking down hostage posters outside the Stern School of Business in the fall 2023 semester, learned about their suspension on Jan. 17. They said that receiving the notice just a week before the start of the spring semester was “incredibly destabilizing.”

“This was the reason why I was unhoused last year — because NYU kicked me out of the dorms after I was suspended, and I had to find a way to secure housing,” Khalique said. “As a first-gen scholarship student, it was not possible for my family at all to contribute, and I had a hard time with moving around and finding housing stability and financial stability.”

Khalique, who said they were falsely charged with hanging banners from the upper levels of the library, also accused NYU of “targeting brown and Arab students.” They said they felt that the university had singled them out by notifying them of their suspension 10 days after most other students. 

Students who received notice of their suspension on Jan. 7 were given the opportunity to appeal the decision within five business days. Multiple students told WSN that the student suspensions are ongoing, with some suspended for one year, some for a semester and others relieved of their disciplinary charges following the appeal process. 

“The original email was like a copy and paste template, charging or accusing all students with the same alleged participation in the action — every kind of thing that they saw that happened, unrelated to the action,” a CAS junior, who requested to be anonymous due to safety concerns, said. “It’s really just about intimidating and suppressing student voices.”

NYU spokesperson John Beckman said the university is not authorized to discuss individual students’ disciplinary records, and confirmed that the university has been proceeding with disciplinary hearings “against NYU participants in the disruptions.”

“Sanctions reflect such issues as the seriousness of these events involved, prior student conduct records, existing warning or probationary status, truthfulness of testimony, among other matters,” Beckman said.

In multiple interviews, students compared NYU’s approach to pro-Palestinian demonstrations to that of other on-campus protests and disruptions. Khalique referenced a 2014 “die-in” inside Bobst organized by the Black Student Union at NYU, protesting police brutality in the wake of Michael Brown and Eric Garner’s deaths. Khalique claimed that recent sanctions against students and faculty reflect a harsher approach to demonstrations in support of Palestinian resistance.

“The university has weaponized state violence to really arrest their own students and faculty, to deprive them of their careers and therefore housing, healthcare, scholarship and to strip them of their livelihoods,” Khalique said. “It’s the Palestine exception.”

The CAS junior also criticized NYU for what they called a disproportionate suppression of pro-Palestinian speech. 

“You can see it as an example of the Palestine exception on campus,” the student said. “Things related to Palestine are completely treated on a different level than anything else. I see it as an example of collective punishment, and it was very arbitrary — people received notices who weren’t involved at all.”

One of the sanctioned students, a CAS senior who requested to remain anonymous due to pending disciplinary proceedings, criticized the university for sending “the same exact email” to all students — including those allegedly not involved in the demonstration — and called the sanctions random and disproportionate. They also said that during their hearings, their assigned administrator’s account of the events was incorrect, including the documented date of the action. 

In its email to students, the OSC alleged that they were involved in “draping unauthorized banners and flags,” “changing attire to avoid detection,” “loudly chanting from the 1st and 12th floors” and “refusing to remove a table and chairs that had been placed by protestors in the lobby near the express elevator.” The student added that the extensive list of sanctions made it challenging for students to appropriately prepare for their hearings, many of which were scheduled within 24 hours of the initial email.

“It’s really useful for shaming people — for making it seem like your sanctions are going to be far greater than what they should be because there’s all this reference to things you didn’t do,” the student said in an interview with WSN. “You don’t even know what you’re going into at these conduct hearings. They hope you just give them what you’re guilty of.”

The student, accused of hanging banners from the library’s upper levels, spoke to an administrator at the protest who told them that students would not be sanctioned for doing so, according to an audio recording obtained by WSN. The student said they submitted the recording to the OSC as evidence as part of their appeal, which they said was not accepted.

Immediately following the December sit-in, NYU issued persona non grata statuses against students and faculty who participated in the protest, barring them from accessing several university buildings. Police arrested two faculty members at a protest outside Bobst the next day, sparking criticism from hundreds of faculty and staff, 1,800 scholars unaffiliated with NYU and other nonprofit organizations. Beckman said in his statement that NYU had relieved four affected faculty members of their persona non grata statuses.

“The idea that they can just blanket suspend people without even having any idea of the extent of their actions to attribute this disruptive, five-hour-long act on all of these students — it’s hard to even talk about properly because it’s so ridiculous,” the anonymous CAS senior said. “It’s mostly just a scare tactic, and it can’t be a good move on the part of the university.”

Dharma Niles contributed reporting. 

Contact Yezen Saadah at [email protected].