Dozens of students have signed a petition calling on NYU to uninvite representatives from the CIA to its Wednesday spring internship fair, saying the agency’s work is not aligned with university values. The CIA has faced criticism for its violent post-9/11 interrogations, and military operations in countries including Indonesia, Guatemala and Iran.
Spearheaded by NYU’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, the petition stated that the CIA’s active recruitment efforts on campus breach university ethical codes’ citation of “respect for the rights and dignity of others” as a “core value.”
“This goes against the principles of a university trying to foster a safe and creative space for students who want to go out into the world,” Vince Anani, a founder of Students of Color for Change, said in an interview with WSN. “The CIA has been involved in the disruption and misery of millions of people in various ventures from around the world.”
Last week, over 1,000 students from law schools across the tri-state area petitioned against the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s participation in an NYU Law career fair. SDS has also hosted several protests against recruitment efforts from weapons manufacturing companies at the Tandon School of Engineering.
In the petition, which has garnered over 70 signatures, students cited the intelligence agency’s military operations in Indonesia, human rights violations related to a coup in Guatemala and use of classified documents to help overthrow an Iranian government — all of which took place in the mid-late 1900s. More recently, the CIA has come under fire for refusing to disclose what kinds of personal information the New York City Police Department accessed during Black Lives Matter protests and using torture to interrogate prisoners in Guantánamo Bay.
SDS and other on-campus groups scheduled a picket outside Wednesday’s internship fair, set to take place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Kimmel Center for University Life. The event draws thousands of students to network with nearly 40 employers, including Bloomingdale’s, the New York State Department of Transportation and Rakuten International.
“We want to make sure that anyone who tries to go to the career fair is aware of the CIA’s presence, and doesn’t go to the table,” Ebtesham Ahmed, an organizer for NYU SDS, said in an interview with WSN. “We are asking the administration to not include the CIA in this career fair and also future career fairs.”
Last semester, NYU SDS protested Tandon’s investments in military manufacturers and tech companies with ties to Israel, such as Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, at its career fair and at off-campus recruitment efforts. Both firms did not show up to the fair after protests at Tandon, with Glencore leaving just a QR code on a table and General Dynamics not in attendance at all.
During the fall protests, an NYU spokesperson had told WSN that “the calls to deprive fellow students of their choice of where to work” are “deeply troubling.”
Contact Amanda Chen at [email protected].
